Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 6 9780198827030, 9780198827047, 0198827032

Table of contents :
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Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy: Volume 6
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Contents
Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defense of Divine Predestination
1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUGUSTINE’S CAUSAL ACCOUNT OF PREDESTINATION
2. PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF AUGUSTINIAN PREDESTINATION: THE IDLE ARGUMENT AND THE MANIPULATION ARGUMENT
3. AUGUSTINE ON THE ASYMMETRY OF HUMAN AGENCY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Reality of the Non-Existent Object of Thought: The Possible, the Impossible, and Mental Existence in Islamic Philosophy (eleventh–thirteenth centuries)
1. INTRODUCTION
2. MUʿTAZILITES’ REALISM: OBJECTS OF THOUGHTS AND INTENTIONS
3. THE “POSITIVE OF POSITIVE RULE” AND MENTAL EXISTENCE
4. ASHʿARITES AND FAKHR AL-DĪN AL-RĀZĪ: MENTAL EXISTENCE AND PLATONIC FORMS
5. THE IMPOSSIBLE: PARACONSISTENCY OR REDUCTIONISM
6. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Signum est in praedicamento relationis”: Roger Bacon’s Semantics Revisited in the Light of His Relational Theory of the Sign
1. INTRODUCTION
2. A READING HYPOTHESIS: THE RELATIONAL NATURE OF THE SIGN
a. The Two Semantic Relations
b. The Augustinian Background
3. BACON’S SEMANTICS REVISITED
a. A Typology of Semantic Relations
b. Natural and ad placitum Relations between Words, Concepts, and Things
c. Transfers of Words and Re-Imposition
4. UNDERLYING METAPHYSICS AND SEMANTIC ISSUES
a. Bacon’s Theory of Relation
b. Semantic Issues: Bacon as a Critic of His Contemporaries
5. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Is Anything in the Intellect that Was Not First in Sense?: Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas
1. ACCESS AND CONCEPTUALIZING
a. Access
b. How Access Affects Conceptualizing
c. Are the Senses My Intellect’s Gatekeepers?
2. SELF-AWARENESS AND OUR CONCEPT OF THE INCORPOREAL
a. Accessing the Incorporeal Intellect
b. Conceptualizing the Incorporeal? A Misconception
c. Conceptualizing a Kind of Being that is Not Corporeal
3. HUMANS AND THE INCORPOREAL “ABOVE”
a. Central Intelligence Puzzles
b. The Two Kinds of Genus–Species Relationships
c. Situating the Human Intellect in the Scale of Intellectual Perfection
d. Puzzle 1 Solved: Composite Intellects Conceptualizing Simple Ones
e. Puzzles 2 & 3 Solved
4. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Merciful Demand: Fraternal Correction as a Form of Blame
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNTS OF FRATERNAL CORRECTION
a. From the Bible to the Thirteenth Century
b. The Augustinian Inheritance
c. Thirteenth-Century Innovations
d. The Stages of Correction
e. Omission of Correction
3. MORAL ADDRESS, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND BLAME
4. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marguerite Porete and Godfrey of Fontaines: Detachable Will, Discardable Virtue, Transformative Love
1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
2. MARGUERITE’S REASONS
3. BEYOND POLITICS
4. DETACHABLE WILL
5. DISCARDABLE VIRTUE
6. TRANSFORMATIVE LOVE
7. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristotle and John Buridan on the Individuation of Causal Powers
INTRODUCTION
1. ARISTOTLE ON POWER INDIVIDUATION: THE ACTIVITY-OBJECT PRINCIPLE
a. Definitional Dependence and Individuation
b. The Objects of Activities
c. Power Types, Not Power Tokens
d. A Single-Track Account of Powers
e. Aristotle’s Account of Power Individuation and Its Influence
2. JOHN BURIDAN ON POWER INDIVIDUATION: INDEPENDENCE AND MULTI-TRACK POWERS
a. Buridan’s Dispositional Theory: The Soul as a Multi-Track Power
b. The Existence Objection
c. The Multi-Track Objection: God, the Will, and Heat
d. Jonathan Lowe’s Dilemma and Buridan’s Appeal to Parsimony
3. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Briefly Noted
Notes for Contributors
Index

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OXFORD STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 6

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ADVISORY BOARD Peter Adamson, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Deborah Black, University of Toronto Peter King, University of Toronto Henrik Lagerlund, Stockholm University John Marenbon, Trinity College, Cambridge Calvin Normore, University of California, Los Angeles Dominik Perler, Humboldt University, Berlin Eleonore Stump, St. Louis University Editorial Assistant Philip Choi, University of Colorado

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Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 6 Edited by

ROBERT PASNAU

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © the several contributors 2018 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–882703–0 (hbk.) 978–0–19–882704–7 (pbk.) Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Contents Articles Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defense of Divine Predestination Tianyue Wu The Reality of the Non-Existent Object of Thought: The Possible, the Impossible, and Mental Existence in Islamic Philosophy (eleventh–thirteenth centuries) Fedor Benevich “Signum est in praedicamento relationis”: Roger Bacon’s Semantics Revisited in the Light of His Relational Theory of the Sign Laurent Cesalli and Irène Rosier-Catach Is Anything in the Intellect that Was Not First in Sense? Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas Therese Scarpelli Cory Merciful Demand: Fraternal Correction as a Form of Blame Jeffrey Hause Marguerite Porete and Godfrey of Fontaines: Detachable Will, Discardable Virtue, Transformative Love Peter King Aristotle and John Buridan on the Individuation of Causal Powers Can Laurens Löwe

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100 144

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Briefly Noted Scotus—Holcot—Hasse—Kilvington

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Notes for Contributors Index

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Augustine on the Election of Jacob A Philosophical Defense of Divine Predestination Tianyue Wu

The Doctrine of Providence claims that the eternal God not only creates the world in time but also predestines the existence of all things in the world and their activities, of which human beings are not an exception. Divine predestination is above all related to the ultimate end or beatitude of rational beings: God freely elects ‘in advance’ who will receive divine grace and persevere in it, and thus be saved from sin and death. In a tradition that can be traced back to Augustine, this form of divine providence is often interpreted in a causal sense: God is the sole cause of salvation, which has nothing to do with human works and merits.¹ This causal interpretation of predestination, however, has almost disappeared from the contemporary theological and philosophical scene.² Few people defend a strong Augustinian ¹ Hans Urs von Balthasar once claimed that Augustine changed “the consistently positively conceived idea of predestination in scripture” into a “dark and menacing” doctrine of double predestination that “brought untold suffering to mankind” in the following centuries. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, vol. I, The Word Made Flesh, trans. A. V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 266, cited from M. Levering, Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4–5. ² For instance, in one popular textbook on systematic theology in the Catholic world, only sin and grace are dealt with in an independent chapter, while the word ‘predestination’ does not even occur in the index. See Francis Schussler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin (eds.), Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), esp. 375–430. Similarly, though The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology devotes a chapter to election, which is identified as an essential part of the theory of doctrine, nevertheless, the author highlights the disdain of contemporary Protestant theologians, such as Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, for the theory of personal election and how Barth employs the conception of universal salvation in Christ to soften the tension between the predestination and God’s love of all beings. See John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 105–20. In studies on philosophy of religion, scholars are

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version of divine predestination today. Even they prefer to follow Boethius to emphasize its theocentric dimension: by carefully separating the eternal plan of God from the salvation of human beings in time, they endeavor to show how the atemporal characteristics of predestination make room for human freedom.³ In contrast, this essay aims to take up the philosophical challenge of causal determination in divine predestination to human freedom by reconstructing Augustine’s relevant insights to argue that divine predestination still can accommodate our intuitions concerning freedom and moral responsibility today. Above all, it deserves notice that Augustine’s own reflections on predestination went through a long development and only in his rather late controversial writings did he establish the causal account roughly reconstructed above. Therefore, I will briefly reconstruct this progress in Section 1 by focusing on his interpretation of the election of Jacob as it is found in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. This will help us clarify some of Augustine’s insights, in particular his distinction between foreknowledge and predestination, which are crucial to our understanding of divine predestination as a causal theory. In Section 2, I will appeal to attacks from the enemies of determinism, in particular those originating from the Idle Argument and the Manipulation Argument, to present the theoretical difficulties in Augustine’s account for Jacob’s election as can be seen in an imaginary case (Case 1) I design. It seems that Augustine’s Jacob is no different from a manipulated agent in any aspect relevant to the conditions for human agency. This will also explain why it is not enough to save Augustine’s position by appealing to Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist model as Augustinian scholars commonly do.⁴ more interested in divine foreknowledge than predestination. For recent studies, see William Lane Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Leiden: Brill, 1991); Linda T. Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Ken Perszyk (ed.), Molinism: The Contemporary Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The crucial difference is that the divine foreknowledge does not necessarily entail causal determinism, while predestination does entail it. I will appeal to Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians to demarcate this significant difference. ³ For instance, Herbert McCabe, a distinguished Catholic apologist of predestination, stresses, “We do not have predestination at all; it is the plan in the mind of God, it is nothing whatever in us. Predestination exists in eternity and only in eternity, in the eternal timeless mind of God. It is not before or after or simultaneous with anything.” Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters, ed. B. Davies (New York: Continuum, 2002), 184–5. For a recent detailed account of the biblical roots and theological traditions of predestination, see Levering, Predestination. ⁴ See, for instance, James Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 219–35; Jasper Hopkins, Philosophical Criticism (Minneapolis: Banning Press, 1994), 3–40; Esa Rannikko, Liberum Arbitrium and Necessitas: A Philosophical Inquiry into Augustine’s Conception of the Will (Helsinki:

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In Section 3, I will argue that Augustine’s teaching of predestination, especially the so-called ‘double predestination,’ contains a significant but often-neglected aspect of moral intuitions: the asymmetry of moral responsibility, namely, the conditions of being praised for a good action are substantially different from those of being blamed for an evil one. Augustine was not only conscious of the asymmetric structure of moral responsibility, but also concerned to offer a rational account of this puzzling phenomenon in his metaphysical framework. I will consider some possible objections to the Augustinian asymmetry thesis to complete our philosophical defense of Augustine’s predestination doctrine and to show its relevance to our moral responsibility practices today.

1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUGUSTINE’S C A U S A L AC C O UN T O F P R E D E S T I N A T I O N Augustine’s doctrine of predestination can be traced back to his early exegesis of the Epistle to the Romans written in 393/4, Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula ad Romanos.⁵ St. Paul explicitly mentions that God calls and foreordains those who are to be saved: For those whom he previously (ante) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Rom. 8:29–30)⁶

The temporal adverb ‘previously (ante)’ in St. Paul’s words seems to suggest a logical (if not a temporal) difference between divine foreknowledge and predestination. In contrast, Augustine prefers to emphasize the unity between these two different descriptions of divine agency upon human affairs: “He does not predestine anyone unless (nisi) he foreknows that this person will believe and follow his call, and he calls them the elected.”⁷ Luther-agricola-society, 1997), 30–3; 221–31; Eleonore Stump, “Augustine on Free Will,” in E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 124–47. ⁵ See Josef Lössl, Intellectus gratiae: die erkenntnistheoretische und hermeneutische Dimension der Gnadenlehre Augustins von Hippo (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 54–5; Volker H. Drecoll, Die Entstehung der Gnadenlehre Augustins (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 165. ⁶ The translation of Scripture verses is cited from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition with modifications in light of the Latin version Augustine actually uses. ⁷ Augustine, Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula Apostoli ad Romanos, 55, “Nec praedestinauit aliquem, nisi quem praesciuit crediturum et securutum uocationem

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It shows not only that predestination presupposes foreknowledge, but also that the operation of predestination is completely based upon the divine foreknowledge of future belief. With respect to the effective influence of the divine agency upon human freedom of will, Augustine does not seem to assign a specific role to the predestination. This point is more evident in Augustine’s commentary on the election of Jacob. Jacob and Esau are twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca. While the twins fought together in Rebecca’s womb, God already predicted: “the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). For this reason, St. Paul asserts that the divine call and election is before one’s birth and therefore has nothing to do with one’s good or bad works (opera) (Rom. 9:11–12). With a worry that this claim might be misinterpreted as a denial of human freedom, Augustine insists that God’s preferential love of Jacob over Esau is based on his foreknowledge of Jacob’s future faith. God does not select (eligere) according to our good works, which pertain exclusively to divine grace through the gift of charity, but according to faith. Here, faith is openly regarded as the only merit (meritum) of human agents, which enables us as believers to receive God’s gifts so as to perform good works.⁸ Accordingly, divine assistance is restricted to a gratuitous calling that waits to be accepted by the will and to the actualization of our will to perform good works. In this context, the calling is said to be gratuitous merely in that it is not given as a repayment for good works, not in that it is not a prepayment for the future faith God knows in advance. For faith is still taken as a merit that can be ascribed to us. On the one hand, the divine calling simply paves the way to faith without working directly on the faculty of willing.⁹ On the other, the performance of good works follows on our free decision as a reward. In the election of Jacob, the divine interference in Jacob’s faith occurs either before or after the crucial decision of Jacob’s will to believe. There is no explicit mention of a suum, quos et electos dicit” (my translation). See also ibid., 60–1. For comments on this text, see Lössl, Intellectus gratiae, 54–5; Donato Ogliari, Gratia et certamen: The Relationship between Grace and Free Will in the Discussion of Augustine with the So-Called Semipelagians (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 311–13. ⁸ Augustine, Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula Apostoli ad Romanos, 60. A similar account of the beginning of faith can be found as well in his De diuersis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, 68, 3, composed during the same period. ⁹ As other studies have noted, at that time Augustine had not worked out the full meaning of calling (uocatio) and its effect on our decision to believe, something he came to do in and after the work De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. As precisely formulated by Ring, “die Berufung ist eine Art äußerer Gnade”; see Gerhardt Ring, “Der Anfang des Glaubens: Verdienst oder Gnade?” Augustiniana 54 (2004), 177–202, at 180. See also J. Patout Burns, The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1980), 37 ff.; Drecoll, “Gratia,” 195–8; Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, 299.

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causal relation between the divine predestination and Jacob’s act of willing. What matters here is simply the divine foreknowledge of his meritorious faith. Certainly, one can still raise questions about the compatibility between the infallible foreknowledge of God and the freedom of human will in determining his faith. For even granting that the divine foreknowledge is causally external to human actions, one still needs to elucidate if it entails other sorts of determinisms that might be incompatible with human freedom. Since our concern is with Augustine’s reflections on the divine causal determinism and its compatibility with human freedom, we shall reserve the issues of foreknowledge for another paper.¹⁰ In his account of the origin of evil in De libero arbitrio, which was finalized in 395, Augustine restricts his discussions on the compatibility between the infallible divine foreknowledge and free decision of human will, making no mention of predestination at all.¹¹ Scholars such as Volker Henning Drecoll and Josef Lössl correctly observe that Augustine’s understanding of predestination experienced a significant change one year later in his first literary work as a bishop, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, where he introduces an explicit distinction between divine foreknowledge and predestination (or election).¹²

¹⁰ For research on Augustine’s account of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, see, for instance, William L. Craig, “Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will,” Augustinian Studies 15 (1984), 41–67; David P. Hunt, “Augustine on Theological Fatalism: The Argument of De Libero Arbitrio 3.1–4,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996), 1–30; Barry A. David, “The Meaning and Usage of ‘Divine Foreknowledge’ in Augustine’s De libero arbitrio (lib.arb.) 3.2.14–4.41,” Augustinian Studies 32 (2001), 117–55; Barry A. David, “Divine Foreknowledge in De ciuitate Dei 5.9: The Philosophical Value of Augustine’s Polemic,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75 (2001), 479–95. See also note 2 for contemporary discussions on foreknowledge and human freedom. A useful overview can be found in Linda Zagzebski, “Foreknowledge and Free Will,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), ed. E. N. Zalta. . ¹¹ Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, 2, 4–III, 4, 11. It deserves notice that Evodius, Augustine’s interlocutor in this philosophical dialogue, specifically relates the problem of divine foreknowledge to the first sin of human beings and shows no interest in the election of the just, which partially explains Augustine’s silence about predestination in this context. This will be clear in our analysis of the asymmetry of moral responsibility. ¹² This early notion of predestination is rightly associated with Augustine’s soteriological approach developed in his Pauline exegeses from Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula ad Romanos of 393/4 to De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum of 396/7. See Drecoll, Entstehung der Gnadelehre Augustin, 21–2; Lössl, Intellectus gratiae, 241–55. It is precisely for this reason that De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum is widely accepted as a turning point in Augustine’s thought, especially in regard to his views on divine agency and free will. For literature on this change of thought, see Tianyue Wu, “Augustine on Initium Fidei: A Case Study of the Coexistence of Operative Grace and Free Decision of the Will,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 78 (2012), 1–38, esp. 7–8, n. 23.

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In De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum I, 2, Augustine revisits St. Paul’s reflections on grace and merit in Romans 9:10–20. Above all, Augustine reveals the purpose of the whole epistle to be that no man should glory in meritorious works. “Good works are because of grace, not grace because of good works.”¹³ There are no good works without prevenient grace. Divine grace comes before as a necessary condition of good works. When he comes again to the divergent fates of Jacob and Esau, Augustine refuses to reduce election to foreknowledge (praescientia) of future faith. For the same logic could be applied to future good works as well, which were also foreseen by God before the birth of Jacob. However, it is unmistakably indicated in the Scriptures that election was not based on their works because they had not been born when the predetermination was declared. It follows that it was not based on their faith either, because Jacob and Esau had neither faith nor works before their birth.¹⁴ The same reason forced Augustine to consider whether faith itself should be numbered among the gifts of grace. Without any doubt, faith is preceded by the grace of calling, which comes before all merits, and which is open to both the pious and the impious.¹⁵ However, it is equally obvious that the effects of this gratuitous calling differ in Jacob and Esau. In this context, for the purpose of precluding any kind of possible boast on our part, either in good works or in faith, Augustine explicitly ascribed this difference to the nature of divine calling rather than to their responses. The divine calling is no longer a prepayment for the future faith as implied in his earlier interpretation of predestination in the light of foreknowledge. When God predestines a man to be saved, He calls him in such a way that this man may believe (ut credat).¹⁶ As modern commentators notice, the clause ‘ut credat’ certainly signifies a causal relation between the grace of calling and the act of faith.¹⁷ This emphasis on the causal role of divine election, especially in the beginning

¹³ Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 3: “Bona opera ex gratia, non gratia ex operibus.” ¹⁴ Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 5. ¹⁵ Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 7. ¹⁶ Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 9: “[I]f God will have mercy on a man so as to call him, he will also have mercy on him so that he may believe (quia cui misertus erit deus ut eum uocet, miserebitur eius ut credat).” Translation is modified from Augustine, Earlier Writings, tr. J. Burleigh (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1953), 392. ¹⁷ Ring observes that in Augustine’s earlier account of the effect of divine mercy in Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos, Augustine prefers the expression cum crediderit to stress the active contribution of human agents in the beginning of faith. See Ring, “Anfang des Glaubens,” 192; Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, 301.

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of our faith, sets the tone for Augustine’s later reflections on the mystery of predestination.¹⁸ In Augustine’s final years, the problem of predestination became a central topic and was treated in great detail. During the thirty years that intervened, Augustine paid almost no special attention to this issue.¹⁹ The only significant exception is his long letter to the Roman priest Sixtus written in 418 shortly after the Pelagians had been condemned in Rome. In this letter, Augustine addresses the problem of predestination of infants to refute the Pelagian claim that election is based upon one’s merits. It is possible that the infants of pious Christians suddenly die without baptism, while the infants of the enemies of Christ die after being accepted into the church through baptism. However, even the Pelagians agree that no infant enters the kingdom of heaven without being baptized. It follows that God’s election of some over other infants has nothing to do with preceding merits, neither the merits of the infants, because they have none of their own, nor those of their parents, because they make no difference here.²⁰ However, one might appeal to the infants’ possible merits at a later age and interpret God’s predestination as based on foreknowledge of future merits. In light of this challenge, Augustine returns to St. Paul’s example of Isaac’s twin sons. First of all, the fact that the twins were not yet born when

¹⁸ See Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 20, 52: “I began to have a fuller knowledge of this truth in that treatise which I wrote for Simplician of happy memory, the bishop of Milan, at the beginning of my episcopacy, when I realized and stated that the beginning of faith is also the gift of God.” (The translation is from Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, IV, tr. R. J. Teske (New York: New City Press, 1999).) It has to be mentioned that despite Augustine’s insistence on his consistency on the issue of initium fidei, in De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum of 396/7, he still believes that God moves human will in the sense that he reveals the content of faith in our intellect without predetermining the consent of the will. This operation of divine grace is called ‘congruent calling (uocatio congruens).’ For God calls the elect in a manner congruent with the consent of their will. See Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 13. For a classical study on ‘congruent calling,’ see Burns, Operative Grace, 40. For a revision of Burns’ often criticized position and a more detailed analysis of Augustine’s conception of grace in 396, see Wu, “Augustine on Initium Fidei,” 12–18. ¹⁹ As Burns observes, the theme of predestination or election faded into the background in his anti-Donatist works. Cf. Operative Grace, 77–9. In Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians from 411 to his death, the doctrine of predestination plays an essential role in their central quarrels on human freedom and redemption, but it becomes the focus of discussion only in the so-called Semi-Pelagian controversy after 425. For the development of Augustine’s doctrine of election during the Pelagian controversy, see Burns, Operative Grace, 121 ff.; Ogliari, Gratia et cetamen, 310–30. But cf. Mathijs Lamberigts, “Augustine on Predestination: Some Quaestiones Disputatae Revisited,” Augustiniana 54 (2004), 282–8, which argues that the doctrine of predestination is not important in Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians. ²⁰ Augustine, Epistulae, 194, 7, 30–2.

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the predestination was declared confirms the thesis that God’s love and grace show no regard to one’s preceding merits. Furthermore, Augustine draws our attention to the inscrutable nature of the predestination. St. Paul merely mentions that Heaven forbid that there should be injustice in God who shows mercy. In Augustine’s eyes, this interdict clearly exhibits the Apostle’s refusal to offer any further explanation, in particular, for foreknowledge of future works and merits, because such explanation will inevitably destroy the gratuity of divine grace.²¹ More importantly, even if God’s election of Jacob is in accordance with His foreknowledge of Jacob’s later belief and merits, this cannot be applied to infants who die immediately after being baptized, for there are no actual merits for them at all, neither in the past nor in the future.²² It is futile to appeal to their would-be good works that will never materialize. For a good work that actually emerges in the world is obviously better than a possible one. Therefore, if election turns on good works, no matter possible or actual, then it will be difficult to explain why God foreordains those baptized infants to die rather than allows them to adorn this life with their good works he foreknows.²³ A few years later, Augustine’s letter to Sixtus caused serious worries concerning the freedom of the will among the monks at Hadrumetum in Africa. They wrote to Augustine for further elucidation of his doctrine of divine grace, which instigated the controversy with the so-called SemiPelagians in Africa and in Provence during the last years of Augustine’s life.²⁴ The monks at Hadrumetum feared that Augustine had introduced fatalism by the term ‘predestination.’²⁵ In contrast, they appealed to Augustine’s earlier exegeses of Romans to reduce the divine predestination of saints to the foreknowledge of their future faith, which originates in the saints themselves.²⁶ In response to the doubt of the African monks, in maintaining his position in De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum I, 2, Augustine warns that this confusion of praedestinatio with praescientia might lend a hand to the Pelagian heresy. The Pelagian says, “Therefore, he foreknew who were going to be holy and spotless through the decision of their free will, and for this reason, before the creation of the world, he chose in his foreknowledge (praescientia) those whom he foreknew would

²¹ Augustine, Epistulae, 194, 8, 34–40. ²² Augustine, Epistulae, 194, 9, 41. ²³ Augustine, Epistulae, 194, 9, 42. ²⁴ See Augustine, Epistulae, 214–16. For a detailed study of this controversy, see Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, esp. 28–41 for comments on the influence of Augustine’s letter to Sixtus. ²⁵ Augustine, Epistulae, 225, 3. ²⁶ Augustine, Epistulae, 226, 4.

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be such people. Before they existed, therefore, he chose his predestined children whom he foreknew would be holy and spotless; he, of course, did not make (facere) them to be such, nor did he foresee (praeuidere) that he would make them such, but foresaw that they would be such.”²⁷

In contrast, Augustine offers a clear distinction between these two forms of divine agency in its operation on human affairs. Predestination cannot exist without foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can exist without predestination. By predestination, of course, God foreknew those things which he himself was going to do; for this reason it was said, He produced (facere) those things which will be (Is 45:11 LXX). But he is able to foreknow even those things which he himself does not produce, such as sins of any sort.²⁸

In this context, Augustine refers praescientia to the pure awareness of events occurring in our temporal world, while praedestinatio to the actual operation of divine decision working in human affairs. As noted earlier, praescientia might be external to our decision of the will and does not function as a link of the causal chain, which was already evident in the Pelagian account of praescientia mentioned above. Therefore, the necessity contained in the infallibility of divine foreknowledge could be interpreted as purely cognitional, rather than causal.²⁹ In contrast, the verb facere in the above passage unambiguously indicates an actual involvement of divine agency in human affairs. That is, what has been predestined by God is not only known in advance, but actually brought into being by the divine providence as its efficient cause. In De dono perseuerantiae written in 428–9, as a response to worries of some Gallic friars about the divine calling and election, Augustine formulates his mature definition of praedestinatio as follows: The predestination of the saints is nothing other than the foreknowledge and the preparation ( praeparatio) of the benefits of God by which he most certainly sets free whoever are set free.³⁰

²⁷ Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum, 18, 36 (English translation is cited from Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, IV ). ²⁸ Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum, 10, 19. ²⁹ This point is often stressed to defend the compatibility between divine agency and human freedom of will in De libero arbitrio III. See, for instance, David DeCelles, “Divine Prescience and Human Freedom in Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 8 (1977), 153: “Augustine’s critical reply to the argument of his opponents is founded on a distinction he sets up between knowledge (i.e., foreknowledge or prediction, in this sense) and causality.” Craig, “Augustine on Foreknowledge,” 49: “In De libero arbitrio 3.4 Augustine’s concern is to avoid the inference that foreknowledge causes what is foreknown.” It is evident that these accounts are closer to the Pelagian reading of Augustine’s early works. ³⁰ Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 14, 35.

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In his later writings, Augustine frequently refers to the verse from Proverbs 8:35 (according to the Septuagint), “the will is prepared by the Lord (Praeparatur uoluntas a Domino).”³¹ This vividly shows how God prepares the saints’ journey towards the final salvation by producing in them a good will to believe. As Augustine claims in the same work, “We, then, will, but God produces (operatur) in us even the act of willing; we, then, work, but God produces in us the action in accord with good will.” This is often referred to as Augustine’s theory of operative grace. Our question is: when the saints’ good wills and works are both prepared or produced by the operative grace, can we really say that they are free? Now we have a clearer understanding of the development of Augustine’s causal theory of predestination as well as its unusually strong claims on the divine dominance over human affairs. In contemporary terms, Augustine’s final rigid position commits him to a theological determinism. This is a specific sort of causal determinism that believes the facts at a previous moment t, in conjunction with the laws of causation, necessitate all things thereafter. In the case of the beginning of faith, God’s decision concerning the election of Jacob over Esau was made before their birth.³² This fact, together with the infallibility of divine decision, determines that Jacob will obtain an inclination to genuine faith some time later in his life. This theological determinism seems to nullify human agency. For in the case of the election of Jacob, the divine providence not only foresees his redemption before the birth, but more importantly prepares his will to believe, which is the sole foundation of his salvation. It seems therefore that Jacob himself contributes nothing to his being elected. Borrowing a well-known phrase from John Rist, the saints in Augustine’s predestined world seem to be like ‘animated puppets.’³³ To defend Augustine’s doctrine of predestination from a philosophical perspective, we need to offer a more precise definition of human agency and argue that it can be accommodated in his predestined world. Certainly, above all, we must have a clearer understanding of the real philosophical problems we have to face.

³¹ This text appears first in De peccatorum meritis of 411/12 and is a leitmotiv of Augustine’s polemic works against the Pelagians. Cf. Athanase Sage, “Praeparatur voluntas a Domino,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 10 (1964), 1–20, at 1. ³² It does not matter if this divine decision is timeless or independent from the time in our experience. For what concerns us here is its effect in our temporal time. For a recent study of this timeless conception of divine providence, see Linda Zagzebski, “Eternity and Fatalism,” in C. Tapp and E. Runggaldier (eds.), God, Eternity, and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 65–80. ³³ See John Rist, “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination,” The Journal of Theological Studies 20 (1969), 429–30.

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2 . PH I LO S O P H I C A L P R O B L E M S O F AU G U S T I N I A N P R E D E S T I N A T I O N : T H E I D L E A R G U M EN T A N D T HE M A N I P U L AT I O N A R G U M E N T The first difficulty we plan to tackle comes from the ancient enemy of determinism, the so-called Idle Argument, which assumes that divine predestination renders human efforts, especially those of the saints, meaningless because what God foreordains necessarily happens regardless of human efforts.³⁴ We begin with the Idle Argument not only because Augustine addresses its worries about determinism and human agency in preaching the predestination doctrine, but more importantly because Augustine’s practical response there, as I will argue by invoking an imaginary case, simply makes these worries more eye-catching on a more profound level. Among these worries is our intuition that predestination involves something very much like manipulation and therefore leaves no room for contributions from human agency. Since human agency is taken as a necessary condition for moral responsibility, it follows that we have no reason to praise a saint for his faith and good works when these have been causally determined by predestination and he has contributed nothing to its happening. This obviously constitutes a more difficult challenge for Augustine’s casual account of predestination. Let us start with the ancient Idle Argument. For instance, we can raise an objection to the election of Jacob as follows: (1) If God predestines that Jacob will be blessed by his father Isaac, then regardless of whether Jacob has deceived his father, he will take the blessing which is intended for his brother Esau. (See Gen. 27.) (2) God predestines that Jacob will be blessed by Isaac. (See Gen. 25:23; Rom. 9:12, assuming that the predestination of Jacob over Esau entails that Jacob will be blessed by Isaac.) (3) Therefore, it is futile for Jacob to deceive his father.³⁵ ³⁴ The idea of the idle argument can be traced back to Aristotle’s De interpretatione, 18b31–3. Its appearance as an argument against fatalism, in particular Stoic fatalism, is mainly preserved in Cicero’s De fato, 28–9 and Origen’s Contra Celsum, II, 20. For an excellent study on the idle argument and the Stoics, see Susanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), esp. 180–233. ³⁵ The idle argumentation formulated here is closer to Aristotle’s idea rather than to its namesake recorded in Cicero’s and Origen’s works. As Bobzien rightly observes, the idle arguments in ancient texts often have a more complex structure: (P1) If it is fated that p, then, whether or not you φ, p. (P2) If it is fated that not-p, then, whether or not you φ, not-p. (P3) Either it is fated that p or it is fated that not-p. (C) Therefore (with regard to p) it is futile (for you) to φ.

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The argument is aimed at the meaninglessness of Jacob’s effort to get his father’s blessing, but it is applicable to the event of being blessed by his father itself as well. For if Jacob’s efforts or actions are pointless, then being blessed will become an event that merely happens to him, or an event external to Jacob’s agency. A basic assumption in this claim is that the meaningfulness of an event resides in the intimate causal link between the event and one’s efforts: on the one hand, an event can be meaningfully ascribed to an agent when it is a result of the agent’s effort; on the other hand, the effort is meaningful because it brings about a result for the agent. Fatalism is wrong in that it destroys the intimate causal connection between effort and effect. In this regard, it is not difficult for us to argue that predestination can be reconciled with the intimate causal link mentioned above, as implied in Augustine’s response to Cicero’s argument against foreknowledge of the future in De ciuitate Dei V, 9. Augustine agrees with Cicero that God not only foreknows all events as causes and effects, but also establishes a fixed order of all causes. However, unlike Cicero, Augustine argues that this fixed causal order will not annihilate the freedom of human will because human acts of will also constitute a link in this causal order as the causes of human acts.³⁶ Returning to the predestination of Jacob, we can also argue that what is predestined is not merely a single event, but also the causal order that contains the necessary conditions for this event.³⁷ For instance, the birth of Jacob is obviously a necessary condition of his being elected. If Jacob is predestined to be elected, his birth is predestined for his salvation. Therefore, one cannot infer from his predestined election that the election necessarily obtains regardless of his birth. Similarly, if to deceive Isaac is

See Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom, 184. However, in a theological context, it is normally obvious whether p or not-p is predestined. Therefore, we do not need to appeal to (P2) and (P3) to feel this argument’s force. ³⁶ Augustine, De ciuitate Dei, V, 9. It is noteworthy that most of the research on Augustine’s conception of divine foreknowledge is mainly concerned with his early account in De libero arbitrio, paying little attention to the discussions in De ciuitate Dei. See note 10. The few exceptions include Siegbert Peetz, “Augustin über menschliche Freiheit (Buch V),” in C. Horn (ed.), Augustinus: De civitate Dei (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 63–86; Augustin Pic, “Saint Augustin et l’impiété de Cicéron: Etude du De ciuitate Dei V, 9,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997), 213–20; David, “Divine Foreknowledge in De ciuitate Dei 5.9.” ³⁷ This is an idea that can be traced back to the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, as reported by Cicero’s De fato, 30, cited from Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom, 199. Though Augustine merely mentions De diuinatione by name, his reconstruction of Cicero’s arguments in De ciuitate Dei, V, 9 confuses Cicero’s teaching in De diuinatione with those in De fato. See Maurice Testard, Saint Augustin et Cicéron (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1958), vol. 1, 240–2; vol. 2, 47–51.

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hypothetically a necessary condition of Jacob’s being blessed, premise (1) is not true and the whole argument collapses. In light of this reply to the Idle Argument, the necessity entailed by predestination is supposed to be a conditional necessity. It is not the case that what is predestined to happen will happen anyway. Rather, God predestines the event p as well as the set of conditions Q that fixes p. Augustine believes that a free action φ of an agent S can be included in Q. In this case, φ is not pointless for S because being a part of Q, φ contributes to the happening of p. Again, p is meaningful for S because it is impossible without φ. Since φ obviously belongs to S, it follows that p can, at least partially, be ascribed to S. To conclude, though God predestines both φ and p, this does not destroy the agency of S in both φ and p, because the intimate causal link between φ and p remains intact in a predestined world. As a specific response to the Idle Argument reconstructed above, the above refutation inspired by Augustine’s response to Cicero seems to work by showing that its first premise is wrong. However, as a defense of human freedom in a deterministic world, this argument is not sufficient.³⁸ On the contrary, it even renders the problem of compatibility more conspicuous. For what is necessitated by predestination now are not merely the outcomes of one’s action φ, but more importantly the action φ or the act of willing itself. However, what matters in the controversy over predestination is precisely the troublesome relation between the necessity and the freedom of human actions. Since the divine predestination of φ never fails, we need to explain rather than take for granted that a predestined action φ is still a free action and can be ascribed to its agent S, as we did in the last paragraph. It is futile to appeal to the consent of the will or other mental activities that are supposed to underlie our free actions, because they are equally predestined. As has been shown in our reconstruction of Augustine’s later position, divine providence is conceived of as the efficient cause of the election of saints, above all by causally preparing one’s will to believe in certain circumstances. Such a causal power does not allow any counterfactual possibility; otherwise there would be another causal power that could actualize this counterfactual possibility and therefore defeat divine predestination in a possible world, which is obviously irreconcilable with the supreme power of God. In an Augustinian predestined world, human actions, at least those that will lead to one’s salvation, are causally brought about by God’s will and subject to His sovereignty. ³⁸ As Suzanne Bobzien rightly observes, here Chrysippus is not concerned with accounting for the freedom of human action in this context and defends the compatibility of causal determinism and free actions elsewhere. See Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom, 231–3.

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The problem of causal necessity in the doctrine of predestination refers us back to the uneasiness implicit in the Idle Argument: if, at a given moment of t, the occurrence of an action φ of an agent S is ultimately necessitated by causes external to the agent S, in particular by some activities of another agent S0 , then all efforts of S will be futile and make no difference to the happening of φ. This is especially true in a universally determined world. For any effort that can contribute to φ should be ascribed to fate or predestination as well. The uneasiness in question is rooted in our profound belief in the meaningfulness of human efforts and its close relation to moral responsibility, which seems hard to reconcile with a deterministic picture of the world. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there is no space for a defense of the doctrine of predestination. The Idle Argument and worries about an Augustinian response simply reinforce the above intuition about necessity and human agency: if we are assured that our actions are causally necessitated, then we will be equally assured that such actions cannot be free and all our relevant activities are futile. However, if we take this intuition for granted, then we are accepting the standpoint of incompatibilism in an unreflective way, which takes away theoretical space for compatibilism without further arguments. For compatibilists assume the contrary intuition that the necessity of events can be compatible with human agency. To avoid a fruitless debate over irreconcilable sensitivities, we should take a closer look at moral intuitions concerning causal necessity and human agency at stake, which have become a center of interest in recent debates between incompatibilism and compatibilism. Actually, Augustine himself is quite sensitive to the incompatibilist sensitivities illustrated by the Idle Argument, especially the worries about the threat of causal necessity to human agency. His doctrine of predestination is not so “dark and menacing,” as Balthasar claims, that is, to the extent that it is absolutely indifferent to the efforts of self-perfection and is utterly contemptuous of human agency.³⁹ In De dono perseuerantiae, one of his last works, Augustine warns us to be careful in preaching the doctrine of predestination, lest the uneducated audience would become idle and desperate. In particular, one should not say, “Whether you run or whether you sleep, you will be what He who cannot be deceived has foreknown that you will be.”⁴⁰ Obviously, this can be taken as a response to the first premise ³⁹ See note 1. ⁴⁰ See Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 22, 57. In another late work in the SemiPelagian controversy, De correptione et gratia, 15, 48, Augustine also insists that one should not “be lazy and negligent in rebuking those who need to be rebuked” simply because they might be predestined to be “children of perdition.” All translations of

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of the Idle Argument. Instead of lending a hand to the enemy of determinism, the preachers of predestination should exhort their listeners to persevere in their faith by prayers.⁴¹ Augustine is not only very concerned about the rhetorical effects of the doctrine of predestination upon laypeople, but also takes pains to explain to the so-called Semi-Pelagians why the existence of predestination does not render human efforts futile. The key is his emphasis on the inscrutable nature of divine predestination. Augustine believes that when God predestines someone to be a saint, this person will not cease to make efforts to become chaste, because he or she is not certain about God’s plan.⁴² For Augustine, divine election is based on divine judgment, which is undoubtedly just but remains impenetrable to us.⁴³ Therefore, human agents never know who belongs to the elect.⁴⁴ However, according to Augustine’s theory of salvation, we are justified and saved by our faith, which also belongs to divine gifts and is prepared by the divine grace.⁴⁵ Accordingly, from the very beginning of faith—the first step to salvation—at the crucial moment when we make the final decision to believe, we are not sure whether we belong to the elect. That is, though divine grace works on us as an efficient cause of the final decision to believe, it does so in such a manner that we are not conscious of its effect before actually willing. We come to know that we are predestined to believe from our own act of believing.⁴⁶ The ignorance about the divine agency in human willing seems to leave space for an agent S to believe that the very act of believing is also a result of his own efforts or free decision of the will. For at the crucial moment of conversion, the agent S makes the decision in accordance with his limited knowledge about the Augustine’s works in the Semi-Pelagian controversy are cited from Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, IV. ⁴¹ Suzanne Ticciati convincingly shows that the significance of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination should be understood by its purpose of exhortation in specific contexts, in her own term, by its ‘indexicality.’ In particular, she rightly stresses the role of prayer in the performative function of predestination. See “Reading Augustine through Job: A Reparative Reading of Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Modern Theology 27 (2011), 414–41. See also Suzanne Ticciati, “A Performative Reading of Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Studia Patristica 52 (2012), 211–34. ⁴² Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 17, 41. ⁴³ Augustine, De correptione et gratia, 8, 18; De praedestinatione Sanctorum, 8, 16; De dono perseuerantiae, 11, 25. See also his earlier work De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, I, 2, 18. ⁴⁴ Augustine, De correptione et gratia, 15, 46. ⁴⁵ For a more detailed analysis of Augustine’s reflections on the divine operation on the beginning of faith, see Wu, “Augustine on Initium Fidei.” ⁴⁶ Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 22, 57: “Rather, one should say, Run in order that you may gain the prize (1 Cor 9:24), and in order that you may know from your very running that you were foreknown to run in accord with the rules.”

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function of predestination. From the perspective of the agent S, the existence of predestination makes no difference to his decision to believe. By contrast, from the perspective of the divine agent, the will to believe is a causal result of his predestination, which directly prepares the will to obtain a firm inclination to believe. This explains what Augustine means by claiming that God works along (cooperare) with us. He works, therefore, without us so that we will, but when we will and will so that we do the action, he works along with us; nonetheless, without his either working so that we will or his working along with us when we will, we can do nothing in terms of works of piety.⁴⁷

Around 428, in one of his letters to Firmus, Augustine summarized his view that human efforts can work together with predetermination to attain a particular disposition of the will. Firmus was a catechumen reluctant to be baptized. One of his reasons was that one must await the will of God who inclines us to believe. In his response, Augustine insisted that one should not idly wait for divine providence: Do not wait until he wills it, as if you were going to offend him if you willed it first. For whenever you have willed it, you will be willing it with his help and by his working. His mercy, of course, anticipates you so that you may will it, but when you will it, you yourself certainly will it. For, if we do not will when we will, then he does not give us anything when he makes us will.⁴⁸

Augustine’s account of the inscrutable nature of divine judgment is supposed to dispel the worries about the futility of human efforts in a predestined world. However, his solution is even more troublesome for incompatibilists. In their eyes, the inscrutableness of divine predestination at most provides a psychological motivation for a human agent to become who he is causally determined to be. He will not become idle because he is not sure about his final destiny before the end of his life.⁴⁹ It simply takes for granted that human agency can be established in such a deterministic world, without elucidating, for instance, why the human agent in question is not an animated puppet, who has no idea that every move of his life is manipulated ⁴⁷ Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17, 34. ⁴⁸ Augustine, Epistolae 2*, 8. For English translation, see Augustine, Letters 211–70, 1*–29*, tr. R. J. Teske (New York: New City Press, 2005). For comments on this passage, see Gerard Bonner, Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 83–4. ⁴⁹ Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 13, 33: “For those whom he predestined he also called by that calling of which it was said, The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Human beings should not say with a claim to certitude that any human being shares in this calling except when he has departed from this world.”

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by a supreme power.⁵⁰ Even worse, if we accept an Augustinian conception of operative grace as working directly on the decision of the will, then we have to believe that God actually predetermines our inclination of the will independently or ‘without us.’ It follows that even the psychological motivation mentioned above is also causally determined by God. To incompatibilists, it seems therefore self-deceiving to claim that the action driven by this psychological motivation is a human action. This criticism becomes more conspicuous and harsher in a thought experiment I devised: [Case 1] John is a man addicted to heroin, but still a self-controlled person in other respects. He comes upon a thought to abstain from drugs, though not a resolute one. The enormous pleasure in heroin prevents him from making up his mind: he feels regret as well as helpless. He is not happy with his current condition but has no way out. Imagine that his friend Black invented some medicine to make one unaware of the inherent enticing force of the desire for drugs. However, John is reluctant to take this medicine because he worries about its possible side effects, e.g. of changing him into a mindless zombie or a person indifferent to all sorts of sensual pleasure. Or he simply does not like the idea of overcoming his drug addiction by taking another drug. Nevertheless, Black decides to help John without being noticed. He secretly adds the newly invented drug into John’s drink. The medicine takes effect without John knowing it. Then John forms a wholehearted decision to abstain from heroin and succeeds, since he is not troubled by the seductive force of drugs any longer. In this imaginary scenario, John’s final change of mind is analogous to the beginning of faith in Augustine’s predestined saint at a given moment, which is predetermined by divine providence but still takes its root in the spiritual life before that moment. Similarly, the magic medicine can be taken as equivalent to the divine grace. The above description makes it clear that John’s final change of mind does not come out of the blue but can be traced back to the state of his mind before unconsciously taking the medicine. It is also obvious that the sudden conversion occurs spontaneously within John’s mind, at least from John’s own perspective. That is, ⁵⁰ Commentators often dismiss Augustine’s conception of the inscrutableness of divine judgment as an appeal to mystery and an intellectual failure. See, for instance, Rist, “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination,” 437–40; John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 133; Kurt Flasch, Logik des Schreckens (Mainz: Dieterich, 1990), 65–71. For a brief account of the attitude of contemporary commentators on this issue, see Paul Rigby, “The Role of God’s ‘Inscrutable Judgments’ in Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Augustinian Studies 33 (2002), 213–22. Rigby offers an excellent theological account of the positive contribution of God’s inscrutable judgment to justifying Augustine’s theory of predestination.

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without knowing the effect of the magic medicine, one can provide a convincing description of John’s achievement in terms of his own efforts before. Nevertheless, for Black and those who are aware of the existence of the medicine, it seems rather difficult to ascribe the radical change of mind to John. If John claims that he deserves praise for overcoming the seduction of drugs, it seems more likely that they would rather feel pity for him for his ignorance of having been manipulated. This worry about the manipulation can be further strengthened by some recent incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, which can be roughly simplified as the following manipulation argument. (4) A manipulated agent has no freedom of action. (A premise based on moral intuition) (5) An agent in a deterministic world is no different from a manipulated agent in any aspect relevant to the conditions for free actions. (No-difference thesis) (6) Therefore, an agent in a deterministic world has no freedom of action.⁵¹ Since (4) seems uncontroversial for incompatibilists, their main task is to prove (5), the no-difference thesis, by adducing a series of cases. This task may be demanding in showing how a world where physical determinism is true is not essentially different from a world where a human agent is manipulated by another agent.⁵² However, as shown above in our imaginary case, it is rather difficult for Augustine to deny that a predestined saint is causally controlled by the divine agent, even though the saint himself has no idea how it works. It follows that the only possible way for Augustine to answer this criticism is to deny (4) and to maintain that manipulation does not violate freedom of action and moral responsibility. However, this seems to be a more challenging task than proving the no-difference thesis, because it seems to conflict with our basic moral intuition about human agency: when a human agent S is manipulated by another agent S0 to φ, it is the manipulator S0 rather than the manipulated S that should be held morally responsible for φ. How can a manipulated agent have freedom of action? This is a challenge more formidable than people usually think. It is obvious that a manipulated world cannot accommodate to the principle of alternative possibilities. ⁵¹ See Michael McKenna, “Resisting the Manipulation Argument: A Hard-liner Takes it on the Chin,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2014), 467–84. ⁵² In contemporary debates, Alfred Mele’s zygote argument and Derk Pereboom’s four-case argument have received much critical attention. See respectively, Alfred Mele, Free Will and Luck (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 188 ff.; Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 110–17.

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According to this principle, the capacity to do otherwise than one has actually done is taken as a necessary condition of human agency. However, divine grace cannot fail to bring about a sincere love of God in a saint as predestined. Nevertheless, it is not sufficient to show the predestined saint is free simply by denying the principle of alternative possibilities. As mentioned above, recent literature has appealed to Harry Frankfurt’s seminal paper to show that the availability of alternative possibilities is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. A revision of Case 1 might help us better understand this sort of approach and its inherent limits in defending Augustine’s theory of predestination. [Case 2] Suppose Black wants to help John discard addiction but at the same time to keep John’s mind as intact as he can. However, worrying that John might waver in his resolve to stop taking drugs, Black secretly plants a magical device in John’s brain without being noticed by John. If John shows a single sign that he will yield to the seduction of drugs, this mechanic device would cause him to be nauseous and incapable of any further act and finally eradicates the desire for drugs. If on the contrary, John firmly sticks to his original thought and brings it into a wholehearted decision, the device will not intervene at all. As things turn out, John follows through his own plan and successfully extricates himself from drug addiction without ever triggering the device. It is evident that John does not have other possibility available to him after such a device has been implanted as in the former case, just as Jacob cannot fail to obtain a wholehearted love of God. Nevertheless, it seems absurd to claim that John should not be praised for his final achievement. Actually, an omniscient observer who has access to the status of John’s mind will unreservedly praise John’s extraordinary achievement for abstaining from drugs without any sort of external aid, neither a magical device nor a medicine. Examples like this (known as ‘Frankfurt-style cases’ in contemporary literature) show at least that our freedom or control over acts and decisions does not always reside in an absolute power to do otherwise under any circumstance. John is taken as a free agent and accountable for his success because he can be identified as the ultimate source of his final conversion. We shall refer to this interpretation as a ‘source model,’ which accounts for the moral agency in the absence of alternative possibilities.⁵³ ⁵³ It should be noted that the source model itself is open to both compatibilists like Harry Frankfurt and John Fischer and incompatibilists like Alfred Mele and Derk Pereboom. See Michael McKenna, “Compatibilism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), ed. E. N. Zalta. .

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Setting aside whether Frankfurt-style cases or source models are successful in defending compatibilism, a careful reader will notice immediately that they cannot be directly applied to Augustine’s model of predestination. For the trick of this argument is that the intervention of the device does not actually take place in these scenarios, even though its presence ‘fixes’ the final result. In other words, we cannot establish an efficient causal relationship between the device and the decision of the human agent in question. Accordingly, John can be reasonably, at least prima facie, or according to our intuition, identified as the source of his own decision. However, as shown above, Augustine would not grant that John could make a decision to abstain from drugs on his own without any external efficient cause. According to Augustine’s later views, a good will to believe is always a direct result produced (operari) by prevenient divine grace.⁵⁴ It seems that a predestined saint is not the ultimate source of his decision to believe when his belief is actually prepared and produced by divine providence. So, if neither the principle of alternative possibilities nor the source model can be directly applied to a manipulated agent to defend his freedom, what can explain the human agency in a predestined world?

3 . AU G U S T I N E O N T H E A S Y M M E T R Y OF HUMAN AGENCY In this section, I will begin with one of the most controversial perspectives on Augustine’s teaching of predestination, viz. so-called double predestination (praedestinatio gemina), which will lead us to a neglected aspect of our moral intuitions: the asymmetry of moral responsibility. I will argue that this idea is the key to defending Augustine’s doctrine of predestination. It has been suggested that Augustine not only claims explicitly that we are predestined to be saved, but also implicitly suggests there is predestination to damnation.⁵⁵ First, one cannot deny that Augustine does occasionally ⁵⁴ See, for instance, Augustine, De dono perseuerantiae, 13, 33: “Nos ergo uolumus, sed Deus in nobis operatur et uelle; nos ergo operamur, sed Deus in nobis operatur et operari, pro bona uoluntate” (my emphases). ⁵⁵ For example, Burns, Operative Grace, 177; Christopher Kirwan, Augustine (London: Routledge, 1991), 144–6. For a recent account of this issue in Augustine’s theology, see Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, 366–76. On the one hand, Ogliari insists that predestination to condemnation in Augustine’s writings should not be interpreted as if God had positively led a human agent to commit sin and thereby incur condemnation. On the other hand, Ogliari follows Rottmanner in arguing that by withholding saving grace from those non-elect, God “ratifies in an indirect way (or per consequentiam) the reprobatio the sinners have incurred.” See ibid., 371.

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mention “the predestination to punishment,” “the predestination to eternal death,” and “the predestination of damnation” in his works.⁵⁶ More importantly, this seems to be a logical consequence of Augustine’s arguments for the absolute sovereignty of the divine predestination of saints. It is impossible for Augustine to imagine that one can be saved without divine providence, which foreordains the world before its creation. Human beings are saved solely by this gratuitous mercy preceding any merits. However, as Augustine’s critics noted, according to his doctrine of predestination, the number (numerus) of saints who are predestined to be saved is fixed (certus).⁵⁷ It follows that those who are not included in this number will inevitably be refused salvation, that is, condemned, even though God does not compel them to sin.⁵⁸ To answer this criticism, first of all, I want to draw attention to the asymmetrical feature of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination.⁵⁹ As evident in the passages cited earlier, unlike faith and good works that are brought about by divine providence, our sins are based on blameworthy dispositions of the will and are simply foreknown but not predestined by God.⁶⁰ As the supreme good, God by definition cannot be the cause of our evildoings. It is obvious that the origin of evil in a world governed by divine providence is an immense problem we cannot tackle in this context. What suffices for our purpose here is that Augustine consistently holds from beginning to end that evil originates from human will: when we turn towards forbidden things by a free decision of the will, we become the authors of our evildoings.⁶¹ Therefore, with respect to the evil will of a human agent, divine agency is restricted to the atemporal consciousness of those evil acts that are contrary to the genuine nature of His creatures. Accordingly, the inevitability of condemnation for those non-elected is based on the necessity of their sinning. However, this necessity refers above all to the inextricable effect of original sin, which cannot be absolved except ⁵⁶ See Augustine, Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide spe et caritate, 26, 100; Augustine, De anima et eius origine, IV, 11, 16; Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum, II, 17, 26; Augustine, De ciuitate Dei, XV, 1. ⁵⁷ Augustine, De correptione et gratia, 13, 39: “I say these things about those who have been predestined to the kingdom of God, whose number is so certain (ita certus est numerus) that no one is added to them or taken from them.” As noted by Ogliari, this formula certus numerus first appears in De baptismo contra Donatistas of 401. For further references to this phrase, see Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, 348–52. ⁵⁸ See, for instance, Kirwan, Augustine, 145–6. ⁵⁹ Ogliari also notices this significant aspect of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination; see Ogliari, Gratia et certamen, 339–66. ⁶⁰ See note 28. ⁶¹ See, for instance, his early philosophical dialogue De libero arbitrio, I, 1, 1, and one of his final works Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, V, 42, (2).

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by divine grace. In Augustine’s opinion, the presence of original sin renders all human beings, both adults and infants, subordinate to the reign of sin. Thus, condemnation is necessary for those who are not regenerated by faith because they are born under the necessary yoke of original sin.⁶² It follows that if we accept Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, then “the predestination of damnation” is nothing other than the just punishment of this sin. God foreordains the mass of perdition to be condemned just because he foreknows that they are descendants of original sin, not vice versa.⁶³ This view of foreknowledge is distinct from the Pelagian conception of foreknowledge as well as Augustine’s earlier view of foreknowledge, because what God foreknows here is not a possible event that remains in the power of a human agent, but a necessary result for those who are guilty of a sin, either personal or original. Nevertheless, what makes this result necessary is the sin of those people rather than the divine foreknowledge. In this regard, the foreknowledge of condemnation is still causally external to the act of sinning, which is the genuine cause of inevitable condemnation. Therefore, the necessity involved in “the predestination of damnation” should be distinguished from the causal necessity in the predestination of saints. In sum, the predestination of damnation contains no causal power but rather indicates God’s inactivity before those sinners he does not want to save. In light of this, the inactivity of God does not positively determine or cause their condemnation, though it ensures the inevitability of its occurrence.⁶⁴ Whether God is thereby guilty of an omission is a controversial issue, but this is not relevant to our present purpose. For this is an issue of whether God’s action is immoral, which does not raise issues concerning causal determination and its relation to human freedom. Therefore, purely from a causal perspective, Augustine would not recognize the so-called ‘double predestination’ because one is causally effective while the other is not. Technically speaking, this position is also consistent with his distinction between predestination and foreknowledge in the anti-Pelagian context we discussed above. It is clear that Augustine insists upon the difference between predestination and foreknowledge, which shows itself primarily in the causal power of divine activities. But what underlies this difference of divine providence is

⁶² Augustine, De predestinatione sanctorum, 12, 24. ⁶³ It is precisely for this reason, as Gerald Bonner notes, on those occasions when Augustine loosely refers to the predestination of condemnation, Augustine insists that condemnation is the justified punishment (poena, supplicium) for the iniquity of those lost. See Gerard Bonner, St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1986 (2002)), 388–9. ⁶⁴ Augustine, De predestinatione sanctorum, 18, 35.

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the moral quality of what is going to happen: God foreknows and predestines the good, but merely foreknows the evil without causing it. This asymmetry of divine providence is rooted in Augustine’s Neoplatonist ontology, which highlights the convertibility of goodness and being. Everything is good so far as it exists. In contrast, evil does not exist at all. Accordingly, only the coming of the good into being requires an efficient cause, while the origin of the evil in a stricter sense has nothing but a deficient cause.⁶⁵ If this ontological asymmetry is sound, it is evident that only the good requires a causal predestination, whereas the evil is just foreknowledge. The asymmetry of divine providence entails the asymmetry of human agency in Augustine’s moral philosophy: Only good actions are causally determined by predestination and thereby should ultimately be ascribed to divine agency. “For what do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Augustine definitely acknowledges the causal relationship between divine providence and our first will to what is good. “It is certain that we will when we will, but he causes (facere ut) us to will what is good, of whom were said the words . . . , The will is prepared by the Lord.”⁶⁶ However, in evildoings, the divine agency limits itself to the pure cognition of what happens in the world, which is causally external to our decisions and actions. God is not the author of evildoings. An evil will is the efficient cause of evil action, but nothing is the efficient cause of an evil will.⁶⁷ Good and evil actions have different ultimate sources in Augustine’s moral theology. Then, if the Augustinian predestination is compatible with human moral agency, it follows that the relevant moral responsibility practices will reflect an asymmetric structure as well. For a human being to be appropriately blamed, we need to prove that his own evil will is the ultimate causal explanation of his evildoings. However, this causal requirement does not apply to our praise of a predestined saint, since God causally prepares his good will. In addition to worries about the compatibility between foreknowledge and human freedom in evildoings, which are beyond the scope of this essay, contemporary readers might have some other possible objections against the Augustinian thesis of asymmetry in moral agency. I will consider two of them to complete our philosophical defense of Augustine’s predestination theory. ⁶⁵ See, for instance, Augustine, Confessiones, VII, 12, 18–13, 19; Augustine, De ciuitate Dei, XII, 6–7. ⁶⁶ Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 16, 32: “Certum est nos uelle, cum uolumus; sed ille facit ut uelimus bonum, de quo dictum est, . . . : Praeparatur uoluntas a Domino” (the emphases are mine). ⁶⁷ Augustine, De ciuitate Dei, XII, 6.

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First of all, the asymmetry thesis is obviously integrated into Augustine’s profound faith in an omnipotent God and his Neoplatonic approach to goodness and being. So how can it be applied today in a secular context that is in favor of a clear distinction between value and fact, between goodness and being? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, we have to concede that contemporary versions of causal determinisms do not seem to recognize such an asymmetry in regard to the moral qualities of an event. Both morally good and bad actions are equally causally determined by the previous facts in conjunction with the laws of causation. The asymmetry thesis has to pay the price of making the origin of evil, in particular of moral evil in a deterministic world, difficult to understand. For our current purposes, it will suffice to mention that there is no such determination or manipulation of evil without destroying the conditions of responsibility for evildoings. On the other hand, it seems that the asymmetry thesis is still relevant to our moral intuitions today. For even an incompatibilist like Derk Pereboom believes that when love and friendship are concerned, we prefer that they are not brought about by an intentional decision, but naturally flow out of our heart.⁶⁸ However, if all our good actions originate from a good will or a sort of love as Augustine thinks, then we have good reason to believe that we care more about the naturalness and spontaneity of good actions than their relations to our practical deliberation, or the freedom to do otherwise, or other sorts of agential control over our acts. In short, we care little about our own contributions to these most precious things than their spontaneous occurrences in our life. It also deserves mention that, in recent debates, Dana K. Nelkin also stresses the asymmetric structure of moral responsibility for different reasons. She argues that freedom of choice, or the freedom to do otherwise, is a necessary condition for moral responsibility in evildoings, but not for good actions.⁶⁹ It seems that we require additional conditions for blaming a person for his evildoings than for praising his virtues. We can never be too cautious in convicting someone of a crime. By intuition we tend to ask for clearer evidence to establish the relationship between the agent and the crime. This might require an additional incompatibilist condition of free

⁶⁸ Pereboom’s aim is to stress that this sort of love is not threatened by hard incompatibilism. For if we find out that this love is manipulated by external factors, this fact will diminish its significance. See Pereboom, Living without Free Will, 203. ⁶⁹ Dana K. Nelkin, Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 16. For criticisms of Nelkin’s thesis, see Gary Watson, “Asymmetry and Rational Ability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (2013), 467–75.

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action such as the freedom to do otherwise or that the agent is the ultimate source of her decisions and actions.⁷⁰ In contrast, when the action in question is a morally good one—for instance, a fictional altruist Professor Plum is made to take a bullet for Ms. White—our intuitions about freedom and agency will be subtly different: [Case 3] Some benevolent neuroscientists created Professor Plum and have been manipulating his actions by some wireless equipment. Besides this, Plum’s behavior seems no different from an ordinary human being, in particular an altruistic person, who thinks and acts mostly but not exclusively for the well-beings of others. These scientists ‘locally’ manipulate the process of Plum’s deliberation before making the fatal decision. He weighs alternatives, compares costs, hesitates and becomes firm in his decision. All of these states are directly produced by those scientists step by step. Finally, Plum takes a bullet for White for altruistic reasons, which faithfully display his character traits as an unselfish person.⁷¹ I adapted this scenario from the first case of Derk Pereboom’s Four-Case Argument, where Professor Plum is made to kill Ms. White. Pereboom assumes that this is the clearest case to show that a manipulated agent like Professor Plum is not free and therefore should not be held responsible for his evildoing. However, if we accept all the details about Plum’s manipulation but replace his malicious murder with a heroic act, our moral intuitions will not be so clear as Pereboom supposed. As science fiction stories often suggest, even when Plum turns out to be a robot that carries out complex programs similar to our rational deliberations, it still seems difficult to be unmoved. It seems natural for a moral observer to be puzzled at the event. On the one hand, he may judge it as stupid to praise a robot or a person that is manipulated moment by moment to achieve this result. On the other hand, it seems cruel to keep silent about the unusual and seemingly heroic act. This is similar to the case of a dog’s saving its master by natural instinct. It seems natural for us to ‘praise’ this heroic act even though we are absolutely sure that it is not a freely-chosen act. The reason might be that we believe that this praise will bring about more good consequences or simply because we believe that even an animal deserves appropriate recognition for its instinctive behavior. This seems even more so in the case of

⁷⁰ As I argued elsewhere, the principle of alternative possibilities is not taken by Augustine as a necessary condition for our responsibility for evildoings; see Tianyue Wu, “Augustine on Involuntary Sin: A Philosophical Defense,” Augustiniana 59 (2009), 45–78. ⁷¹ Compare Pereboom, Living without Free Will, 112–13.

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Plum when we, as non-omniscient observers, are not certain how the causal determination of Plum’s actions is related to our ordinary life. It seems that the closer the scenario is to our moral experience and the more similar the agent’s behavior to ours, the weaker our judgment about the stupidity of praising a causally determined virtuous action. The second possible objection is more challenging and directly concerns the threat of manipulation to our moral appraisal. Granting the asymmetry thesis, we have to concede that love and friendship belong to the good things that have been causally determined or somehow manipulated by the divine agent. In acknowledging our preference for spontaneous love unmediated by a preceding decision, Pereboom follows Robert Kane to argue that the significance of love will be diminished by the thought that it is brought out by instinct and by external manipulation.⁷² This phenomenon seems to suggest that unreserved praise of love requires that it is not manipulated or causally determined by instinct or something beyond one’s control. To answer this objection, first we should mention that we also praise love growing out of natural instinct, such as parents’ love of their children. As mentioned earlier, unmediated love in this context seems more natural. We do not begrudge praise for those who possess excellent dispositions of character by birth and early education, such as good temper, as well as for those who attained the same disposition through training themselves. More importantly, a virtuous action seems to be more praiseworthy when it is not mediated through practical deliberation but rather arises spontaneously from one’s virtuous disposition as from one’s second nature. It seems that the ultimate object of our praise is the agent rather than his action or his early effort to attain such an action. If the causal determination at issue does not destroy the integrity of an agent’s nature and second nature such as characteristic traits, we have good reason to praise equally a virtuous act without regard to whether it is caused by inborn nature, or pre-fixed character disposition, or a rational decision based upon practical deliberation at the moment. We have touched upon this in Case 3 by replacing the act of murder, which is popular in contemporary manipulation arguments, with a heroic act of self-sacrifice. Our intuitive attitude towards this event also turns on our understanding of the nature of manipulation in question here. If manipulation is exceptional in that world and people can undertake superhuman conduct without being manipulated by those benevolent scientists,

⁷² Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 88, cited in Pereboom, Living without Free Will, 203.

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Plum will not be praised because he does not satisfy the requirements for ordinary praiseworthy actions in that world. On the other hand, if such manipulation is necessary for Plum’s decision or willing to take the bullet, it seems plausible for others to praise him because their moral practice presupposes this sort of causal determination in that world. Certainly, an incompatibilist can go further to deny that there is genuine moral practice in that fictional world. But that will exclude the plausibility of compatibilism from the very beginning. Last but not least, the incompatibilist account of the diminution of praise in causally determined love seems to suggest that an action is more praiseworthy if it depends on things we can control than on things beyond our control at the moment of action. In short, we should be praised for our efforts as implied by the Idle Argument as well. However, if we separate effort from the conditions of effort such as one’s nature or other facets of internal disposition, it seems that these efforts will come out of the blue as it were, and it will be difficult to ascribe them and their achievements to the agent in question. In contrast, in a predestined world, when we ascribe one’s nature and efforts towards good actions to God as well as human agents, and praise them both, though in different ways, it seems we can even offer a better account for the credits of our efforts: our efforts are the manifestations of God’s will as well as our created nature. If we have good reason to praise the goodness of the nature we inherited, we also have good reasons to praise the heroic efforts flowing out of this praiseworthy nature. To conclude, Augustine develops a causal account of divine election of Jacob in his long life of writing, especially during his controversy with the Pelagians and the so-called Semi-Pelagians. His motivation is above all theological, namely, to defend the omnipotence of God and the gratuitousness of divine providence. This rigid theological position caused worries about human agency in such a theologically determined world. Even worse, Augustine’s response in terms of the inscrutableness of divine judgment simply makes a predestined saint more like an ignorant ‘animated puppet.’ Nevertheless, the asymmetric structure of his causal interpretation of predestination suggests a philosophical way to defend his position. Certainly, the asymmetry thesis heavily depends upon his Neoplatonic ontology about the convertibility of goodness and being. However, it is still relevant to our moral responsibility practices today without such an ontological commitment. We tend to be more generous in praising than in blaming, especially when the causal process of a praiseworthy action remains hidden to us. Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Peking University

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Ticciati, Susannah. “Reading Augustine through Job: A Reparative Reading of Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Modern Theology 27 (2011), 414–41. Ticciati, Susannah. “A Performative Reading of Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Studia Patristica 52 (2012), 211–34. Watson, Gary. “Asymmetry and Rational Ability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (2013), 467–75. Webster, John, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Wetzel, James. Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Wu, Tianyue. “Augustine on Involuntary Sin: A Philosophical Defense,” Augustiniana 59 (2009), 45–78. Wu, Tianyue. “Augustine on Initium Fidei: A Case Study of the Coexistence of Operative Grace and Free Decision of the Will,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 78 (2012), 1–38. Zagzebski, Linda. The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Zagzebski, Linda. “Eternity and Fatalism,” in C. Tapp and E. Runggaldier (eds.), God, Eternity, and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 65–80.

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The Reality of the Non-Existent Object of Thought The Possible, the Impossible, and Mental Existence in Islamic Philosophy (eleventh–thirteenth centuries) Fedor Benevich 1. INTRODUCTION The status of non-existent objects of thought played an important role in the history of ancient philosophy. A remarkable example is the so-called “object of thought argument” for the existence of Platonic Forms, which one finds in Aristotle’s Peri Ideōn (reported by the late ancient commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias): since we can conceive of “man” independently from particular humans who come to be and perish, there has to be a distinct entity, which serves as the object of the thought “man,” and which is the Platonic Form of humanity. This argument presupposes a premise, which can be put roughly as “for every thought about an x there has to be a corresponding object x0 .” This means that thinking of an x entails an ontological commitment about its reality. Hence, even if “man” is nonexistent in observed reality, i.e., it is not instantiated in any particular, there has to be a man0 (which is the Platonic Form of “man” in this case), which corresponds to it, insofar as we conceive of “man.”¹ If we turn from antiquity to modernity, we can observe the way in which a similar line of thought, which claims an extramental correspondent to every object of our thought, has divided analytical philosophy into two camps: the followers of Alexius Meinong, who claimed that the non-existent items (both possible ¹ Gail Fine, “The Objects of Thought Argument: Forms and Thoughts,” Apeiron 21 (1988), 105–45 offers a detailed analysis of this argument, which surely has more sophisticated nuances then I can mention in this paper.

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and impossible) do possess some ontological reality despite their being nonexistent; and the upholders of Bertrand Russell’s solution, who refused to ascribe any ontological status to a non-existent and reduced non-existent things to instances of mere descriptions.² The purpose of this article is to present a historical account of the discussion of the status of non-existent objects of thought in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries in Islamic philosophy, although I will concentrate on the Eastern post-Avicennian tradition. For instance, it has been established in studies on Islamic philosophical theology (kalām) that in the ninth to tenth centuries there were several representatives of a group of theologians called the Muʿtazilites who endorsed the view that the non-existent (maʿdūm) is real (thābit), i.e., the non-existent is something (shayʾ), despite the fact that it does not exist.³ Other studies have investigated the polemic against this view found in the treatises of Avicenna (d. 1037), probably the most influential Islamic philosopher. The latter asserted that the nonexistent is not non-existent par excellence. Rather it possesses mental existence (wujūd dhihnī), i.e., it exists in the mind.⁴ Finally, a recent study presented the criticism of this doctrine by a later Islamic scholar, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), who rejected mental existence and was forced to develop a different solution to the problem of the status of non-existent objects of thought.⁵ As this brief summary shows, there was an ongoing dispute about non-existent objects of thought in medieval Islamic philosophy. In what follows, I will concentrate on reconstructing the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions as well as the main arguments by which the different parties in this dispute maintained their positions in the first two centuries after Avicenna. These positions can be reduced to three: the “Muʿtazilite,” as represented by their opponents;⁶ the majority view, which ² Maria Reicher, “Russell, Meinong, and the Problem of Existent Nonexistents,” in G. Imaguire and B. Linsky (eds.), On Denoting: 1905–2005 (München: Philosophia, 2005), 167–93. ³ Josef van Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des ʿAd.udaddīn al-Īcī (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966); Richard Frank, “Al-maʿdūm wal-mawjūd: The Non-Existent, the Existent and the Possible in the Teaching of Abū Hāshim and His Followers,” MIDEO 14 (1980), 185–209; Felix Klein-Franke, “The Non-Existent is a Thing,” Le Muséon 107 (1994), 375–90. ⁴ Robert Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context (London: Duckworth, 2003), 145–60 and Robert Wisnovsky, “Notes on Avicenna’s Concept of Thingness (šayʾiyya),” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10 (2000), 181–221. ⁵ Heidrun Eichner, “ ‘Knowledge by Presence’, Apperception and the Mind–Body Relationship: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and al-Suhrawardī as Representatives and Precursors of a Thirteenth-Century Discussion,” in P. Adamson (ed.), In the Age of Averroes: Arabic Philosophy in the Sixth/Twelfth Century (London: Warburg Institute, 2011), 117–40. ⁶ I call this view “Muʿtazilite” because it became famous in Islamic philosophy (especially in the Ashʿarite doxographies) as well as in previous scholarship as the view

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accepted Avicenna’s theory of mental existence; and Rāzī’s “reductionist” position, which nevertheless will be also found in the accounts of some Muʿtazilite teachings. We will find several issues common to all three camps, issues that stood at the heart of the disagreement between them: ontological commitment, denial or acceptance of mental existence, the reality of impossible paraconsistent entities, and the modalities of conceiving of absolute non-existence.

2. MUʿTAZILITES’ REALISM: OBJECTS OF T H O U G H T S A N D IN T E N T I O N S The Muʿtazilite doctrine, ascribed by our sources as well as by contemporary scholarship to the majority of the Muʿtazilite movement, is that non-existent items have some metaphysical reality, rendered in Arabic with thābit (real/ stable) or shayʾ (something/thing), despite the fact that they do not exist (ʿadama). Hence these “Muʿtazilites” distinguished between two different levels of ontologically positive presence: the more general level of being real (thubūt), which includes both existent and non-existent objects, and the more specific level of existence (wujūd). There was only one domain of entities that they recognized as absolutely unreal: the impossible (mumtaniʿ), a notion I will address in later sections. For now, I will concentrate on the status of possible (mumkin) yet non-existent items.⁷ The original motivation for developing the idea that the non-existent is real may have been exegetical. Several studies mention that there are passages in Qurʾān that demand that the interpreter explain the status of an entity supposed to be non-existent. For instance, sūra 36:82 says: “His command is only when He intends a thing (arāda shayʾan) that He says to it,

of this group. Nevertheless, the quotes around this naming are indispensable, because not all Muʿtazilites endorsed the view. For instance, Ibn al-Malāh.imī, who will be presented in what follows as one of its staunch opponents, was himself a Muʿtazilite. ⁷ A general account of the “Muʿtazilite” doctrine can be found in Frank, Maʿdūm; cf. Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 302, 19–303, 13; Juwaynī, Shāmil, 124–26; Rāzī, Muh.as..sal, 55, 5–7. One should not confuse the shayʾiyyat al-maʿdūm issue with another theory for which “Muʿtazilites” became famous: ah.wāl (modes/states), which are “neither existent nor non-existent yet real.” Although in both cases we deal with something that is not existent yet real, “Muʿtazilite” real but non-existent things become existent after God creates them. On the contrary, ah.wāl never become existent or non-existent, because predicating existence of them is simply a categorical mistake; on ah.wāl see, e.g., my “The Classical Ashʿari Theory of Ah.wāl. Juwaynī and His Opponents,” Journal of Islamic Studies 27 (2016), 136–75.

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‘Be,’ and it is.”⁸ One may claim that this sentence implies that when God wants to create, e.g., an accident of “blackness,” He has this accident somehow “in front of” Him, in order for Him to be able to address His will towards it and bring it into existence. Therefore, on the one hand, this object is non-existent before God commands it to “Be!,” yet on the other hand, it is something real because He can address it.⁹ Another passage is sūra 22:1: “O mankind, fear your Lord. Indeed, the convulsion of the [final] Hour is a terrible thing (shayʾ).” In this passage the end of the world is designated as “something,” although it does not exist yet. Again, one may argue that it is the object of God’s intention and of his knowledge about the world’s dramatic future, to which God has not yet commanded “Be!”¹⁰ Both Qurʾānic passages reveal that one could use the supposed reality of the objects of divine thoughts and intentions as an argument in favor of the reality of non-existent objects.¹¹ However, God’s case is only a specific instance of the more general problem, a case alluded to by a group of Muʿtazilites in order to establish that the non-existent is real. The arguments based on the reality of the intended objects operate with the concepts of capacity (qudra), will (irāda), and intention (qas.d ). The “Muʿtazilites” argue, for instance: [T1] The one who has the capacity to create substance has it before [the substance] exists, whereas he cannot help but have a connection with what he is capable of (taʿalluq bi-l-maqdūr). Therefore substance is an object (dhātan) before it exists in order that the one who is capable [of creating it] could have a connection with it. [. . .] There has to be some relation (id.āfa mā) between the subject and the object of capacity (al-qādir wa-l-maqdūr), in order that bringing into existence could occur. Yet, relation can be only established between two objects (dhātayn). By such a relation we mean connection (taʿalluq).¹²

⁸ Trans. .sah.īh. international. Cf. Qurʾān 16:42. ⁹ Cf. Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics, 147–8 and Peter Adamson, “Al-Kindī and the Muʿtazila: Divine Attributes, Creation and Freedom,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003), 59–60. Cf. Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, pp. 90, 20–91, 3. ¹⁰ Cf. Klein-Franke, “The Non-Existent,” 382. ¹¹ Accordingly, the sources from the period ascribe to the Muʿtazilites the position that essences like “blackness” have their essential features (s.ifāt dhātiyya) independently from God, and God’s task is only to render them existent. Indeed, we find this argumentation in Ibn al-Malah.imī, Muʿtamad, 374, 19–379, 17, who, being a Muʿtazilite himself, may be regarded as a reliable source for the Muʿtazilite positions. Frank, Maʿdūm, 192–203 presents it as an original Muʿtazilite doctrine too. Nevertheless, later reconstructions of Muʿtazilite argumentation may have been interspersed with Avicenna’s argumentation in Dānishnāma. On this see my “The Essence–Existence Distinction: Four Elements of the Post-Avicennian Metaphysical Dispute (11–13th centuries),” Oriens 45 (2017), 203–58. ¹² Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 363, 14–23.

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[T2] The one who has the capacity wills (yurīdu) to bring into existence either substance or blackness, so that there have to be both objects in order that intending (qas.d) to bring into existence any of them is possible.¹³

In these passages the opponent argues that the objects of intentions have to be real, because intending something means to build a connection (taʿalluq) or relation (id.āfa) to it. Given the implicit assumption that the presence of a relation requires the presence of relata, they conclude that e.g., when God intends to create a substance, the substance has to be real despite the fact that it does not exist yet. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī reports similar arguments, though with more downto-earth examples: we have capacity over moving to the right or to the left but not over flying into the sky, and we intend having fortune and children and not being sick and unfortunate, although none of this exists yet.¹⁴ However, in Rāzī’s account the argument takes a slightly different spin. His “Muʿtazilites” argue that these intentions can be distinguished (tamayyaza), and that “everything which can be mutually distinguished has to be a concrete true reality in itself ( fī anfusihā h.aqāʾiq mutaʿayyina).”¹⁵ Why so? We will see later that Rāzī bases this inference on the Avicennian theory of predication. Ibn al-Malāh.imī also refers to the ability to distinguish between different intentions. However, he accounts for the fact that distinctions can be made regarding only real objects on different grounds: [T3] Each of us knows (yaʿlamu) what he does before he does it and knows other acts before he brings them into existence. He can also distinguish between what he can do and what he cannot, just as he can distinguish between the types (ajnās) of what he can do. Yet knowledge and distinguishing (al-ʿilm wa-l-tamyīz) must have connection to the non-existent, whereas a connection is only possible between two things (shayʾayn). Therefore it is established that the non-existent is something and an object in the state of non-existence, in order that knowledge and distinguishing can be connected to it.¹⁶

This passage reveals the way in which Ibn al-Malāh.imī’s proponents of the reality of the non-existent responded to the question of why the (currently non-existent) acts that we intend to accomplish are real. They referred to their theory of knowledge.¹⁷ In order to wish something, we must be able to ¹³ Ibid., 371, 1–2. ¹⁴ Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, p. 91, 13–16 and p. 91, 17–23. Cf. Rāzī, Muh.as..sal, 56, 18–57, 7 and Maʿālim, 28, 1–4. ¹⁵ Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, p. 91, 5–6. ¹⁶ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 364, 21–4. Cf. Frank, Maʿdūm, 204. ¹⁷ One should notice that knowledge here does not in any strict sense bear on the question of knowing the right from wrong or of necessary knowledge. Rather, in this discussion, it has a broad meaning of thinking or conceiving of something.

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distinguish it from our other wishes. Yet in order to distinguish something, we must know what it is. Finally, knowledge of something implies a connection to the object of knowledge, since a connection to nothing is impossible. Indeed, throughout the whole discussion Ibn al-Malāh.imī ascribes to the group of Muʿtazilites a specific theory of knowledge with which he actually agrees, barring some restrictions: knowledge is a connection (taʿalluq) or a relation (id.āfa) to the object of knowledge.¹⁸ Hence, the objects of intentions must be real, because they are distinguishable in thought, which entails that one has connection to them. This account applies not only to the objects of intentions. Rāzī has another everyday-life example, whose logic again connects to sūra 22:1: we can distinguish between tomorrow’s sunrise and sunset, although neither of them yet exists; hence, they are real.¹⁹ As already mentioned, Rāzī has his own reasons for this inference, yet one can easily explain the reason the sunrise and sunset must be real on the basis of the described theory of knowledge found in Ibn al-Malāh.imī: thinking of different things entails that they are real, so that our thought can build different connections or relations either to tomorrow’s sunrise or to tomorrow’s sunset. Thus, the non-existent must be real because it functions as the object of our thought. Given that thinking or knowing something means establishing a relation between ourselves and the objects of thought, all objects of our thoughts and intentions must be real even if they are non-existent, according to the reported theory of the “Muʿtazilites.”²⁰ Therefore this philosophical movement claims, according to Rāzī, that everything known is real (kull maʿlūm thābit).²¹ Ibn al-Malāh.imī reports the same: there was a group of the Muʿtazilites who followed the definition of something (shayʾ) in a lexicographical manner (ʿalā t. arīq al-lugha): thing (shayʾ)/object (dhāt) =df that which can be known and uttered²²

It is in order to make sense of this position that they extended the notion of reality beyond the notion of existence, since we can posit both the existent and the non-existent as objects of our thoughts. This line of thought may easily remind us of Meinong, mentioned in the introduction, who ascribed to the non-existent some reality other than existence because of

¹⁸ Cf. Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 356, 9–19; 365, 1–10; or Āmidī, al-Nūr al-bāhir, vol. 4, p. 6, 2. The concept of “connection” appears already in the original Muʿtazilite argumentation, cf. Abū Rāshid al-Nīsābūrī, Mas.āʾil, 19, 15–17. ¹⁹ Rāzī, Muh.as..sal, 56, 16. ²⁰ Cf. Shahrastānī, Nihāyat al-aqdām, 153, 3–5. ²¹ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 80r, 14–15. ²² Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 354, 7–8, cf. Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Ilāhiyyāt I, 5, p. 25, 8–9.

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intentionality theory, which implied that thinking or intending is a twosided process with the subject on one side and the (real) object of thought on the other. 3 . T H E “ P O S I T I V E O F P O SI T I V E R U L E” AN D M E N TA L EXI ST ENC E The theory that every possible object of thought is real was built upon the definition of knowledge as a relation to its object. Yet one may come to the same conclusion on different grounds. As was mentioned in section 2, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī made his “Muʿtazilites” argue for the reality of the nonexistent on the basis that one non-existent object of thought is distinguishable from another, and that everything distinguishable is real. The latter claim is explicated as follows: [T4] The distinction (imtiyāz) of one thing from another depends upon the fact that each of them is a concrete true reality and a concrete quiddity. For the fact that they are mutually distinguishable (tamayyuz) is among the predicates (h.ukm) of those true realities and among their attributes (s.ifa). Yet neither attribute nor predicate can obtain (thubūt) unless an object of attribution is realized (taqrīr).²³

The fact that x and y are distinguishable entails that they are real, because the distinction between x and y is an attribute which applies to both, and the presence of an attribute entails the presence of its subject. In this passage, Rāzī traces back the “Muʿtazilite” argumentation to one single premise: in the proposition “s is p,” if p is posited as really obtaining, s has to obtain as real too. This is one of the most widely used rules of post-Avicennian metaphysics, which Rāzī elsewhere formulates as follows: “everything of which a positive predicate is said inevitably is positive (kull mā kāna mah.kūm ʿalayhi bi-h.ukm thubūtī fa-lā budda wa-an yakūna thubūtiyyan).”²⁴ I shall call this henceforth the “positive of positive rule.” The notion “positive” (thubūtī) is derived from the same root as the word which I translate as “obtain” or “real” (thābit/thubūt). If a notion is labeled as “positive,” it means that it designates an entity which is real and has some concrete content (thereby it differs from the privative (ʿadamī) terms).²⁵ ²³ Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, p. 92, 16–19, cf. Maʿālim, 28, 15–16. ²⁴ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 132, 13. ²⁵ The presence of a negative predicate does not entail any existential import over the subject (cf. Saloua Chatti, “Existential Import in Avicenna’s Modal Logic,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 26 (2016), 47–9). We will, however, see in what follows that this rule was handled so loosely that one could for instance say that the predication of “impossibility” (which is rather a negative predicate) entails the reality of the subject.

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The “positive of positive rule” offers another basis on which one may conclude that all distinct objects of thought are real. For in order to distinguish between two objects of thought one has to suppose that each of them has some positive predicates that make them distinct; and if these predicates are positive, then their subjects have to be positive too. This is what Rāzī means when he claims that “being distinct” is a positive predicate.²⁶ Rāzī inherits his analysis of the “Muʿtazilite” doctrine from Avicenna. It is the latter who apparently both invented (or at least explicated) the “positive of positive rule,” as well as integrated it into the dispute about the status of the non-existent objects of thought. He renders it with existential notions: “if an attribute is existent, that to which it is attributed is necessarily existent.”²⁷ The emergence of this rule in Avicenna might be related to the Peripatetic tradition of rendering predication as “existing in” ((ἐν)υπάρχειν), which in the Arabic tradition was often rendered literally under the notion of mawjūd fī.²⁸ Indeed, it is quite intuitive to claim that the subject of prediction has to exist (or more broadly “be real”), if the predicate exists in it (or more broadly obtains in it). As Rāzī puts it, positing a predicate about a subject entails the occurrence (h.us.ūl) of this predicate, which has to be rooted in the occurrence of the subject itself.²⁹ Both Rāzī and Avicenna accept the “positive of positive rule.” This is an important fact, because it renders either’s preferred definition of knowledge irrelevant. If the argumentation for the reality of the non-existent objects of thought were grounded in the concept of knowledge as relation only (as it was in Ibn al-Malāh.imī’s account), then it would suffice to endorse a different theory of knowledge, in order to reject the reality of the nonexistent objects of thought. Indeed, we know that Avicenna had another concept of knowledge, which is that knowledge is having the object known represented in the mind.³⁰ This, however, would not allow him to reject the “Muʿtazilite” theory out of hand, because Avicenna grounds it in the “positive of positive” rule, which he accepts. It is in order to solve this problem that Avicenna can apply one of his most influential theories: the

²⁶ Cf. Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 132, 13–14. ²⁷ Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Ilāhiyyāt I, 5, p. 26, 4. Since Avicenna identifies the real with the existent there is no difference between his and Rāzī’s wording, who uses existential notions elsewhere himself (Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 78r, 18–19). ²⁸ On this term see Joep Lameer, Al-Fārābī & Aristotelian Syllogstics: Greek Theory & Islamic Practice (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 85–6. Although it is usually translated with neutral “belonging to,” the emergence of the “positive of positive rule” shows that it still had existential connotations. ²⁹ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 130, 13–14. ³⁰ Cf. Avicenna, Ishārāt, namat. 3, 7, p. 237, 8–14 on apprehension (idrāk), of which knowledge is a specific case (cf. Eichner, “ ‘Knowledge by Presence’,” 122).

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doctrine of “mental existence” (wujūd dhihnī). Mental existence, for Avicenna, means that an x, when I conceive of it, literally exists in my mind. For instance, when I think about “man,” the essence of “man qua the universal ‘man’ ” exists in my intellect (ʿaql).³¹ This gives Avicenna a way to avoid the “Muʿtazilite” ampliation of “being real” beyond existence. Instead, he ampliates existence itself. It means not only extramental but also mental existence. When I conceive of an extramentally non-existent object, it is still real, namely as mentally existent.³² As a result, the “positive of positive rule” is not violated. When we say “Pegasus is a horse with wings,” “horse with wings” is surely a positive predicate, which implies that Pegasus must have some metaphysical reality too. Indeed it does, because it exists in the mind of the one who utters this proposition. Avicenna is consistent about this theory. When discussing quantification over the subject in syllogistics, he accepts that the subject may be posited as existent either in mental or extramental reality (fī l-fard. al-dhihnī aw fī l-wujūd al-khārijī).³³

³¹ On mental existence in Avicenna see Deborah Black, “Avicenna on the Ontological and Epistemic Status of Fictional Beings,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997), 425–53 and Deborah Black, “Mental Existence in Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna,” Mediaeval Studies 61 (1999), 45–79. See also Michael Marmura, “Avicenna’s Chapter on Universals in the Isagoge of his Shifāʾ,” in M. Marmura (ed.), Probing in Islamic Philosophy: Studies in the Philosophies of Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and Other Major Thinkers (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publishing, 2005), 33–61. ³² Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Ilāhiyyāt I, 5, p. 26, 11–14, on this see Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics, 147–8. ³³ Avicenna, Ishārāt, nahj 4, 5, p. 93, 10 (with MS “S.”), cf. Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Qiyās I, 3, p. 21, 6–12. This brings us to the problem of existential import in the Avicennian and post-Avicennian logic in general, which is closely connected to the topic discussed in this paper, yet cannot be addressed in detail, since logic is not the primary concern here. Tentatively, one might suggest the following: Regardless of which theory of existential import one endorsed after Avicenna, everyone agreed to the “positive of positive rule,” which required one to posit the subject of an affirmative proposition as real. Therefore the famous post-Avicennian distinction between h.aqīqī (essence apart from any existence) and khārijī (essence qua extramentally existent) readings of existential import (see, e.g., Tony Street, “Faḫraddīn al-Rāzī’s Critique of Avicenna’s Logic,” in D. Perler and U. Rudolph (eds.), Logik und Theologie im arabischen und lateinischem Mittelalter (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 99–116 or Riccardo Strobino and Paul Thom, “The Logic of Modality,” in C. D. Novaed and S. Read (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 348–9) does not correspond to Avicenna’s two options (dhihnī and khārijī) we just saw precisely because the postAvicennian tradition stands under the influence of Rāzī, who denies mental existence and instead posits another realm that corresponds to propositions whose subject is not observed qua instantiated in the extramental reality. Hence, Rāzī introduced the h.aqīqī reading which concerns essence qua essence and not essence being in the mind as it was in Avicenna. Essence qua essence is real in Rāzī, and hence the “positive of positive” rule still holds. For the essence qua essence concept in Rāzī’s metaphysics, see my “The Essence–Existence Distinction.”

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Does the “mental existence” theory always provide consistent application of the “positive of positive” rule? There is a case that could seem problematic, which is the problem of the absolutely non-existent (maʿdūm mut.laq). By “absolute non-existence” one means the absence of an x in both extramental and mental reality. On this issue, there was an agreement in the post-Avicennian tradition that something absolutely non-existent cannot be conceived at all.³⁴ After all, if absolute non-existence implies absence in the mind, an absolutely non-existent concept cannot be present in the mind! However, one may notice some disagreement and hesitance concerning absolute non-existence (ʿadam mut. laq) itself. As Rāzī notices, to say that one cannot conceive of absolute non-existence is already to make a predication of it, which according to the “positive of positive rule” entails that “absolute non-existence” has to be real at least in the mind. This is why Rāzī appears puzzled on this topic in Mulakhkhas., where he wants to claim that absolute non-existence is inconceivable. According to him, one can conceive of non-existence only in relation to something, i.e., as related (mud.āf ) to something existent.³⁵ Leaving the problem unsolved in this passage, Fakhr al-Dīn actually provides a solution in his earlier discussion of the “positive of positive rule.” There, the dialectical opponent asks Rāzī in what way this rule is applicable to the conception of negation (intifāʾ ): we can distinguish between negation and affirmation, yet to think that this would imply that negation is something positive is nonsense. The author responds that there is no problem in accepting that negation is something positive. “Negation” only means that a concept x is not instantiated in extramental reality. Yet, positivity applies to negation qua concept in the mind, not qua “negated in the extramental reality.”³⁶ In other words, Rāzī suggests that we differentiate between the concept of negation as a metaphysical entity in the mind and the content of a negation, which is the negation of an extramental instantiation. The same idea may have been the basis for the solution to the conceivability of absolute non-existence in the circle around the later Islamic philosopher Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T. ūsī (d. 1274). The solution is that we can conceive of ³⁴ Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Ilāhiyyāt I, 5, p. 25, 14–15; Ḥ illī, Asrār, 415, 21–416, 2; Ibn Kammūna, Jadīd fī l-h.ikma, 85, 5–6. This stands in close connection to the “falseparadox” as Joep Lameer called it, which concerns the proposition “the absolutely unknown cannot be known.” Since one cannot make any predications about the absolutely non-existent, one cannot do so about the absolutely unknown either. In both cases, the source of the problem is the “positive of positive rule.” As a result, it is no wonder that some solutions that Lameer provides on behalf of e.g., Abharī and T. ūsī remind us of those which we are about to see on the side of the absolutely non-existent; see Lameer, “Ghayr maʿlūm yamtaniʿ al-h.ukm ʿalayhi: An Exploratory Anthology of a False Paradox in Medieval Islamic Philosophy,” Oriens 42 (2014), 397–453. ³⁵ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 81r, 1–11. ³⁶ Ibid., fol. 78v, 10–13 (somehow clearer in Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 131, 2–10).

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absolute non-existence and make positive predications about it, insofar as it is a concept in the mind. Yes, the content of this concept implies “nonexistence in the mind,” yet this non-existence is not said about the concept itself, but about a non-specified x, to which absolute non-existence may apply. The subjects (mawd.uʿayn) of two non-existences are different (the non-specified x vs. the concept of absolute non-existence), hence no contradiction between them arises.³⁷ This discussion shows how seriously the post-Avicennian tradition took the ontological commitment that arises from the “positive of positive” rule, such that they tried to explain how even absolute non-existence can be said to exist. Let us now turn back to the “mental existence” solution for the status of the non-existent object of thought. A similar idea can be found in Ibn al-Malāh.imī. He ascribes it to the school within the Muʿtazilite movement, whose head was Abū l-Ḥ usayn al-Bas.rī (d. 1044), and which Ibn al-Malāh.imī himself represents.³⁸ He had a distinct yet similar problem as Avicenna. There were two main arguments in favor of the reality of nonexistent objects of thought: the “positive of positive” rule and the concept of knowledge as relation. Avicenna did not want to accept the reality of the non-existent, but accepted the “positive of positive” rule and hence had to seek help by the theory of mental existence. Ibn al-Malāh.imī does not want to accept the reality of the non-existent either, yet he wants to accept the Muʿtazilite concept of knowledge as a relation. Hence, he has to ampliate this concept of knowledge. According to Ibn al-Malāh.imī, knowledge can be a relation not only to concrete extramental objects (mutaʿayyin) but also to what is conceived (mutas.awwar).³⁹ Hence, he establishes a theory of concepts that acquire reality on the ontological level of the intellect, imagination, or soul (ʿaql, wahm, and nafs with no technical distinction between these notions).⁴⁰ Accordingly, he distinguishes between two notions that were extensionally identical in the “Muʿtazilite” ontology: “something” (shayʾ) and “object” (dhāt). In Ibn al- Malāh.imī’s doctrine, “something” covers both the concepts in the mind and the extramental objects, whereas “object” refers to the extramental concrete entities only.⁴¹ The issue is terminological, yet it allows Ibn al-Malāh.imī to distinguish between two kinds of knowledge depending on the quantification over the objects to ³⁷ Ibn Kammūna, Jadīd fī l-h.ikma, 85, 7–86, 2, Ḥ illī, Kashf al-murād, 51, 19–52, 9. ³⁸ Rāzī, Muh.as..sal, 55, 6 also reports that Abū l-Ḥ usayn al-Bas.rī disagreed with the majority of the Muʿtazilites. ³⁹ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 356, 16; 365, 9. This doctrine strikes one as being similar to Avicenna’s, yet I leave speculation regarding whether and who influenced whom to another study. ⁴⁰ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 354, 3–4, 15; 363, 1; 364, 17; 365, 18. ⁴¹ Ibid., 268, 11–269, 16; 354, 15–16. Cf. Suhrawardī, Mashāriʿ, 362, 6–7.

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which they are related: knowledge about the true reality (h.aqīqa) and the quiddity (māhiyya) of something vs. its conception qua an existing concrete particular object (ʿilm bi-h.aqīqat al-shayʾ laysa yataʿallaqu bi-l-maʿlūm muʿayyan). For this distinction he provides a particularly interesting argument, namely, the fact that we know the true reality of the eternal (qadīm) and the temporally originated (muh.dath). Yet, if knowing the true nature of something implies knowing the object to which it applies, and only God is eternal, then we would immediately know God.⁴² In other words, Ibn al-Malāh.imī accuses his opponents of ignoring the difference between the so-called “transparent” (independent from our knowledge) and “opaque contexts” (dependent on our knowledge). If knowing “unicorn” means knowing the transparent object “unicorn” (as he interprets the theory of his opponents), then every attribute which applies to “unicorns,” even if it does not follow from the concept of “unicornness,” has to be known to us. Rather, knowing “unicorn” means for Ibn al-Malāh.imī establishing a relation between the subject of knowledge and the concept (and not an extramental object) which obtains its reality in the subject’s mind (he uses the derivatives of th-b-t and never of w-j-d).

4 . A S H ʿA R I T E S A N D F AK H R A L- DĪ N A L -R ĀZ Ī: M EN T A L E X I S T E N C E A N D P L A T O N I C F O R M S Both Ibn Malāh.imī and Avicenna asserted that non-existent objects of thought are real, meaning that they are extramentally non-existent yet mentally real. This allowed them to extensionally identify the notions of “being real” and “being existent,” which corresponds—as noted by Wisnovsky—to the traditional mainstream view of another school of Islamic philosophical theology: Ashʿarism.⁴³ Indeed, the traditional Ashʿarite solution to the problem of non-existent objects of thought came close to Avicenna’s mental existence. They agreed with the Muʿtazilites that knowledge is a connection with an object of thought, yet they disagreed whether this object has to be posited as real.⁴⁴ Rather, the Ashʿarites claimed that one conceives of the non-existent by the supposition of its existence (taqdīr al-wujūd) and the addition of negation to it (intifāʾuhū). Thus, conceiving of the non-existent “day of resurrection” (remember the problem of sūra 22:1) would mean ⁴² Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 369, 21–370, 6. This discussion reveals the close connection between the essence–existence distinction and the status of the non-existent, which I have discussed elsewhere (see “The Essence–Existence Distinction”). ⁴³ Wisnovsky, “Essence and Existence,” 30–1. ⁴⁴ Ans.ārī, Ghunya, 279, 15–280, 1.

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conceiving of the day of resurrection as if it existed/were real and negating existence/reality of it: “We know the negation of what will be, so that we suppose the reality (nuqaddiru thubūt) of the day of resurrection and then we know its negation (intifāʾahū).”⁴⁵ Our post-Avicennian sources reveal that they may have regarded this solution as similar to Avicenna’s mental existence. For instance, Ibn al-Malāh.imī elsewhere adds to the aforementioned notion of “conception” (tas.awwur) that one conceives of the nonexistent “by [its] existence” (ʿinda wujūd), which appears quite close to the Ashʿarite “supposition of existence.”⁴⁶ One of our earliest sources for the reception of Avicenna’s philosophy in the Islamic theological tradition, Muh.ammad ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153) is willing to identify the traditional Ashʿarite and Avicenna’s solution to the problem of the nonexistent objects of thought. He often uses Avicenna’s “mental” (ʿaqlī) status interchangeably with the Ashʿarite “supposed” (taqdīrī).⁴⁷ The alleged similarity between Avicenna’s and the traditional Ashʿarite approach may have been the reason for the enormous success of Avicenna’s suggestion to posit the non-existent objects of thought as existent in the mind. An overwhelming majority of post-Avicennian philosophers accepted it, and hence the problem of where to place the objects of thought that do not exist was solved for them.⁴⁸ Yet there was one particular philosopher who did not accept the mental existence solution: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. As we already mentioned, he accepted the “positive of positive rule” and on this basis explained the “Muʿtazilite” theory of the real non-existent. To this one can add that he rejected Avicenna’s theory of knowledge and followed the traditional kalām-assumption shared by both Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites that knowledge is/implies a relation (id.āfa) to the object known.⁴⁹ Thus, he accepted both arguments that may lead to positing the non-existent as real, yet he still was not consistently willing to solve the problem with mental existence. Indeed, in some chapters of his early Mabāh.ith, Rāzī clearly agreed with Avicenna that non-existent objects of thought exist in the mind.⁵⁰ However, ⁴⁵ Ibid., 286, 7–13; cf. Shahrastānī, Nihāyat al-aqdām, 153, 6–16. On taqdīr-theory and other aspects of the traditional Ashʿarite view on the non-existent, see Richard Frank, “The Non-Existent and the Possible in Classical Ashʿarite Teaching,” MIDEO 24 (2000), 1–37. ⁴⁶ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Fāʾiq, 92, 16–19. ⁴⁷ Cf. e.g., Shahrastānī, Nihāyat al-aqdām, 201, 8. ⁴⁸ Abharī, Kashf al-h.aqāʾiq, 110, 7ff., T. ūsī, Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād, 64. Even Urmawī, Mat. āliʿ, fol. 3r, 10–3v, 6 who follows Rāzī in many respects, disagrees with him on the rejection of the mental existence and accepts Avicenna’s solution. ⁴⁹ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 450. ⁵⁰ Ibid., vol. 1, p. 136, 18; p. 136, 24. On the dating of Rāzī’s works see Ayman Shihadeh, The Theological Ethic of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 7–9. Nevertheless he rejects mental existence in a later chapter which is devoted to the issue of knowledge (Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, pp. 437–44).

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he rejected the concept of mental existence in the slightly later Mulakhkhas..⁵¹ Given that mental existence was the solution to the problem of non-existent objects of thought, Rāzī had to develop a different solution to the issue: [T5] We do not concede that we can conceive of the objects that are not extramentally real. Yes, they can be not present (h.ād.ira) to us, yet why can one not say that everything that can be conceived of and imagined has an existent form which subsists by itself (s.ūra mawjūda qāʾima bi-nafsihā) or it [inheres] in a hidden body (al-ajrām al-ghāʾiba)? When soul turns to them it perceives them. They are the exemplars (muthul ) which the great Plato was talking about. We will mention Aristotle’s argument against them with a response to it.⁵²

This passage makes two particularly unexpected moves. First, Rāzī does not accept the assumption of his Ashʿarite colleagues and Avicenna that we can conceive of objects that are not extramentally real. Yet, in what follows, he accepts that every object of our thought has to be real.⁵³ Therefore, every object of our thought has to be extramentally real. This sounds a lot like the “Muʿtazilite” view. However, Rāzī puts a different spin on it. The “Muʿtazilites” assumed that for every object of our thought there is an extramental correspondence. Rāzī agrees to this and provides two options: either x “subsists by itself” or there is a “hidden body”⁵⁴ y, in which x inheres. Several lines later both options are reduced to one solution, which is to say that non-existent objects of thought do exist in the “hidden/non-transparent” (ghāʾib) realm.⁵⁵ That is why this position gets explicated by Rāzī as Platonic Forms (though it remains unclear whether both or only one option includes the Platonic Forms). His line of thought immediately reminds us of the argument in favor of Platonic Forms from Peri Ideōn, which was mentioned in the introduction: conceiving of a non-existent x means conceiving of the Platonic Form of x. One may also compare this way of arguing with the argument for the existence of the world of suspended images (muthul muʿallaqa) by Rāzī’s famous contemporary Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191), which according to Nikolai Sinai led Suhrawardī to “reify” images ⁵¹ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 78v, 17–79r, 9. I will discuss one of the arguments against mental existence in section 5. ⁵² Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 79r, 12–18. The text from the manuscript runs as follows: ‫ ﻧﻌﻢ ﻗﺪ ﻻ ﻳﻜﻮﻥ ﺣﺎﴐﺓ ﻋﻨﺪﻧﺎ ﻭﻟﻜﻦ ِﻟ َﻢ ﻻ ﻳﺠﻮﺯ ﺃﻥ ﺗﻘﺎﻝ ﺇ ّﻥ ﻛﻞ ﻣﺎ ﺃﻣﻜﻨﻨﺎ ﺃﻥ‬.‫ﺇ ّﻧﺎ ﻻ ﻧﺴﻠﻢ ﺃ ّﻧﺎ ﻧﺘﺼﻮﺭ ﺃﻣﻮﺭﺍ ﻻ ﺛﺒﻮﺕ ﻟﻬﺎ ﰲ ﺍﻟﺨﺎﺭﺝ‬ ‫ ﻭﻫﻲ ﺍﳌﺜﻞ ﺍﻟﺘﻲ ﻛﺎﻥ‬،‫ﻧﺘﺼﻮﺭﮦ ﻭﻧﺘﺨﻴﻠﻪ ﻓﻠﻪ ﺻﻮﺭﺓ ﻣﻮﺟﻮﺩﺓ ﻗﺎﺋﻤﺔ ﺑﻨﻔﺴﻬﺎ ﺃﻭ ﰲ ﳽء ﻣﻦ ﺍﻷﺟﺮﺍﻡ ﺍﻟﻐﺎﺋﺒﺔ؟ ﻓﺈﺫﺍ ﺍﻟﺘﻔﺖ ﺍﻟﻨﻔﺲ ﺇﻟﻴﻬﺎ ﺃﺩﺭﻛﺘﻬﺎ‬ .‫ ﻭﺳﻨﺬﻛﺮ ﺃﺩﻟﺔ ﺃﺭﻳﺴﻄﻮ ﻋﲆ ﺇﺑﻄﺎﻝ ﻫﺬﮦ ﺍﳌﺜﻞ ﻣﻊ ﺍﻟﺠﻮﺍﺏ ﻋﻨﻬﺎ‬.‫ﻳﻘﻮﻝ ﺑﻬﺎ ﺍﻟﻌﻈﻴﻢ ﺃﻓﻼﻃﻮﻥ‬ ⁵³ Ibid., 18–19. ⁵⁴ It is not entirely clear what Rāzī means with these “hidden bodies.” Kātibī, Ḥ ikmat al-ʿayn, 6, 9 paraphrases this passage replacing the hidden bodies with the Active Intellect. ⁵⁵ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 79r, 21.

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that were claimed to be merely mental in Avicenna as self-subsistent entities.⁵⁶ The same “reification” may be claimed for Rāzī in [T5]. Nevertheless, we should not rush to the conclusion that Rāzī believed in Platonic Forms of non-existent objects. Rather, he merely suggests that our thoughts about non-existent objects need to have correspondence in something like Platonic Forms. For in Sharh. al-Ishārāt Rāzī provides the same argument when rejecting the Avicennian theory of knowledge. Yet there he says that the theory of Platonic Forms is rather far-fetched (mustabʿad ), although it is less far-fetched then Avicenna’s concept of knowledge.⁵⁷ Here it does not sound like Rāzī is willing to accept Platonic Forms. Indeed, he clearly rejects them in Mabāh.ith on the firm Avicennian grounds that the requirement for an immanent cause of participation (humanity qua humanity shared by both ʿAmr and Zayd) does not entail a requirement for transcendent principles (Platonic Form of humanity).⁵⁸ In the Mulakhkhas.’ discussion of Platonic Forms, Rāzī first reminds the reader of the fact that he produced some arguments in their favor in the analysis of existence, which is a cross-reference to [T5]. However, he does not consistently agree with Platonic Forms in what follows. On the one hand, he recapitulates what he calls “Aristotle’s arguments against Platonic Forms” (which effectively alludes to the problem of individuation of Platonic Forms vis-à-vis their instantiations; accepted in the Mabāh.ith) and rejects it, as he promised in [T5]. On the other hand, he still draws the Avicennian distinction between immanent and transcendent universals and seems to accept it.⁵⁹ Given that I could not find any hint as to whether Rāzī would accept Platonic Forms in his other writings, and since a thorough investigation of his theory of universals deserves a separate study, I label for now his position on this ⁵⁶ Nikolai Sinai, “Al-Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision and Suspended Images (muthul muʿallaqa),” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 25 (2015), 279–97. Actually, Suhrawardī elsewhere accepts Avicenna’s solution based on mental existence (Mashāriʿ, 200, 15) as well as Avicenna’s theory of knowledge as the presence of the concept in the mind (Talwīh.āt, 241, 1–4; on this and other passages, see Eichner, “ ‘Knowledge by Presence’,” 127–40), which raises a question for another study, how both Rāzian “extramentalist” and Avicennian “mentalist” argumentation is compatible for him. ⁵⁷ Rāzī, Sharh. al-Ishārāt, vol. 2, p. 236, 1–6. ⁵⁸ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, pp. 201–3. On Avicenna’s theory of universals and his rejection of Platonic Forms, see Marwan Rashed, “Ibn ʿAdī et Avicenne: sur les types d’existant,” in R. Chiaradonna (ed.), Aristotele e i suoi esegeti neoplatonici (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2004), 107–72; Michael Marmura, “Avicenna’s Critique of Platonists in Book VII, Chapter 2 of the Metaphysics of his Healing,” in J. Montgomery (ed.), Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy, From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 359–64; and Fedor Benevich, “Die Göttliche Existenz: Zum ontologischen Status der Essenz qua Essenz bei Avicenna,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 26 (2015), 103–28. ⁵⁹ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., MS Tehran Majlis 827t, 79, 17–27.

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topic as at best indecisive. Hence, we cannot conclude out of hand that Rāzī solved the issue of non-existent objects of thought just by transferring them to the Platonic Forms. In any case, as we will now see, my resistance to ascribing the Platonic Forms solution to Rāzī gains further support from the different account of the knowledge of the non-existent he develops when discussing the status of the impossible.

5 . T H E I M P O S SI B L E : P A R A C O N S I S T E N C Y OR REDUCTIONISM So far I have been investigating positions on the status of non-existent objects of thought in terms of possible objects, which just happen not to exist currently. Remember the Qurʾānic example of the end of the world, as well as Rāzī’s everyday-examples of tomorrow’s sunset and sunrise. However, impossible objects of thought are those that would cause the most problems. For we have seen that all the aforementioned accounts amount to asserting that anything conceivable has to be in some way real, either as a mental concept existing in the mind, or as an extramental object. So, is the impossible conceivable? And if so, is it real? The status of the impossible was used by both Ibn al-Malāh.imī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in the course of the dispute concerning the status of the nonexistent in order to refute the “Muʿtazilite” view. In summary, they claim that not every object of thought and knowledge is real because impossible items are such objects, yet they obviously cannot be real. The traditional example here is a second God. When the opponents of Ibn al-Malāh.imī provide the aforementioned argument that the objects of thought have to be real objects in order that the relation (id.āfa) and connection (taʿalluq) of the knower with the known obtains, he responds that in this case a second God has to be real too, whenever we conceive of him.⁶⁰ Fakhr al-Dīn argues as follows: [T6] As for the first proof of the [the Muʿtazilites] its source is that they did not know that quiddity exists in the minds and we have already clarified this. What supports it is the fact that we can conceive of the impossible (al-mumtaniʿāt) and the imaginative forms (al-suwar al-khayāliyya) like that of Zayd, ʿAmr, and some concrete horse, whereas they grant us that these are not extramentally real.⁶¹

⁶⁰ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 365, 11. ⁶¹ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 136, 18–21. For another version of the argument with “the second God” example, see Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, p. 95, 15; on this see below.

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Rāzī rejects in this passage the “Muʿtazilite” logic that every distinct object of thought has to be real, departing from the assumption that they would agree that there are some objects of thought that do not obtain extramentally. For instance, this would apply to the impossible. However, Rāzī is not entirely fair in his argumentation. For the proponents of the reality of the nonexistent objects of thought provided a response to this argument, which Rāzī ignores, but which Ibn al-Malāh.imī takes into consideration. As Richard Frank has already highlighted, in talking about the impossible they allowed an exception: an act of knowing that has no object of knowledge whatsoever (ʿilm lā maʿlūm lahū).⁶² Ibn al-Malāh.imī reports: [T7] Some said: our saying “the known” excludes an analogue of God (mithl al-lāh)—may He be exalted! For it is not known, since knowing that there is analogue of God is a [case of] knowledge without the known (ʿilm lā maʿlūm lahū). [. . .] As for their statement that knowing that there is no analogue to God is a [case] of knowledge without the known, this is not true either. For knowledge cannot be conceived of without any relation to the known, which is either something concretely individuated or a concept (immā mutaʿayyin aw mutas.awwar). How is it possible to talk about knowledge without the known?⁶³

Ibn al-Malāh.imī reports the attempt of his opponents to solve the issue of the impossible and rejects it. They could not accept that a second God is real; therefore, they concluded that it also fails to be an object of thought properly speaking. Our author rejects this solution. Since his opponents share with him the position that knowledge is a relation, the relata are presupposed, so that the second God must be real. To this Ibn al-Malāh.imī immediately adds his aforementioned solution that objects can be real in thought. His “second God” is real, yet it is only real in the mind of the one who utters the proposition that the presence of a second God is impossible, whereas the second God does not have to be real qua concrete particular. One finds similar reasoning a century later in another Muslim scholar, Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 1233). He reports that Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (tenth century) believed that in the case of knowledge of the impossible (mustah.īl), such as the knowledge of a second God, an agreement between opposites or of the equality of a part to the whole, there is no object known (lā maʿlūm). Āmidī rejects this conclusion, because “knowledge and the known are mutually related (mutad.āʾifīn) and neither of them can be grasped intellectually unless the other is.”⁶⁴ Both Ibn al-Malāh.imī and Rāzī in [T6] place the impossible as a real object in the mind. This became the overwhelming solution to the status of ⁶² Frank, Maʿdūm, 189. ⁶³ Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 356, 9–18. ⁶⁴ Āmidī, Abkār al-afkār, vol. 1, p. 48, 3–10.

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the impossible in the post-Avicennian era.⁶⁵ Many accepted Rāzī’s argument that the “Muʿtazilite” rule, namely, that everything conceivable is extramentally real, leads to problems in case of the impossible, and in turn they concluded that this is why Avicenna’s mental existence solution has to be correct. We want to acknowledge that the impossible is real, given that it is a distinguishable object of thought, but it must exist only in the mind. Therefore, the possible and the impossible non-existent objects of thought have the same status on this view: they exist as real features in the mind. Nevertheless, we may remember that Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī gave up this solution in Mulakhkhas., where he rejected Avicenna’s theory of mental existence as a whole. One of his arguments is precisely directed towards the case of the impossible: [T8] The proof that rejects [mental existence] is that the only meaning of attributing something to something else is the occurrence of the former in the latter. Yet, when we conceive of the hot and cold as well as of straightness and circularity, if the quiddity of both the hot and cold or of both straightness and circularity would occur in us, then we would become ourselves hot and cold or straight and circular at the same time (maʿan). And this is absurd.⁶⁶

In his criticism of the Avicenna’s theory of mental existence, Rāzī employs the fact that this theory is closely connected to Avicenna’s concept of knowledge, which means the inherence of the object of thought in the “self” (dhāt) of its subject.⁶⁷ Interestingly, the main point of his argument is not that this theory leads to an intuitively absurd assumption that we become cold and hot, when we conceive of these features. In this argument, Rāzī is ready to grant to Avicenna that there is nothing absurd about the inherence of “hot” in ourselves when we think about it. Rather, Rāzī points out a further problem that arises on the basis of this fact: we become hot and cold at the same time, when we think of the hot and cold at the same time. The problem indicated by Rāzī may appear to be unrelated to thinking about impossible objects. For it can be interpreted as thinking about two possible objects simultaneously, which entails that we ourselves, the subjects of thinking, become impossible objects. However, his objection also holds if we think about an impossible object like “co-occurrence of hot and cold” or when we utter the proposition “something that is hot and cold is impossible” and thereby posit “something that is hot and cold” in our minds. This

⁶⁵ E.g., Abharī, Kashf al-h.aqāʾiq, 111, 20–1; Ḥ illī, Kashf al-murād, 17, 13–16; Ibn Kammūna, Jadīd fī l-h.ikma, 84, 10–15. ⁶⁶ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 78v, 17–21. ⁶⁷ Cf. Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Ilāhiyyāt III, 8 on knowledge as an accident and Ishārāt, namat. 3, p. 237 on perception as the representation of the perceived in the perceiver.

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also leads to the fact that we become ourselves the impossible object, “something that is hot and cold.” Therefore, there would be one and the same subject (the subject of thinking), which receives opposed attributes at the same time, which is indeed impossible. Thus, Rāzī accuses Avicennists of introducing impossible but real objects, in other terms, something “paraconsistent” and real. Rāzī may seem right in his analysis of Avicenna’s mental existence solution. Given that Avicenna’s theory made use of the rule that everything of which we make predication is real, it committed one to postulate paraconsistent objects, even though their reality obtains in the mind alone. However, already in the first part of the thirteenth century we find a response to Rāzī’s argument in yet another scholar, Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1264): [T9] The impossible has a form in the intellect. Otherwise one could not predicate the impossibility of it. The same applies to the non-existence. It was said in order to reject mental existence that if the hot and cold existed in the mind, then opposites would co-occur (ijtimāʿ al-d.iddayn) in one locus of inherence (mah.all). In response we say that we do not concede that there is an opposition between the universal hot and the universal cold. Rather the opposition obtains between the extramental hot and cold.⁶⁸

In order to refute Rāzī’s argument Abharī claims that there is no opposition between the universals “hot” and “cold.” Rather, there is one only between the hot and the cold qua being extramental. In another treatise, he says that there is no opposition between the form (s.ūra) of the hot and cold, but only insofar as they are extramental.⁶⁹ What he intends is similar to what we have seen in the post-Avicennian analysis of the conception of absolute nonexistence: a distinction between a concept qua an entity and the content of this concept.⁷⁰ The content of the hot and cold contradicts, but the concepts themselves do not. In later generations Abharī’s solution was accepted and explicated further.⁷¹ For example, one thinker in the circle of Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T. ūsī claimed that what inheres in the mind is not the quiddity of the hot and cold itself, but a form (s.ūra) or a likeness (mithāl ) which differs from quiddity in terms of the attributes that apply to it.⁷² This ⁶⁸ Abharī, Muntahā, 283, 19–23: ‫ ﻭﻗﻴﻞ ﰲ ﺇﺑﻄﺎﻝ ﺍﻟﻮﺟﻮﺩ ﺍﻟﺬﻫﻨﻲ ﺇ ّﻥ ﺍﻟﺤﺮﺍﺭﺓ‬.‫ ﻭﻛﺬﺍ ﺍﻟﻌﺪﻡ‬،‫ﻭﺍﳌﻤﺘﻨﻊ ﻟﻪ ﺻﻮﺭﺓ ﰲ ﺍﻟﻌﻘﻞ ﻭﺇ ّﻻ ﻻﺳﺘﺤﺎﻝ ﺍﻟﺤﻜﻢ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﺑﺎﻻﻣﺘﻨﺎﻉ‬ ‫ ﻭﺟﻮﺍﺑﻪ ﺃﻥ ﻧﻘﻮﻝ ﻻ ﻧﺴﻠﻢ ﺃ ّﻥ ﺑﻴﻦ ﺍﻟﺤﺮﺍﺭﺓ ﺍﻟﻜﻠﻴﺔ‬.‫ﻭﺍﻟﱪﻭﺩﺓ ﻟﻮ ﻛﺎﻧﺘﺎ ﻣﻮﺟﻮﺩﺗﻴﻦ ﰲ ﺍﻟﺬﻫﻦ ﻟﺰﻡ ﺇﺟﺘﻤﺎﻉ ﺍﻟﻀ ّﺪﻳﻦ ﰲ ﻣﺤ ّﻞ ﻭﺍﺣﺪ‬ .‫ ﺑﻞ ﺍﻟﺘﻀﺎﺩ ﺇﻧﻤﺎ ﻳﺜﺒﺖ ﺑﻴﻦ ﺍﻟﺤﺮﺍﺭﺓ ﻭﺍﻟﱪﻭﺩﺓ ﺍﻟﺨﺎﺭﺟﻴﺘﻴﻦ‬،‫ﻭﺍﻟﱪﻭﺩﺓ ﺍﻟﻜﻠﻴﺔ ﺗﻀﺎ ًﺩﺍ‬ ⁶⁹ Abharī, Tanzīl al-afkār, fol. 25v, 21. ⁷⁰ Cf. Ḥ illī, Kashf al-murād, 51, 11–12, where the simultaneous conception of both negation and affirmation is explained precisely in these terms. ⁷¹ E.g., Kātibī, Ḥ ikmat al-ʿayn, 6, 3–6; Ibn Kammūna, Jadīd fī l-h.ikma, 84, 16–18. ⁷² Ḥ illī, Kashf al-murād, 11, 8–14.

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may sound problematic, given that such a distinction indicates a difference between the objects of our knowledge and their extramental correspondence, which leads to obvious epistemological problems. A deflationist reading of the proposed distinction would be that the quiddity of fire as a whole requires both the form of fire and a matter, which is lacking in the case of a wholly immaterial conception of fire.⁷³ So, given that the form remains the same in conception and extramentally, our knowledge has correspondence. This solution shows that putting the impossible on the level of mental existence did not force the upholders of this view to believe in real paraconsistent objects. They denied that there is any paraconsistency between two opposed objects in the mind which are simultaneously conceived, because their opposition obtains only insofar as the essences that are indicated by these objects of thought exist in extramental reality. Hence, we ought to talk about “conceiving the impossible” in the Avicennist theory only in a loose sense: the combination of concepts of “hot” and “cold” is actually possible, although it describes an impossible state of affairs in the extramental reality. Those in post-Avicennian philosophy who upheld Avicenna’s mental existence solution did not only solve the problem of paraconsistency brought up by Rāzī. They also turned his weapon against him. Rāzī used the problem of the reality of the impossible in order to refute a theory that held the impossible to be real in the mind. However, how could he account for them in his own theory? We have seen that he—at least dialectically— solves the problem of the possible objects of thought by asserting something like Platonic Forms that correspond to these objects. Doing the same would be problematic in the case of the impossible: should we suppose Platonic Forms of the impossible? This is the argument raised against him by the majority of the post-Rāzian tradition. Abharī was probably the first to note: [T10] As for his wondering: why do you say that we can conceive of things that do not exist extramentally, we say: For we can conceive of what we mentioned in terms of the ideas (mafhūmāt) some of which cannot exist extramentally, and these impossible [ideas] neither subsist by themselves nor do they [inhere] in the hidden bodies.⁷⁴

⁷³ Cf. Abharī, Kashf al-h.aqāʾiq, 111, 2–3 and Kātībi, Munas..sas. fī sharh. al-Mulakhkhas., fol. 96v, 10, who both talk about the lack of the receptive (qābil) element, which usually stands for matter. ⁷⁴ Abharī, Kashf al-h.aqāʾiq, 110, 16–18: ‫ ﻗﻠﻨﺎ ﻷ ّﻧﺎ ﻧﺘﺼﻮﺭ ﻣﺎ ﺫﻛﺮﻧﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺍﳌﻔﻬﻮﻣﺎﺕ ﻣﻊ ﺃ ّﻥ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﺎ ﻣﻤﺘﻨﻊ‬،‫ﺃ ّﻣﺎ ﻗﻮﻟﻪ ِﻟ َﻢ ﻗﻠﺘﻢ ﺑﺄ ّﻧﺎ ﻧﺘﺼﻮﺭ ﺃﺷﻴﺎﺀ ﻻ ﻭﺟﻮﺩ ﻟﻬﺎ ﰲ ﺍﻟﺨﺎﺭﺝ‬ .‫ ﻭﻻ ﻳﻜﻮﻥ ﺗﻠﻚ ﺍﳌﻤﺘﻨﻌﺎﺕ ﻗﺎﺋﻤﺔ ﺑﻨﻔﺴﻬﺎ ﻭﻻ ﰲ ﳽء ﻣﻦ ﺍﻷﺟﺮﺍﻡ ﺍﻟﻐﺎﺋﺒﺔ‬،‫ﺍﻟﻮﺟﻮﺩ ﰲ ﺍﻟﺨﺎﺭﺝ‬

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Abharī addresses in this passage Rāzī’s argument that we saw in [T6]: why do we need to postulate that we can conceive of something extramentally non-existent? Why not just say that these objects of thought do exist in extramental reality either as self-subsisting entities or as inherent in Platonic Forms? To this, Abharī responds that this reasoning fails in the case of the impossible. Given the hidden assumption that the very idea of the impossible involves its not existing extramentally, the impossible objects of thought cannot be instantiated as either of Rāzī’s options. This argument was widely accepted after Abharī, and can be regarded as decisive in favor of establishing the concept of mental existence.⁷⁵ Thus, the argumentation proceeds in three steps: (1) every object of thought has to be real (either due to a “relational” definition of knowledge or because of the “positive of positive” rule); (2) the case of the possible objects of thought is indecisive, since they can be posited as either mentally or extramentally existent; (3) the case of the impossible decides the issue in favor of the mental existence solution. Therefore, Rāzī falls into his own trap: he tried to use the problem of paraconsistency in order to reject the mental existence of the impossible. However, the same objection is even more problematic for his own solution, because it posits the non-existent objects of thought not even as mentally real, but as extramentally real. Nevertheless, we noted above that the “Platonic Forms” solution should not be taken as his final word on the subject. One finds later, both in Rāzī’s Mabāh.ith (which preliminary posits the non-existent as mentally existent) and in his Mulakhkhas. (which develops the “Platonic Forms” view), another attempt to solve the problem of non-existent objects of thought: [T11] Everything which is known has to be distinguishable from another. Everything which is distinguishable from another is existent. Therefore, everything known is existent. The contra-positive is: that which is not existent cannot be known. Yet, we know a lot of things that are non-existent, e.g., we know the non-existence of another God and the non-existence of an agreement between the opposites. How then can these two points be compatible? We say: The non-existent has to be either simple (basīt. ) or composite (murakkab). [a] If it is simple, like the non-existence of an opposite to God, this can be intellectually grasped only due to its resemblance to an existent thing, as it is said: there is not for God—may He be exalted—anything whose relation to Him (li-l-lāh shayʾ takūnu nisbatuhū ilayhi) would be like the relation of blackness to whiteness. If we did not know the opposition which occurs between existent things, it would be impossible to know the non-existence of an opposite to God. [b] If [the non-existent] is composite, like knowing the non-existence of an agreement between blackness and whiteness, then knowing this gets accomplished only due to the knowledge of its ⁷⁵ E.g., Kātibī, Munas..sas. fī sharh. al-Mulakhkhas., fol. 96v, 39.

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existent parts (bi-ajzāʾihī al-wujūdiyya). For instance, we intellectually grasp “blackness,” “whiteness,” and “agreement” as it is grasped. Then it is said that “agreement,” which is grasped as something existent, does not occur to “blackness” and “whiteness.” The gist is that the non-existence of the simple is known only through a comparison (bi-l-muqāyasa) to something existent, whereas the non-existence of the composite is known only through knowing its simple [parts].⁷⁶

First, Fakhr al-Dīn addresses precisely the problem we are dealing with: if everything known has to be existent (= extramentally real, according to the previous analysis), then the impossible cannot be known. Yet, intuitively we see that we can entertain impossible objects of thought, which gives rise to a contradiction. In order to solve this problem, Rāzī attempts to reduce the impossible to possible items and negation. Thinking about the second God amounts to saying that there are two elements: there is x, which is “God”; and there is y, which is “the thing whose relation to another thing is like the relation of opposition between the blackness and whiteness” (a “second relatum of an opposition” in other words). And saying that there cannot be any second God means that necessarily⁷⁷ there is no y for x. As for the paraconsistent object “blackness and whiteness together” it is reduced to: there is x, which is whiteness; and there is y, which is blackness; and there is z, which is co-occurrence; and z does not hold of x and y. With this reductionism Rāzī breaks up the traditional matrix of the oneto-one correspondence between the objects of thought and real objects. Not every object of thought is real, but only the possible ones. As for the impossible, it is not real qua a distinct object. Rather, it should be reduced to other real objects, which our thought addresses by negating them of each other when we think of the impossible. Thereby he manages to retain his concept of knowledge, which is a relation to a real object of knowledge: knowing the impossible is a relation to one or several real objects, even though the object is not the impossible entity itself, but rather its constituents, which are possible in themselves yet cannot be combined in one. As a result, Rāzī denies that we can conceive of impossible objects properly speaking, i.e., entertain them as distinct entities. Rather, we conceive of the combination of real objects, i.e., of a correlation between different entities without forming a new—impossible—entity.

⁷⁶ Rāzī, Mabāh.ith, vol. 1, p. 500, 7–19. Cf. Mulakhkhas., fol. 126v, 16–22 and Mat. ālib, vol. 1, 49–50. ⁷⁷ The addition of “necessarily” is required for distinguishing between mere failure of presence (there just happens not to be a second God) and the impossibility of there being the second God. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this issue to my attention.

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Rāzī already has this solution in mind in some versions of his argumentation against the “Muʿtazilite” view. We saw above that he raises the impossible in Mabāh.ith in order to show that there are objects of thought that are not extramentally but rather mentally real. However, in his two other treatises Rāzī uses the same in order to establish that not every object of thought is “real” (thābit) generally speaking (Mulakhkhas.)⁷⁸ or that not every object of thought possesses some essence/being itself (dhāt), true reality (h.aqīqa), and quiddity (māhiyya); for instance, the second God and “the co-occurrence of blackness and whiteness” do not possess these features (Arbaʿīn).⁷⁹ Indeed, according to the reductionist solution, none of these objects is an entity in itself, such that it would possess an essence. Rather, each is just a negation of one essence of another. This idea is compatible with the “Platonic Forms” solution. For instance, one could claim that the impossible describes the relation of two Platonic Forms (whiteness and blackness) to each other. However, it is not entirely clear whether Rāzī would apply the same reductionist analysis to possible objects of thought. Although he uses two cases of the impossible as examples in [T11], he speaks generally of the “non-existent” there and not of the simply impossible. Therefore, the same reductionist analysis may be applicable to possible objects which do not exist, yet without positing them as something like Platonic Forms, i.e., something real but “hidden.” Suppose there is no blackness. Yet, in order to conceive of it, one does not have to posit the “Platonic Form” of blackness. It would suffice on the reductionist account to say: there is x (which is whiteness), and there is y (which is “the second relatum of an opposition”); and possibly there is y for x. Whichever solution is decisive for Rāzī, they share a common feature: he claims that thinking of the non-existent can be reduced to negating existent objects. Rāzī’s reductionist solution did not receive much attention in post-Rāzian philosophy. It was apparently accepted by Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, who also asserted that knowing the second God actually means knowing this real God, but did not explain how this reduction is supposed to work.⁸⁰ Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī (d. 1276), from the circle around Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T. ūsī, commented on the passage from Mulakhkhas. that contained the reductionist theory, but he does not give any hint as to whether he recognized that this theory would save Rāzī from the traditional accusations.⁸¹ It is however particularly striking to turn rather to the predecessors of Rāzī than to his successors, since it appears that Rāzī was not the first to suggest the reductionist solution. We have seen above that a group of the Muʿtazilites ⁷⁸ Rāzī, Mulakhkhas., fol. 80r, 15–16. ⁷⁹ Rāzī, Arbaʿīn, vol. 1, p. 95, 14–23. ⁸⁰ Āmidī, Abkār al-afkār, vol. 1, p. 48, 15–16. ⁸¹ Kātibī, Munas..sas. fī sharh. al-Mulakhkhas., fol. 157v, 30–7.

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tried to save their assumption that every object of thought is real by stating that the impossible objects of thought are not objects of thought properly speaking. Ibn al-Malāh.imī reports of another attempt on their part to solve the case of the impossible: [T12] One reports of some of them who said that the knowledge that there is no second God apart from God the Exalted is [still] a knowledge which is connected to something known (mutaʿalliq bi-maʿlūm). Then, some of them said that this knowledge is the knowledge of God the Exalted Himself (bi-dhāt al-lāh) in terms that there is no second for Him. And some of them said that it is like knowing that substances and accidents do not resemble Him.⁸²

Ibn al-Malāh.imī’s opponents try to solve the issue of the impossible the same way as Rāzī did. They reduce the idea of knowing the impossible to knowing an extramentally existent feature and negating something else from it. Especially the second attempt, which makes a disanalogy between God on the one hand and substances and accidents on the other, reminds us of Rāzī’s move. However, Ibn al-Malāh.imī interprets it differently. Saying that there is no second God is reducible to saying that God does not resemble substances and accidents, because everything apart from God is either substances or accidents. In any case, Ibn al-Malāh.imī does not agree. First, he claims that neither strategy is applicable to all impossible objects of thought. Second, he says that knowing God Himself would be a necessary condition for knowing that there is no second God according to the reductionist theory of his opponents. He disagrees: we can still know that there is no second God while denying the existence of even a single God. Third, he disagrees that knowing that God is neither substance nor accident immediately entails that we know that there is no second God.⁸³ Yet one could argue that these objections apply only to particular attempts to reduce “no second God” to knowing God with a negation, though they do not address the validity of the general idea of reducing the impossible objects of thought to real ones. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Malāh.imī leaves the topic aside at this point and does not discuss it further. There is another source apart from the “Muʿtazlites” which suggests a reduction of the impossible to the really existent and which is very likely to be the direct source of Rāzī’s solution. It is Avicenna. Following the tradition of Aristotle’s An. Post. II, 1, Avicenna distinguishes in the Burhān of Shifāʾ between the questions “what something is” and “whether it is” and shows that one ought to engage in the latter after answering to the former. In Burhān I, 6 Avicenna argues that knowing “what something is” comes to us from outside the mind. Here he notes a problem: ⁸² Ibn al-Malāh.imī, Muʿtamad, 367, 6–8.

⁸³ Ibid., 367, 8–368, 5.

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[T13] Every object of inquiry (mat. lūb) of these [unknown things] is achieved only by means of existing, occurring things. Here, however, there is a place for doubt, namely how is one to conceive (yatas.awwaru) of a non-existent essence whose existence is impossible, when one is asked about it “what it is,” so that thereafter one might inquire whether it exists. For if no meaning for it occurs (lam yah..sul) in the soul, how can one judge it be either occurring or not occurring, when the impossible has no form in existence? How, then, would a form of it be taken into the mind so that conceiving would constitute its meaning? [To this] we say: this impossible is either (a) singular, having neither composition nor separability of parts, [or (b) composite]. [a] If [it is singular], it cannot be conceived at all except by some kind of comparison (al-muqāyasa) with the existent and in relation to it. This would be similar to our saying “vacuum” and “the contrary of God.” For vacuum is conceived as belonging to bodies as a recipient, and the contrary of God would be conceived as belonging to God in the way hot relates to the cold. Thus the impossible would be conceived in terms of a possible thing to which it relates, being conceived in relation to it and likened to it. In itself, however, it is neither conceivable nor intellectually graspable, nor does it have any essence ( fa-lā yakūna mutas.awwaran wa-lā maʿqūlan wa-lā dhāt lahū). [b] As for that which has some sort of composition and separable parts, such as the goat-stag, the phoenix, or a human that flies, what is first conceived is their separable parts whose existence is not impossible. Thereafter one conceives of some kind of connection for the parts, in comparison to the connection that obtains for the separable parts of existing composite essences. There would thus be three things, two of them being parts, where each of them [can] exist alone, and the third being a composition of them, which is conceived qua composition, because composition qua composition is one of the things that exist. In this way one obtains the meaning of how the name of a non-existent signifies. Thus the non-existent is only conceived because of the prior conception of existing things.⁸⁴

The problem that Avicenna needs to solve in this passage is how we can conceive of the impossible. For instance, his general claim in the first sentence is that we can form concepts in our minds only when departing from really existent things. Naturally, a dialectical opponent interferes and wonders how this might work in the case of forming the concept of the impossible, given that the impossible cannot be real per definitionem. Avicenna’s response is already familiar to us. Impossible concepts are either simple or composite. If they are simple, then one conceives of them by comparison to the real, e.g., we conceive of a contrary to God by connecting the idea of contrariety with God. If they are composite, then we bring

⁸⁴ Avicenna, Shifāʾ, Burhān I, 6, 72, 3–17, trans. Marmura, modified (see Michael Marmura, “Avicenna on Meno’s Paradox: On ‘Apprehending’ Unknown Things through Known Things,” Mediaeval Studies 71 (2009), 49–51).

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together real existents and apply an idea of composition to them. Thus, Avicenna’s solution is reductionist here. Avicenna’s reductionist account of the impossible might be interpreted in a twofold way. First, we may infer that Avicenna claims in [T13] that we cannot conceive of the impossible, meaning that we cannot form an impossible, paraconsistent concept in our minds. Instead, we combine several concepts and relate them to each other without creating a new one. This is certainly the interpretation of this passage which Rāzī endorsed. For we can claim with certainty that Rāzī develops his reductionist solution in [T11] by directly or indirectly basing himself on Avicenna’s [T13]. The core of the theory is obviously the same. Terminology is either very close or just the same as in the case of the notion “comparison” (muqāyasa). And, last but not least, both Avicenna and Rāzī allude to the same example in the (a)-case, a contrary to God, and unfold it through a comparison to hot and cold. Nevertheless we should remember that Rāzī talks in [T11] about the nonexistent in general, which made me suppose before that the same reductionist analysis applies to the possible in his system. This would be very fortunate for Rāzī given that we saw that he rejects the mental existence of the possible. Similarly, in the last sentence of [T13], Avicenna says that he just explained how we conceive of the non-existent generally without restricting it to the impossible. Hence, one might suggest that the reductionist analysis he suggests is also applicable to the possible, which does not happen to be “out there” at the moment of concept-formation. What was fortunate for Rāzī is in turn quite unfortunate for Avicenna. For we saw that Avicenna places the possible but non-existent objects of our thoughts on the level of mental existence. Hence, he would provide himself with two different solutions to one problem. Therefore, one might suggest a different interpretation of [T13]. Avicenna does not suggest there that the impossible is not conceived qua a single new concept. Rather, he has an absolutely different problem in mind: not conceivability but concept-formation. He suggests that one cannot acquire the concept of the impossible by itself. Compare: we can form the concept of “horse” just by looking at different horses; but we cannot form the concept of “second God” just by looking at him. It is this problem that he needs to solve, given his initial assumption that all concept-formation happens on the basis of extramental objects. And he does it by invoking the reductionist solution: we do form a concept of the impossible yet only on the basis of combining concepts that refer to real things. So, the last sentence of [a] in which Avicenna says that the impossible is not conceivable in itself ought to be interpreted as the claim that we cannot form a concept of the impossible without referring to the real. With this interpretation, the remark in the last sentence becomes clear. It is common both to the impossible

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(second God) and to the possible which is not realized now (tomorrow’s sunset), i.e., to everything non-existent, that we form their concepts by combining the concepts we obtained from existents; thereby their formation differs from the concept-formation of a real existent, whose concept can be acquired by itself. This interpretation is compatible with mental existence, for both the possible and the impossible are concepts that exist in the mind in this case. More studies ought to be done on the subject of whether Avicenna would agree that we can conceive of the impossible, and I do not intend to settle the issue in this paper. For now, it is clear that although [T13] certainly was the source for Rāzī’s reductionist solution, it nevertheless cannot be excluded—given the possible second interpretation—that the post-Avicennian proponents of mental existence like Abharī and T. ūsī were in agreement with Avicenna when they suggested that the impossible exists in the mind no less than the possible does.

6 . C O N C LU S I O N In this paper, I presented three main attempts to account for the metaphysical status of the non-existent objects of our thoughts. They can be summarized in the following diagram: “Muʿtazilites”

Avicennists and the Muʿtazilites following Abū l-H . usayn al-Bas.rī

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Possible

extramentally real yet non-existent

real in the mind/mental existence

Platonic Forms (?) or can be reduced to real extramental objects

Impossible

unreal (no objects of real in the mind/mental thought at all) or can be existence reduced to real extramental objects

can be reduced to real extramental objects

All three views share the common trend to ascribe some reality to all objects of thought, which we might interpret as ontological permissivism. Whenever I think of unicorns, tomorrow’s events, etc., that which I think about has to be posited as a real entity that obtains either in the mind or extramentally. The two main reasons for the ontological permissivism were: (1) a specific theory of knowledge and thought which claims that when thinking we build a relation or connection to the objects of thought; (2) a specific theory of predication, which claims that predicates occur in their subjects, which entails that subjects have to be real in some sense. The ontological permissivism went so far as to posit the concept of absolute non-existence as real. However, the observed tendency in Islamic

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philosophy had an exception: impossible objects, like “the second God” or “something which is both black and white.” The supporters of the “mental existence” solution were alone in believing that the impossible is something real. Nevertheless, even they tried to avoid the reality of paraconsistent objects, asserting that the paraconsistency of the impossible applies to it only insofar as it is extramental. In the mind, the impossible is not paraconsistent. Rather thinking about something impossible means stating it as paraconsistent in extramental reality. As for the two other views, they generally tried to avoid the reality of the impossible even further. Fakhr alDīn al-Rāzī’s attempt to reduce the impossible objects to the relations between possible ones may be regarded as the culminating point of this tendency.⁸⁵ For him, the impossible is not a proper object of thought, but a combination of objects of thought, and therefore it need not be real. Still, it would not be an overstatement to say that the Avicennists’ view was the victorious one in the post-Avicennian tradition, which overwhelmingly agreed that both possible and impossible objects of thought exist in our minds.⁸⁶ LMU Munich

BIBLIOGRAPHY Al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn. Kashf al-h.aqāʾiq fī tah.rīr al-daqāʾiq, MS 2752. Tehran: Magjlis-i Shūrā-yi Millī, 105–212. Al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn. Muntahā l-afkār fī ibānat al-asrār, MS 2752. Tehran: Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Millī, 213–406. Al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn. Tanzīl al-afkār, MS Laleli 2562. Istanbul: Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi. Adamson, Peter. “Al-Kindī and the Muʿtazila: Divine Attributes, Creation and Freedom,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003), 45–77. al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn. Abkār al-afkār fī us.ūl al-dīn, 3 vols., ed. A. F. al-Mazīdī (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2003). al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn. Al-Nūr al-bāhir fī l-h.ikam al- z.awāhir, 4 vols., ed. F. Sezgin (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 2001). al-Ans.ārī, Salmān b. Nās.ir. Ghunya fī l-kalām, vol. 1, ed. M. Ḥ . ʿAbd al-Hādī (Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2010). ⁸⁵ Apart from Burhān al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 1286) who claimed in Sharh. Asās al-kiyāsa, 274, 3–5 that the impossible cannot be even conceived of at all. ⁸⁶ This paper was written as a part of the “Heirs of Avicenna” project at Munich School of Ancient Philosophy. I am very grateful to Peter Adamson, Davlat Dadikhuda, Andreas Lammer, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on the previous draft of this paper and helpful discussion which preceded its writing; I am also grateful to DFG for its support of the “Heirs of Avicenna” project.

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“Signum est in praedicamento relationis” Roger Bacon’s Semantics Revisited in the Light of His Relational Theory of the Sign Laurent Cesalli and Irène Rosier-Catach 1. INTRODUCTION Among several other things, Roger Bacon is a remarkable figure in the history of medieval philosophy in general (and in the history of medieval philosophy of language in particular) for the claims, both to be found in his De signis (1267),¹ (i) that the sign belongs to the category of relation, and (ii) that speakers constantly re-impose words in their everyday colloquial practice. While the latter of these statements has been thoroughly considered in the literature,² a careful study of the former as well as of the ¹ De signis = DS. Two other texts of Bacon’s contain parallel passages on the theory of sign: the Compendium studii theologiae = CST, and the Communia naturalium = Cna. The Summulae dialectices = SumD will also be mentioned. Many thanks to Parwana Emamzadah for her precious help in the final redaction of this paper. ² On Bacon’s philosophy of language, see Sten Ebbesen, “Roger Bacon and the Fools of His Time,” CIMAGL 3 (1970), 40–4; Jan Pinborg, “Bezeichnung in der Logik des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Der Bergriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter. Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971), 238–81; Sten Ebbesen, “The Dead Man Is Alive,” Synthese 40 (1979), 43–70; Margareta Fredborg, “Roger Bacon on impositio vocis ad significandum,” in H. A. G. Braakhuis, C. H. Kneepkens, and L. M. de Rijk (eds.), English Logic and Semantics: From the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1981), 167–91; Alain de Libera, “Roger Bacon et le problème de l’appellatio univoca,” in English Logic, 193–234; de Libera, “Roger Bacon et la logique,” in J. Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 103–32; Thomas Maloney, “The Semiotics of Roger Bacon,” Medieval Studies 45 (1983), 120–54; Maloney, “Roger Bacon on the Significatum of Words,” in L. Brind’Amour and E. Vance (eds.), Archéologie du signe (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983), 235–49; H. A. G. Braakhuis, “Kilwardby vs Bacon? The Contribution to the Discussion on Univocal Signification of Beings and Non-Beings Found in a Sophism Attributed to Robert Kilwardby,” in

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relation between the two theses remained to be done. The following pages are meant (at least to start) to fill the gap. We begin by formulating a new reading hypothesis for Bacon’s relational semiotics (section 2), explaining that a sign is essentially involved in two relations, one (R1) to the interpreter, the other (R2) to the significate (section 2a); we proceed with an overview of the Augustinian and theological background of the theory (section 2b). In the next step (section 3), we reconsider the main tenets of Bacon’s semiotics, showing that his typology of signs amounts to a division of semantic relations (section 3a), and that his distinction between two main types of semantic relations, namely natural and ad placitum (or voluntary) ones, is the cornerstone of his account of the complex way in which words, concepts, and things are related (section 3b). The whole of Bacon’s theory of language turns out to rest on one fundamental and pervasive insight: in semantic matters, the focus should not so much be on mere entities (words, vocal sounds made by animals, traces) as on the different relations they entertain with other entities. That is best illustrated by Bacon’s theories of re-imposition and equivocation, which we consider in the next section (3c), and by means of which he reinterprets some core notions of “terminist” logic (roughly, the suppositio theory, or the theory of the properties of terms) such as ampliation and restriction, and offers an original analysis of connotation. In the last part of the paper (section 4), we consider the way Bacon’s relational semantics is linked, first, to his metaphysical account of relations (section 4a) and, second, to the position he takes in major controversial issues of his time (section 4b). E. P. Bos (ed.), Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985), 111–42; Alain de Libera and Irène Rosier-Catach, “Intention de signifier et engendrement du discours chez Roger Bacon,” Histoire Épistémologie Langage 8 (1986), 63–79; Katherine Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden: Brill, 1988); de Libera and Rosier-Catach, “La pensée linguistique médiévale,” in S. Auroux (ed.), Histoire des Idées Linguistiques, vol. I (Liège: Mardaga, 1992), 186–215; Rosier-Catach, La parole comme acte: Sur la sémantique et la grammaire au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1994); Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace: Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Seuil, 2004); Stephan Meier-Oeser, Die Spur des Zeichens: Das Zeichen und seine Funktion in der Philosophie des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997); Giorgio Pini, “Species, Concept and Thing: Theories of Signification in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999), 21–52; Pini, “Signification of Names in Duns Scotus and Some of His Contemporaries,” Vivarium 39 (2001), 20–51; Costantino Marmo, Semiotica e linguaggio nella scolastica: Parigi, Bologna, Erfurt 1270–1330. La semiotica dei Modisti (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994); Marmo, La semiotica del XIII secolo. Trà arti liberali e teologia (Milan: Bompiani, 2010); Laurent Cesalli and Claudio Majolino. “Making Sense: On the Cluster significatio-intentio in Medieval and Austrian Philosophies,” Methodos 14 (2014), ; Ana Maria Mora Marquez, The 13th Century Notion of Signification: The Discussions and Their Origin and Development (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

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Laurent Cesalli and Irène Rosier-Catach 2. A READING HYPOTHESIS: THE RELATIONAL N A T UR E O F T H E S I G N

a. The Two Semantic Relations The opening claim of the DS—“signum est in praedicamento relationis” (“the sign belongs to the category of relation”)—can be analyzed into the following four sub-claims: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

An entity X is a sign iff it stands in a relation (R1) to an interpreter; An entity X is a sign iff it stands in a relation (R2) to a significate; R1 and R2 are essential and per se relations, as that of a father to a son; The fact that what terminates R2 exists is only accidental with respect to R2, to the effect that the relation holding between a sign and an existing significate is comparable to the one holding between what is knowable and actual knowledge of it.

Claims (i) to (iv) constitute our reading hypothesis. It is meant, first, to help make sense of the tricky }1 of the DS not so much for itself as in confrontation with two related passages (}146 in the first place, but also }122) where Bacon seems to contradict what he had said in }1; and second, it is intended to shed some (new) light on Bacon’s famous theory of the re-imposition of words. Ad (i). The full opening sentence of the DS reads as follows: A sign belongs to the category of relation and is said essentially with respect to that for which it signifies, because it posits it in act when the sign itself is in act, and in potency when it is in potency. (DS }1, trans. p. 35, modified)³

In other words, what first and foremost makes a sign of a given entity X is the relation R1 holding between it and an interpreter, i.e., that for which (cui) it signifies,⁴ to the effect that if the interpreter is missing, if there is not anyone who “conceives through a sign” (DS }1), the X at stake is not a sign “in actuality, but only in potency” (DS }1). To be sure, for an X to be a sign in potency is not to be a sign (‘in potency’ is a modifying, not a qualifying determination): it is true, for example, that Laurent is a fabulous pianist in potency; but this is precisely so because it is also true that Laurent is not a ³ DS }1: “Signum est in praedicamento relationis et dicitur essentialiter ad illud cui significat quoniam illud point in actu cum ipsum signum sit in actu, et in potentia cum ipsum est in potentia.” ⁴ The notion of interpreter is to be taken in a fairly broad sense here: it can be the addressee (the listener), but also, more generally, any instance able to “terminate” R1 (including the utterer herself).

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fabulous pianist. A mere X—i.e., an X without R1—is not a sign but only the substance of what can (and will possibly) be a sign as soon as R1 obtains. It is in that sense that R1 is said to be essential (essentialiter dicitur): Unless someone could conceive through a sign, it would be useless and empty. Indeed, it would not even be a sign, but would remain a sign only in substance and would not have the character of a sign (ratio signi), just as the substance of a father remains even after his son is dead, but not the relation of paternity. (DS }1, trans. p. 35, slightly modified)⁵

The example of paternity makes this crystal clear: just as there is no relation of paternity without a father and his son, there is no (relation of) signification without an X and an interpreter of it. R1, however, is not the only essential (relational) feature to be possessed by an X in order to be a sign. Ad (ii). In }146, one can read the following: Again, when one of the extremes of two things opposed as relatives is destroyed, although the other is not destroyed with respect to its substance, yet the relation and the bearing of the one to the other is destroyed. For example, if the substance of Socrates (who was the son of Plato) is destroyed, granted that Plato lives, paternity does not remain in Plato. And the case is similar in all things. Therefore, once the thing signified is destroyed, granted the substance of the vocal sound would remain, [it would] not however [have] the character of a sign. (DS }146, trans. p. 104, slightly modified)

Here, we have again the example of the relation of paternity used in order to make clear that something is essential for an X to be sign. But contrary to what we had in }1, the relation father/son does not illustrate R1 (X/ interpreter) but another relation, R2 (X/significate): just as Plato does not stand in a relation of paternity with his son Socrates if the latter is no more, X is not a sign if what it signified is no more. Taken together, then, }1 and }146 yield the following picture: for an X to be a sign, there are two essential (i.e. sine qua non) relational conditions to be fulfilled: (a) X must be correlated with an interpreter (by R1), and (b) X must be correlated with a significate (by R2). However, R1 and R2 are not on an equal footing. As Bacon says in }1: This verb ‘to signify’ more essentially and more principally pertains to that with respect to which something is acquired—something signified in the dative case more [properly] than by the accusative. (DS }1, trans. pp. 35–6, slightly modified)⁶ ⁵ DS }1: “Quia nisi posset aliquis concipere per signum, cassum esset et vanum, immo non erit signum, sed maneret signum solum secundum substantiam signi et non esset in ratione signi, sicut substantia patris manet quando filius est mortuus et non relatio paternitatis.” ⁶ DS }1: “Hoc verbum ‘significo’ essentialius et principaliter respicit illud cui adquiritur aliquid, hoc est rem per dativum significatam, quam per accusativum.”

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What is signified in the dative case is what terminates R1 (ad illud cui), what is signified in the accusative case is what terminates R2 (ad quod). What Bacon implicitly (but quite clearly) says here is not that R2 is not essential for an X to be a sign, but only that it is less essential than R1. As a result, the relational conception of the sign put forward in the DS identifies two unequally essential relational features (R1 and R2) for an X to be a sign. R1’s obtaining and R2’s obtaining are necessary conditions for an X to be a sign. Only their obtaining jointly is the sufficient condition for X to be a sign. Thus, we can interpret the opening sentence of the DS as follows: ‘signum est in praedicamento relationis’ means that an entity X is a sign iff it is correlated to an interpreter (by R1, more essential) and it is correlated to a significate (by R2, essential as well, but less essential).⁷ Ad (iii). In }122, Bacon offers a typology of relatives distinguishing relativa per se and per accidens, and, among the former, relativa per se primo modo dicendi per se and relativa per se secundo modo dicendi per se.⁸ The passage is worth quoting extensively: . . . there are some relatives that are called per se relatives (relativa per se), namely those which have a built-in relation (relatio innata) and are the subject of a relation and are the subject of a relation, not just the object, whether they are per se relatives in the first way of saying per se (relativa per se primo modo dicendi per se) like a father, a son, etc., which are in the category of Relation, or whether they are per se relatives in the second way of saying per se (relativa per se secundo modo dicendi per se), like a science, a discipline and many others which, although they are related in virtue of a built-in relation per se (as able to laugh inheres in a man), are not in the category of Relation. Such relatives, I say, actually posit their correlatives, and when they are in potency, they signify [them] in potency, and when in the past, they signify [them] in the past, as is clear: ‘There is a father, thus there is a child,’ ‘There was a father, therefore there was a child,’ ‘There will be a father, therefore there will be a child.’ Other relatives are [relatives] by accident (relativa per accidens), which do not have a built-in relation that inheres in them and in virtue of which they are related, but only terminate the relation of other things, like the knowable, the understandable, the subject of a discipline, what is measured, and the like, and these, even when they actually are, do not signify in a determinate way that their correlatives actually are, but under a disjunction ‘in potency or in act’ or ‘in the past or in aptitude.’ For example, ‘there is ⁷ As we shall see (section 3c), the priority of R1 plays a crucial role in Bacon’s theory of the re-imposition of words. The talk of “more essential” and “less essential” is odd (cf. the end of section 3a). ⁸ Cf. the threefold division of relatives in Metaphysics V, 15, where Aristotle distinguishes two types of symmetrical relatives “whose whole being consists in their being related to something else” (i.e., quantitative relatives such as a double and a half, and relatives according to action and passion such as what heats and what is heated), and one type of asymmetric relatives which is such “because something else is related to them” (the knowable, the measurable, etc.; see 1021a26 in particular).

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a knowable, therefore there is knowledge of it, or there was, or will be or it is born suited to be.’ (DS }122; trans. p. 96, slightly modified)⁹

Since in }1 and }146 R1 and R2 are both illustrated by the example of paternity, it follows that the extremes of R1 and R2 are relativa per se primo modo dicendi per se. As Bacon suggests, the difference between the primo and the secundo modo dicendi per se is that between what belongs essentially to something, and what belongs to it as a proprium:¹⁰ man possesses the ability to laugh per se secundo modo, but a sign is essentially related to an interpreter and a significate, as a father to a child. What distinguishes a sign from a science among the relatives per se is not the possession of a built-in relation (this is, properly speaking, what ‘to be a relative per se’ means), nor is it the fact that they always posit (or “signify” as Bacon puts it) their relata (there is no science without a knowable, just as there is no sign without an interpreter and a significate (or no father without a child)); rather, what distinguishes a sign from science among the relatives per se is that the correlatum of a sign—an interpreter, a significate (or a child, for a father)—is itself a relative per se (and such is the necessary and sufficient condition for an X to belong to the category of relation). The same does not hold for the relatum of a science, for as a matter of fact, the knowable is a mere relative per accidens (it does not have any built-in relation to science and can thus very well exist independently of it). Note that in the case of per se relatives, there is a strict symmetrical correspondence between the two relata: if one relatum is in potency, in act, present, past, or future, the other one is just the same, i.e., in potency, in act, present, past, or future, to the effect that we get the following inferences: ‘there is a father, therefore there is a child,’ ‘there was . . . ,’ and so on, and, correspondingly: ‘there is a science, therefore there is a knowable,’ ‘there was . . . ,’ etc. In the case of per accidens relatives, by contrast, such inferences do not obtain, and the second relatum can only be inferred under a disjunction, hence: ‘there is a knowable, therefore there is, was, will be, or can be a science of it.’

⁹ DS }122. For the necessary coexistence of both relata of a relation, see also Bacon’s questions on the Metaphysics (164). ¹⁰ Cf. Bacon, SumD, III, }}55–6 (ed. de Libera, p. 198; trans. Maloney }285, p. 150). See, however, Aristotle, Metaphysics V, 18, 1022a25, where the first and the second modes of saying per se are distinguished along somewhat different lines: “Therefore ‘in virtue of itself ’ must have several meanings. It applies (1) to the essence of each thing, e.g., Callias is in virtue of himself Callias and the essence of Callias; (2) whatever is present in the ‘what’, e.g., Callias is in virtue of himself an animal. For ‘animal’ is present in the formula that defines him; Callias is a particular animal.”

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So far so good (or so we hope). But things start getting problematic when one tries to make sense of the very end of }1, where Bacon says something which appears to be incompatible with the theory reconstructed so far. Ad (iv). In }1, after having clearly underscored that a relation to an interpreter (i.e., R1) is essential for an X to be sign, Bacon says the following: . . . [a sign] does not refer to what it is supposed to signify unless by accident, that is, as the knowable to knowledge. For it does not follow: ‘A sign actually exists, therefore a signified thing exists’ because non-beings can be signified by vocal sounds just as beings can be, unless we would want to say that the being which is necessarily required for the significate is only in the intellect and imagination. (DS }1, trans. p. 36, slightly modified)¹¹

The purported incompatibility is this: if the relation holding between a sign and what it signifies (i.e., R2) is an accidental one, how can it be at the same time an essential one, as }146 clearly states? Prima facie, the last lines of }1 seem indeed to say the following: just as there can be a knowable without the corresponding science, there can be a sign without the corresponding significate. Well . . . , if this is true, then }146 contradicts }1, and it is false that R2 is essential for an X to be a sign, unless some appropriate distinction is made. A closer look at the text shows that the prima facie reading suggested above is inaccurate, for it ignores a central distinction at work in this passage, a distinction which, once recognized, solves the apparent problem of incompatibility between }1 and }146. If one takes into account that, according to Bacon, vocal sounds can be imposed on beings (entia) just as they can be imposed on non-beings (non entia), it follows that significates can be beings or non-beings. In other words, what cannot be inferred from the existence of a sign is the fact that the corresponding significate must be as well something existing (an ens). It is true, therefore, that R2 is essential for an X to be a sign; but it does not follow that the R2-correlate of a sign must be something existing (it can perfectly well be something which does not exist, a non ens).¹² The inference formulated at the end of }1 is perfectly coherent with the typology of relations given in }146. The relation of a sign to an existing ¹¹ DS }1: “Et propter hoc ad rem quam habet significare non refertur nisi per accidens, hoc est sicut scibile ad scientiam. Non enim sequitur: ‘signum in actu est, ergo res significata est,’ quia non entia possunt significari per voces sicut et entia, nisi velimus dicere quod esse quod necessario requiritur ad significatum non est nisi apud intellectum et imaginationem.” ¹² As we shall see in section 4b, the possibility of imposing a vocal sound on something which does not exist is a basic requirement for the Baconian theory of the (constant) reimposition of vocal sounds in colloquial practice.

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thing is per accidens, just as that of a knowable to a science. Thus, only the following relation obtains, the second relatum being taken under a disjunction: ‘there is a sign, therefore its significate is in potency, in act, present, past, present, or future,’ and hence, as Bacon explicitly puts it, we cannot infer: ‘a sign actually exists, therefore the thing signified exists.’ To sum up, the relation R2 holding between a sign and its significate, just as R1 holding between a sign and its interpreter, is a per se relation, and for that reason, both R1 and R2 are essential for a sign; by contrast, the relation holding between a sign and an existing signified thing is per accidens, and thus not essential, i.e., accidental, for a sign. The very last lines of }1 also deserve a brief comment. There, we suggest, Bacon says something along the following lines: if one were to say that the R2-correlate of a sign must be something existing, then, since we very often talk about things which obviously do not exist (such as past, future, possible, or even imaginary things), one would have to admit that, in order to make sure that a sign is never deprived of an existing significate, vocal sounds would have to be conceived of as being necessarily imposed on mental entities, i.e., on “things” which do exist, but only in the mind or in the imagination.¹³ But this is absurd, for words signify what they have been imposed on, and it is clear that not every word signifies a mental entity. Consequently, one must admit that vocal sounds can be imposed on things which do not exist (non entia), just as on things which do exist (entia).¹⁴ One last point before going over to section 2b. Why is it that Bacon qualifies R1 as being more essential (“essentialius”) than R2? Regarding the conceptual problem involved here, the following analogy might help: although both genus and differentia are essential to a species (say, to be an animal and to be rational for the species human being), both are not on an equal footing (in a sense, to be rational is more essential to human beings than to be an animal). Thus “degrees of essentiality” could be understood as relative positions in a Porphyrian tree. Given that one is (absolutely) free to impose a vocal sound on (absolutely) any thing (existing or not), what warrants the correlation required by R2 can only be the correlation achieved by R1. In other words, since the obtaining of R2 cannot depend on what is ¹³ Thus, for example, the name ‘centaur’ would signify the mental representation of a centaur (that mental entity would then be that on which the vocal sound ‘centaur’ would have been imposed). ¹⁴ Cf. DS }}19, 27, 36, 90–1, etc. In view of Bacon’s clear rejection of fancy ontological categories such as esse essentiae and the like, one can legitimately wonder whether, provided our reading hypothesis is correct, Bacon would not be precisely committed to the kind of ontology he fights against on every possible occasion. This, however, is not necessary at all, for as Bacon clearly says in DS }105, the name of a non ens is always understood with respect to the ens whose privation it is (see sections 3c and 4b).

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objectively given in the external world (R2 obtains indifferently with respect to the existence or non-existence of things), the obtaining of R2 must somehow depend on R1. Therefore, it is the interpreter who does the job of linking the sign with its (necessary) significate. In that sense, R2, being dependent on R1, is less essential than R1, and correlatively, R1, being that on which R2 depends, is more essential than R2. We will see in the following section that this claim is made in clear opposition to some theologians, who hold, for sacramental signs, that once imposed—that is once R2 has been set—it cannot be modified by a speaker or an interpreter, and thus that R2 is more essential than R1.

b. The Augustinian Background When Bacon wrote his three Opera, in 1267, that is, more than twenty years after having taught as an art master and lectured on grammar and logic, he had become a Franciscan. As is clear from the summary of the entire De signis given in the Opus tertium (cf. ed. Brewer, 101–2, and CST }}82–3), theological issues now played a crucial role in his philosophy of language. This explains the obvious change in his way of dealing with semantic issues. In the De signis, part of the Opus maius III, the main focus is now on the notion of sign (signum). The Augustinian background of Bacon’s semiotics,¹⁵ and more precisely of his twofold relational theory of the sign, is to be found in the rich debates that took place, in the thirteenth century, in the chapters dedicated to the sacrament as a sign, in commentaries on Book IV of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Those debates began in two earlier controversies over the Eucharist, in the ninth and eleventh centuries. Berengar of Tours introduced a dossier of definitions of the sign, mostly borrowed from Augustine. He grounded his own position—the permanence of the bread in the Eucharist—in the idea that the sign is relational and belongs to the category of ad aliquid. From Augustine’s definition of the De doctrina christiana¹⁶ he gathers, first, that ¹⁵ This is the position acknowledged by most commentators; see Fredborg, “Roger Bacon on impositio vocis ad significandum”; Pinborg, “Roger Bacon on Signs: A Newly Recovered Part of the Opus Maius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981), 403–12; RosierCatach, La parole comme acte; Marmo, Semiotica e linguaggio nella scolastica; Marmo, “Bacon, Aristotle (and All the Others) on Natural Inferential Signs,” Vivarium 35 (1997), 136–54; Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, esp. ch. 1. Bacon himself recognizes this debt in the Opus tertium, ch. xxvi, 101–2. For a different account, see Maloney, “Is the De doctrina christiana the Source for Bacon’s Semiotics?,” in E. D. English (ed.), Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 126–42 and again Maloney in his translation of Bacon’s On Signs (Opus maius, part III, chapter 2), 18 sq. ¹⁶ De doctrina christiana II, 1: “Signum . . . est res praeter speciem quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem venire” (A sign is a thing which,

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the bread (as a signifier, signans) and the body of Christ (as a significate, signatum) are co-present, and, secondly (from the clause aliquid aliud present in the definition), that they must be distinct.¹⁷ In the thirteenth century, the controversy over the causality and efficiency of the sacraments was centered on the question of whether the virtus sanctificandi was a quality or a relation. The Oxford Dominican Richard Fishacre wrote long pages to explain that the sacrament, like the sign, is a relational entity. He carefully defined the sacramental sign, drawing on the Augustinian definition, where he found the idea that the sign is involved in two relations: The noun ‘sign’ is a relative. Among the nouns of the relatives, some signify a single relation, others a double relation [ . . . ] For that matter a sign, according to me, if we understand the term correctly, signifies one relation to the significate (significat relationem unam ad significatum) (= R2), and another one to the one for whom it signifies (et aliam ad eum cui significat) (= R1), and this double relation (duplex relatio) is touched upon in the definition just mentioned: the relation to the significate by the clause ‘something else’ (aliud), the relation to the one for whom it signifies by the clause ‘brings something else to the mind’ (in cognitionem venire). (Richard Fischacre, In IV Sententiarum, dist. 1, ed. Goering; cf. Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 94)

Fishacre is the source of the major claim held in the DS, that both R1 and R2 are needed in order for a sign to be a sign. However, he does not state, as Bacon will do, that R1 is more essential than R2, but rather the opposite: The relation to the significate is the one which is more essential for the sign (relatio illa quae est ad significatum est essentialior signo) [ . . . ] The relation to the one for whom it signifies sometimes is permanent, as in given signs (signa data). It is in virtue of the will of the one who imposed the sign that this vocal sound ‘homo’ always signifies such a thing. But sometimes such a relation is not permanent, for instance in the case of the smoke, which can be considered as a thing in itself and not as being caused by the fire, and then the smoke is by no means a sign, since one of the relations is missing; but if it is considered as being caused by the fire, then it is fully a sign. Note, however, that both relations are perpetual (utraque perpetua) in given signs, and this from institution, but none is essential. However, for natural signs the relation to the significate is over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself). ¹⁷ See Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, chs. 1 and 5 (and the bibliography mentioned), and on the ninth-century controversy, see Marmo, “Il ‘simbolismo’ altomedievale: tra controversie eucaristiche e conflitti di potere,” Comunicare e significare nell’Alto Medioevo 52 (2005), 765–819; Marmo, “Semiotica della presenza: l’emergere della transustanziazione nel IX secolo e le sue implicazioni semiotiche,” in G. Marrone and N. Dusi (eds.), Destini del sacro: Discorso religioso e semiotica della cultura (Rome: Meltemi, 2008), 59–71.

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essential, and thus perpetual, since it is essential to all creatures to be caused by God, and thus to be His sign [ . . . ] But the relation of natural signs to the one for whom they signify is neither essential nor perpetual, but accidental. Creatures are not only meant to signify God. (Fischacre, In IV Sententiarum, dist. 1)¹⁸

Bonaventure, discussing the question of the baptism of children who cannot understand the meaning of a sign, also acknowledges the double relation. The relation R2 to the significate is for him the essential relation, and not the relation R1. He uses the very same example Bacon will use in an opposite manner in DS }147, namely the example of the circulus vini (cf. infra }4b): The sign has a double relation (duplex comparatio), to what it signifies (= R2), and to that for which it signifies (= R1). The first one is essential, and the sign has it always in actuality (in actu), whereas it has the second one as a disposition (in habitu). It is in virtue of the first one that a sign is said to be a sign. Hence the circle hanging outside of the tavern is always a sign, even if no one looks at it. In the same way a sacrament is always a sign, even if no one knows it. (Bonaventure, In IV Sententiarum, ed. Quaracchi t. IV, p. 15, arg. 3)

For Bonaventure, R2 is always in actu and does not depend on R1—the circulus vini remains a sign, even if no one receives it as such. Once the sign has been instituted, it has a significate, which it can signify or not. As will be shown later, Bacon will hold the exact opposite position. However, Bacon and Bonaventure seem to agree on the fact that the significate does not need to be always in act, and Bonaventure intends this exactly as Bacon does. The thing signified does not need to be an existent one: Just as signification expresses a relation that does not require that the significate be always in actuality, the truth of the sign (veritas signi), which expresses the condition of the relation, does not require being grounded in some particular thing existing in actuality [ . . . ]. (Bonaventure, In II Sent., dist. 37, a. 2, q. 3, p. 875)¹⁹ ¹⁸ Note that in CST }115 (trans. Maloney, modified), Bacon claims the opposite: since signification is accidental to the vocal sound, it is not perpetual and can be removed from it: “Similarly, nothing which comes from without and extraneously and is not of the nature of the thing can be necessary and perpetual to it; but signification is not of the nature of a vocal sound but accrues to it from without [ . . . ]; therefore signification is not necessary nor perpetual to it and thus it can be removed from it.” ¹⁹ The important notion of veritas signi is borrowed here from Anselm of Canterbury, and plays a major part in discussions on the nature of the sign, not only in theological discussions (cf. Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 79 sq.), but also in Albert the Great’s logical works, which are relevant for the problem of the existence of the significate, and would require a closer investigation; cf. De praedicamentis (vol. 1, 191–2), De sex principiis (vol. 1, 310–11). See also Marmo, “Logique élargie et sémiotique. Albert le Grand, Roger Bacon et Gilles de Rome,” in J. Brumberg (ed.), Ad notitiam ignoti: L’Organon dans la ‘translatio studiorum’ à l’époque d’Albert le Grand (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 447–62. For Bacon, the manifestation of Anselm’s veritas signi consists in the claim that R2 is also essential to the sign (that is: together with R1).

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The recognition of this twofold relational nature of the sign becomes even more important in view of the very nature of the sacramental sign, which is not only a “cognitive” sign (insofar as it signifies), but also an “operative” one (insofar as it is efficient), since it “operates what it signifies” (id efficit quod figurat): the role of the protagonists, both speakers and listeners, in the process of signification and production of the significate, is very precisely defined by the theologians. They take into consideration the imposition (the first one by Christ, the second one by the Church), the utterance, and the reception of the sacramental sign in a given context. Such a conception is also at stake in discussions on lies and false statements, which take into consideration both what is signified and what is intended.²⁰ In a short tract serving as an introduction to his commentary on Book IV of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Quid ponat ius,²¹ Peter John Olivi shows the wide implications of such a twofold relational theory of the sign, extending it to questions pertaining to a whole range of issues (property, law, contracts, vows, institutions, etc.).²² It is important to take this theological context into account. We gather from the summary given in the Opus tertium that the De signis is only the first part of a longer work: the missing section was devoted to the application of the theory of signs to theological issues, including the sacraments.²³ Let us now turn to the major consequences of Bacon’s conception of the twofold relational nature of the sign. 3. BA CON ’ S SE M A N T I C S R E V I S I T E D

a. A Typology of Semantic Relations The classification presented by Bacon in the first section of the DS has often been described as a kind of general semiotics, integrating all kinds of signs (be they linguistic or not, natural or not), and different kinds of ²⁰ See Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, ch. 4; Rosier-Catach, “Intentions, Conventions, Performativity: Medieval Discussions about Sacramental Formulas and Oaths,” Hersetec 3 (2009), 1–14 and Rosier-Catach, “Speech Acts and Intentional Meaning in Medieval Philosophy of Language,” Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52 (2010), 55–80. ²¹ See Alain Boureau, “Le concept de relation chez Pierre de Jean Olivi,” in A. Boureau and S. Piron (eds.), Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298): Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 42–55; Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 160–6; Sylvain Piron, “La question Quid ponat ius?,” Oliviana 5 (2016), . ²² For the implications in moral philosophy and law, see Boureau and Rosier-Catach, “Droit et théologie dans la pensée scolastique: le cas de l’obligation et du serment,” Revue de synthèse 129 (2008), 509–28 and in economic theory see the major edition and study of his Tractatus de contractibus by Sylvain Piron, esp. 50 sq. ²³ Cf. Rosier-Catach, La parole comme acte, 149–55.

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signification. However, the important point is that this classification is based on the distinction, not of entities, but of relations. As a consequence, the same entity (e.g., the barking of a dog), can be considered as a natural sign or as a voluntary one, depending on the significate to which it is related, and on the type of relation prevailing between the two entities (the barking and what it signifies). Bacon’s relational conception of the sign is thus intimately connected to his typology of semantic relations: (1) natural signs (signs by essence) (1.1) relation of inference between the sign and its significate (1.2) relation of similitude or conformity (1.3) relation of effect with respect to its cause (2) given signs (constituted by the soul to signify) (2.1) signifying ad placitum, under the mode of a concept (per modum conceptus) (2.1.1) linguistic signs • signifying from an imperfect deliberation (interjections) • from a perfect deliberation (other parts of speech) (2.1.2) non-linguistic signs (gestures, items put up for sale and displayed in windows as signs, etc.) (2.2) signifying naturally, under the mode of an affect (per modum affectus) (2.2.1) produced by the sensitive soul (vocal sounds of animals) (2.2.2) produced by the rational soul (groans, sighs, expressions of pain, etc.) The first division (1)/(2) is modeled on the one given by Augustine in the De doctrina christiana. The subdivision of group (2) integrates the elements given by Aristotle in Peri hermeneias ch. 2. Such classifications were often found in the chapters on the sacraments in commentaries on Book IV of the Sentences.²⁴ A sign is to be characterized by the relations connecting it to its significate(s), and is not to be reduced to its substance (substantia signi). Thus, one and the same item can be classified under different types of signs depending on the relations constituting its ratio signi. Some relations are based on the very essence of the item at stake, they are natural relations (1); others imply the activity or intention of an intellect (2); but all of them, in order to be semantic ²⁴ Such classifications were often found in the chapters on the sacraments in commentaries on Book IV of the Sentences, and even earlier, e.g., in Simon of Tournai. See Marmo, “Bacon, Aristotle (and All the Others)”; Marmo, “Simon of Tournai’s Institutiones in sacram paginam: An Edition of His Introduction about Signification,” CIMAGL 67 (1997), 93–103; and Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 57–66.

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relations, need an interpreter (that is, what “terminates” R1). The fact that there is a natural relation from an effect to its cause holding between smoke and fire is merely a necessary condition for smoke to be a sign of fire. Smoke is a sign of fire iff this natural relation is acknowledged by an interpreter (through habit, etc.). Otherwise, smoke remains a thing, a mere thing, an object for perception, not presenting anything further (aliquid aliud) to the mind.²⁵ As a consequence, first, by matter of principle, sign and significate should be distinct, since it is an aliquid aliud that is presented to the intellect. An apparent counterexample, discussed by Bacon, is that of the bread in the window of a shop, which signifies itself, i.e., bread, as being for sale in the shop (DS }27). Bacon’s solution to that puzzle consists in saying that in such a case, sign and significate are nonetheless different: the piece of bread in the window is bread sub ratione signi (the substance of bread as signifying something) whereas the pieces of bread in the shop are bread sub ratione venditionis (the substance of bread signified as being purchasable). That the bread is a sign by human institution is clear since any other item could have been used for the same purpose. This analysis helps answer the much disputed question of whether a vocal sound can be imposed on itself (thus yielding a case of autonymy), and whether it then signifies itself naturally or ad placitum (DS }28), an issue standardly discussed with the example of buba (DS }}28–35, CST }}50–8). Second, the same sign, or rather the same substantia signi can be involved in different types of relations. For instance, the famous barking of a dog (latratus canis) is considered as a sign given by the soul (it presupposes a certain “intention of the mind”) signifying naturally that a dog is angry (mode 2.2), since it can use a different sign in different cases; in the same way, a hen uses a different sign when it teaches the chicken to beware of a hawk, or when it calls them for food. But the very same barking of a dog can also be considered as a natural (inferential) sign, if someone hearing it (and not seeing the dog) infers that a dog is around the corner (mode 1.1).²⁶

²⁵ This idea derives from Augustine, as clearly explained by Richard Fishacre. He says for instance that things in the world, when they are not seen as pointing to God who created them, are mere things (i.e., non-signs). On this, see Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 71–2, n. 167. ²⁶ This again was a theoretical tool used by theologians when they explained that the same sacramental sign could be both a natural and a given sign, such as water in baptism, which bears a natural relation of similitude to purification and a conventional relation to what it means for someone to be baptized. See Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 66 sq.

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b. Natural and ad placitum Relations between Words, Concepts, and Things The classification presented above is much more than a mere typology. Its function is to provide the theoretical framework needed to account for the different semantic relations a vocal sound can entertain with what it signifies. Again, a vocal sound cannot be qualified in itself as a natural or a given sign, but only with respect to its relation to a significate: “vocal sounds and writing can signify some things at pleasure and others as natural signs” (DS }166). All the semantic relations can be summed up in the following diagram:²⁷ vocal sound (vox) (A) natural relation according to mode 1.1

mental image of the sound (species vocis)

Mode 1.1 : inference Mode 1.2 : similitude Mode 1.3 : causality

(C) natural relation according to mode 1.1

mental image of the thing (species rei)

(B) ad placitum relation

thing (res)

(D) natural relation according to mode 1.2

(A) The relation between the vocal sound and its acoustic image in the soul is a natural one, according to the three modes of the natural sign. Any vocal sound uttered entails the existence of its own mental image in the utterer’s mind (and thus it signifies it according to mode 1.1); a vocal sound bears a certain conformity to that image (and thus signifies it according to mode 1.2); a vocal sound is the effect of its image in the soul (and thus signifies it according to mode 1.3 [DS }}17–18; CST }}46–8]). These relations, Bacon insists, exist before the vocal sound is imposed, and remain after the imposition (DS }16).

²⁷ See esp. Pinborg, “Roger Bacon on Signs.”

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(B–C) According to Bacon, the vocal sound is imposed on and thus signifies ad placitum the res extra animam, and not the species rei (B) (DS }} 163–9, CST }}59–61). Bacon confronts here an issue which, as he says, gives rise to numerous and contradictory opinions among wise men (DS }} 161, 163, CST }59): the question as to whether a sign signifies a species in the mind or a thing outside the mind, and how it signifies the one or the other. Bacon is fully aware that his position is opposed to the ones of most of his contemporaries, who claim, following Boethius, that a sign signifies ad placitum the species rei. Sure enough, Bacon insists that some knowledge, and thus a species, of a thing is required in order for a vocal sound to be imposed on a thing, but this does not prevent a vocal sound from being imposed directly on the thing at stake.²⁸ The words are then signs of the species rei that are in the utterer’s mind only insofar as, each time a vocal sound already imposed is actually uttered, one is allowed to infer from such an utterance that a species rei is present in the utterer’s mind in virtue of (C). Since, on the one hand, there is a natural relation of similitude (D) holding between the thing signified and its species or mental image, and since, on the other hand, the similitude is then necessarily present in the mind when the thing is signified, one can infer from the uttering of a vocal sound that the similitude of the thing signified is present in the mind of the utterer (C): So whenever a vocal sound signifying a thing is uttered in a significative way [i.e. with the intention to signify a thing and not a word or a concept], it is necessary that the species and cognitive habit of the thing be present in the soul; therefore an uttered vocal sound signifying at pleasure necessarily implies as a sign the species and cognitive habit of the thing in the soul. . . .Because of this a vocal sound must signify a species and cognitive habit, but not as a sign given by a soul, as was proven before [i.e., }163], since it signifies it neither naturally²⁹ nor at pleasure; therefore as a natural sign. (DS }165; see also CST }60)

This relation of the sign to the species rei can only exist once the sign has been imposed (DS }165, CST }59). Thus, only the relation of the vocal sound to the thing outside the mind is a relation ad placitum (B), whereas the relation of the same vocal sound to the species is a relation of inference, a natural relation according to the first mode (C), since it is neither a relation of similitude (mode 1.2), nor a relation of an effect to its cause (mode 1.3):

²⁸ Although there is a tradition of seeing imposition being made directly on the thing, stemming from Augustine’s Confessions or De magistro, and illustrated with the episode of Adam naming the animals, or with the attribution of a name to a child during baptism, what is unusual is to connect in this way imposition to signification, in order to claim that signification is also directly to the thing; cf., for instance, the Ars Meliduna, 294, or Pseudo-Kilwardby (see note 30). See also section 4b. ²⁹ That is, as a groan, the barking of a dog, cries of pain, etc. Cf. }164.

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Hence once a vocal sound has been imposed on a thing outside the soul, if it is compared to the thing itself, it is a vocal sound signifying at pleasure, because it has been imposed on it (= B). But if it is compared to the proper species of the vocal sound itself, then it is a natural sign according to the three modes of a natural sign, as was discussed above (= A, see }}18 and 165). But if it is compared to the species and cognitive habit of a thing which one has about a thing through its species, then it is only a natural sign according to the first mode of a sign (= C). (DS }166; cf. CST }}60–1)

A further argument in support of the claim that a signifying vocal sound signifies a thing outside the mind and not its species is given from the use of a vocal sound in a proposition: ‘Socrates runs,’ does not mean something like ‘a species of Socrates in the mind runs’ (DS }164). Bacon claims that he is perfectly in accordance with Aristotle, who, in the second chapter of the Peri Hermeneias dealing with nouns, talks about signification ad placitum, whereas in the first chapter of the same work he talks about signs in general and thus also about natural signs, as in the case of intellections signifying things. As a consequence, it cannot be inferred from that first chapter that vocal sounds signify species ad placitum (DS }166). (D) The various relations expounded above are the most important ones for Bacon, since they apply to words, as he recapitulates in DS }166. In order to have a complete picture, one should also consider the natural relation that necessarily holds between a species rei (or passio animae) and a thing, as Aristotle and Boethius already claimed. Bacon says of that relation that it is a relation of signification by similitude (DS }}2, 5)—and this is why the “common interpretation” of the Augustinian definition was criticized: species of things are indeed signs, although not sensible ones. One can add that it is a relation of inference (mode 1.1: if there is a species of a thing, one can infer that there is a thing), and a relation of effect to cause (mode 1.3: the species is the effect of the thing).³⁰ ³⁰ Another remarkable text should be mentioned here, namely the Commentary on Priscianus maior by Pseudo-Kilwardby (c.1260). In that work, one finds not only a relational theory of the sign, involving four different relations, but also qualifications of these relations as being natural or ad placitum. Note, however, that unlike Bacon, PseudoKilwardby remains in line with Aristotle, and considers the relation holding between the sign and the species rei as being “from institution” and not as a natural one: “The exterior sensible vocal sound has a fourfold relation: (a) one is a relation to the image of the interior vocal sound, after whose similitude it is configured; (b) another one to the intellection or the similitude of the thing; (c) a third one to the interior discourse which holds together the signifiable species and the image of the vocal sound; (d) a fourth one to the thing outside which is signified by the vocal sound when the intellect acts . With respect to the first one (a) it is a natural sign, since every effect naturally represents that of which it is an effect; but with respect to the second, third and fourth (b–d) it is significative by institution; just as in the interior vocal sound, there is a

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c. Transfers of Words and Re-Imposition Another major consequence of the relational conception of the sign, and of the view that the relation R1 to an interpreter determines the relation R2 to a significate is the way Bacon accounts for meaning transfer (translatio, transumptio) within a coherent and general theory which relates different semantic issues (equivocation, analogy, restriction, ampliation, and connotation) with his idea of “re-imposition.” He offers an original synthesis construed on a variety of elements gathered from the logical, as well as from the theological tradition, especially from Augustine’s and Boethius’s De trinitate. As a result, some of the key notions of terminist logic receive a new interpretation. Unlike other terminist logicians, Bacon qualifies every transfer of meaning as equally pertaining to “equivocation” (and not to “univocation”), since they are the result of a new imposition, or renovation of signification. He talks of “equivocation” because the vocal sound, which had a first significate, is then given a second significate. Unlike the first imposition, which was made by a wise man (sapiens), the second imposition is made every day and by every language user. It is “tacit,” i.e., not expressed vocally, and is realized while the utterance is made. In general, it is also transitory. This process of re-imposition, says Bacon, is extremely common and explains that the words keep changing their meaning: “Just as we give significates to vocal sounds when we want to, we can take them away just as we want to” (DS }144; CST }116).³¹ Consistently, in other parts of the Opus Majus, to which the De signis originally belonged, Bacon has long pages on the historical change and evolution of words and expressions throughout time.³² Although the beneplacitum of the utterer is absolute, the re-imposition is not made at random. When the speaker—i.e., a rational being wanting to communicate with other rational beings—wants to mean something in precognition of the vocal sound before it becomes a mental word, and a deliberation in order to determine by means of which vocal sound such an intellection is to be signified, in the same way, the exterior and sensible vocal sound will signify the species in virtue of the institution realized by the soul, on the basis of a previous deliberation.” Interestingly, it refers to theological sources, not only Augustine but also John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa. Cf. Fredborg, “Roger Bacon on impositio vocis” and for the significance of that text for the theory of language, Claude Panaccio, “Grammar and Mental Language in the Pseudo-Kilwardby,” in S. Ebbesen and R. Friedman (eds.), Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition (Copenhagen: Institute for Greek and Latin, 1999), 398–413. ³¹ The difference between first and second imposition is tackled in a number of passages. Cf. DS }}35, 51, 129, 133, 149–50, 154–61; CST }}125–6. ³² See Rosier-Catach, “Roger Bacon: Grammar,” in J. Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1996 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 67–102.

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particular, she does not change haphazardly the meaning of a word, but acts in virtue of some linguistic properties of the words or of some contextual or situational parameters. These are in no way constraints, limitations of her freedom, but, as Bacon says, they play the role of possible motivations or, or as we would say, of “occasional causes”: a given predicate is not a constraint for its subject to have this rather than that reference, but the uttering of the sentence at stake is the occasion for the utterer to re-impose the subject; in the same way, a given situation, such as the death of a person, does not change in itself the reference of the person’s name, but is the occasion for the utterer, when talking about the deceased, to re-impose the name at stake (Peter, which was the name of a living person, is changed into the name of a dead person; DS }}148–53, }161; CST }125). Bacon enumerates five modes of equivocation,³³ distinguished according to the relation holding between the significates of a word. He explains that, in general, speakers follow these modes of equivocation. For instance, they bring about a transfer of meaning either according to the first mode of equivocation (when a word is first used for something which exists, and then for the same thing, but after it has ceased to exist), or to the second mode of equivocation (when a word is used for something real and for the representation of that thing), etc. (DS }}81 sq., CST }}130 sq.). Although a word can be given any meaning whatsoever, since this depends on the absolute freedom of the speakers, in general they produce semantic transfer along the lines described by the five modes of equivocation.³⁴ We will show in section 4b how this conception explains the affirmative answer given by Bacon to the question of whether a word can lose its signification, a major issue in thirteenth-century semantics. In what follows, we shall illustrate this general idea with two of its concrete applications. The first shows Bacon’s peculiar interpretation of the theory of supposition, restriction and ampliation, the second pertains to his analysis of connotation. i. Ampliation and Restriction. Contrary to the standard “contextual approach” followed by terminist logicians, Bacon claims that whenever ampliation or restriction occurs, there is a new imposition involved. For ³³ These five modes are already mentioned in Bacon’s earlier Communia naturalium, 51, where he mentions again an earlier and fuller analysis to be found in his commentary on the Metaphysics (not in the extant commentaries). There is an ontological issue at stake, about the nature of the composite. ³⁴ DS }82: “One should also know that any word can be taken equivocally, as we wish, for an unlimited number of significates, because we can impose and transfer at our pleasure; but more commonly we use a vocal sound for modes of grades of equivocation” (trans. Maloney, p. 78). See also DS }}87–8 (with an interesting reference to Augustine’s De dialectica), }94, and CST }}120–1.

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him, the word that signified a certain thing through imposition, now taken within a determined propositional context, can be transferred to something else, and as a result it becomes equivocal since it now has a second significate in addition to the one it already had before (DS }}92–4). But, unlike what he claimed in earlier works,³⁵ Bacon opposes the view that the context would by itself be sufficient to achieve ampliation or restriction. Bacon’s main claim, stated in vigorous terms against his contemporaries (DS }98), is that the predicate does not have the power to amplify or restrict the subject, the “power to alterate” (potestas alterandi) the reference of the subject-term, but that the presence of the predicate is only an “occasion” or a “motivation” for the utterer to do so (solum praebens occasioni intellectum transsumendi nomen ad aliud significatum), since the ampliation or restriction could very well be done in the absence of such a context: Hence, the efficient cause of this sort of ampliation and restriction is the rational soul, when they come about from its good pleasure. And it can, if it wants to and when it wants to, produce them, whether with such a predicate or subject which is called ampliative or restrictive, or without them. But it pleases the intellect, in the presence of such predicates and subjects, to transfer names and to ampliate or restrict, because of the conformity of such predicates and subjects with the significates to which the intellect transfers when ampliating of restricting. (DS }97, trans. p. 85, slightly modified)

Interestingly, one of the examples used by Bacon is borrowed from Boethius’s De trinitate: Deus est iustus, as opposed to homo est iustus, standardly a case of transfer of meaning of the predicate due to the subject, much discussed by the theologians. In Deus est iustus, the transfer of meaning is determined by the signification of the subject: Boethius does not intend to say, Bacon explains, that iustus is here transferred from human to divine justice de virtute sermonis (i.e., in virtue of the sole power of the words), but that its use with the subject Deus incites the utterer to give it a meaning different from the one it had originally, when it was imposed to signify human justice (DS }}95, 99).³⁶ ³⁵ In the Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus, 149, and SumD II, }}558–9 (trans. Maloney }248), Bacon claimed that a name, which only refers by itself to present things, can be “ampliated” according to the tense of the verb. ³⁶ Terminist logicians consider quasi-exclusively the ampliation or restriction of the subject term, whereas in theology, the ampliation and restriction of both subject and predicate terms are considered; furthermore, theologians consider that ampliation and restriction of one term can be determined also by the signification of the other term, and not only by its consignification (as the tense of the verb which determines the reference of the subject). See Luisa Valente, “Talia sunt subiecta qualia praedicata permittunt. Le principe de l’approche contextuelle et sa genèse dans la théologie du XIIe siècle,” in J. Biard and I. Rosier-Catach (eds.), La tradition médiévale des Catégories

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These passages are interesting when referred to the debate about the role of context. A passage in Peter John Olivi’s Quaestiones logicales is particularly relevant in that respect. Olivi enumerates three positions: (1) some claim that the freedom (beneplacitum) of the utterer or of the listener is absolute; (2) others claim that there is a “natural” relation between the predicate and the subject that requires or prevents some kind of reference, to insure their “compossibility”; for instance, in homo est species, homo cannot stand for an individual, since it would be in this case “impossible” for the predicate to inhere in the subject; (3) others again, Olivi explains, hold a via media: they accept that in virtue of the “nature” of the terms, some kind of reference is required, but claim that this is only an “occasional” cause, and that the actual reference of the term depends ultimately (completive) on the “intention” and “voluntary language use of the speaker and utterer”: even when the determination latrabilis is added to the equivocal term canis (meaning the dog, the star, and the dog-fish), this determination does not determine canis to stand only for the dog, since it is perfectly possible to intend and say that A barking dog is a star.³⁷ This third position, which Olivi prefers, is clearly Bacon’s, who also sees the context not as an “efficient” or as a necessary cause in itself, but as an “occasional cause” which can lead the interpreter to ampliate or restrict the term, in a voluntary and free way (secundum beneplacitum).³⁸ (XIIe–XVe siècles) (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), 289–311; Valente, Logique et théologie: Les écoles parisiennes entre 1150 et 1220 (Paris: Vrin, 2008); Rosier-Catach, “Res significata et modus significandi: Les enjeux linguistiques et théologiques d’une distinction médiévale,” in S. Ebbesen (ed.), Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995), 135–68. Interestingly, Bacon, like Olivi (see note 38) and the theologians, considers ampliation and restriction in their wider extension (cf. DS }}90–1: ampliation of the subject due to the predicate; }92: restriction of the subject due to the predicate; }95: ampliation of the predicate due to the subject [e.g., Deus est iustus]; }96: restriction of the predicate due to the subject). ³⁷ This is a well-known case used for the discussion of the role of the context. See, e.g., Ebbesen, “The Dead Man Is Alive”; Marmo, “La funzione del contesto: teorie ‘continentali’ e ‘inglesi’ a confronto sull’eliminazione dell’equivocità tra fine XIII e inizio XIV secolo,” in S. Caroti, R. Imbach, Z. Kaluza, G. Stabile, and L. Sturlese (eds.), “Ad Ingenii Acuitionem”: Studies in Honor of Alfonso Maierù (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales, 2006), 249–80. ³⁸ Olivi, Quaestiones logicales, 342–3: “We reply that the aforementioned contractions or widenings (artationes vel ampliationes) are commonly recognized, although it is not immediately evident whence and from which cause that comes about. (1) For some want it to happen in virtue of the common use and of the good pleasure alone of the ones who impose and of the ones who understand (ex solo communi usu et beneplacito instituentium et accipientium), to the effect that if they wanted to use them differently, that would and could happen in a different way. (2) But others, on the contrary, say that it comes from a predicate’s natural mode of connection with a subject, that is: because a subject should be related differently to a predication about the past than

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ii. Connotation. As we said above, the utterer is absolutely free to give the sign any signification, since the relation R1 (to the interpreter) governs and determines the relation R2 (to the significate). He is thus also free to change the meaning of a sign, although he usually has some motivation for doing so. Some of these motivations are given by the modes of equivocation. Others are given by the natural relations holding between the things, which Bacon describes with his theory of connotation. The problem Bacon wants to address can be illustrated by the following diagram: sign relation of imposition

?

T1

T2

A vocal sound is imposed on a thing T1. If there exists a natural relation between the thing T1 and another thing T2, the same sign can also signify this other thing T2. For Bacon, the obtaining of such a relation is not

to a predication about the present or the future, and vice versa; and again stands differently to the predication that can exist in it than to the one of something that cannot possibly exist in it. And thus, when one says ‘a body is beautiful,’ the predicate in that sentence does not stand for divine or intellectual beauty, but for corporeal beauty alone. And for the same reason, when one says ‘man is a species,’ ‘man’ does not stand here for one of its individuals, because that predicate cannot possibly fit to these . And just the same, when one says ‘a vocal sound is white’ or ‘a constellation is a dog,’ ‘white,’ indeed, cannot stand there for visible, but only for audible whiteness, because it is impossible for visible whiteness to exist in a vocal sound. (3) The third take something like a middle way, saying that, on certain occasions (occasionaliter) and according to certain requirements (exigitive), that comes from a compatible or from an incompatible relation (habitudo) between the predicate and the subject. For nature as it is in itself repels mere incompatible things and requires compatible things; and they say that in that precise respect, the second position is taken to be true. In a way of complement, principally or efficiently, however, they say that it comes from the common intention and voluntary use of speakers and listeners; and intention that was not necessary but was induced only on certain occasions (occasionaliter) from the congruence or incongruence of the mutual relation holding between the terms. This is clearly proven by the fact that explicit determinations allow the contrary to be said, but not signified, as, say, of God, that He is just by accident, and that He is a beautiful body intellectually, or that a constellation is a dog capable of barking, or that a future human being was running or will be running, and so on and so forth. And that way of speaking seems to me more plausible, because it offers a way to reply to objections, here and elsewhere.” (Italics ours.) The reference to Bacon is further confirmed by the use of the same words as effective, or occasio. Cf. DS }97.

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sufficient to talk about transfer of meaning (translatio). If T2 also becomes signified, one has to explain why and how this transfer was achieved, and in which way T2 is signified, in other words, what the nature of the relation holding between T1 and T2 is. Bacon’s explanation takes as a starting point the analysis of Avicenna and al-Ghazali, both of which he explicitly mentioned (DS }103). In a very clear way, Avicenna explains in his Logica that what a word signifies is not necessarily restricted to the items on which it was imposed. Apart from the “true and first signification” (i.e., that on which the vocal sound has been imposed), a name can infer “extrinsically” a second significate: for instance, the word roof signifies primarily (that is, by imposition) the roof (T1), and secondarily (that is, by inference) the basement (T2). This is possible in virtue of the extrinsic relation that the mind perceives between the roof (T1) and the basement (T2), namely, as the integral parts of a whole. In that way, roof (also) signifies the basement, though the basement is not its significate, since roof does not signify it by imposition.³⁹ Bacon wants to move a step further, in order to characterize the semantic relation of the sign to T2, with the help of the typology described above (}3a). He then distinguishes two cases: • When a vocal sound signifies T1, it does so ad placitum, as a given sign. Further, in virtue of the natural relation of consequence holding between T1 and T2, the vocal sound is also a natural sign of T2. It signifies T2 ³⁹ Avicenna, Logica, f. 5rb–va (text of the edition prepared by Françoise Hudry to whom we are grateful for giving us access to that passage prior to its publication): “Against him we reply, saying that what we claim in saying that a name signifies a certain intention is not the way he thinks, namely that whatever will have been signified by a word, that necessarily is its signification. For you know that when this noun ‘mobile’ signifies , there is necessarily something moving, and that when this name ‘roof ’ signifies , there is necessarily a basement. Nonetheless we do not say for that reason that this name ‘mobile’ signifies something moving or that something moving is understood from it, nor that from this name ‘roof,’ a basement is understood or signified. What ‘to signify’ means for a name is that a name is a name of that intention that comes from the first imposition (sensus enim de ‘significare’ nominis est ut nomen sit illius intentionis quae est ex prima impositione). Whence if there is an intention joined to the first one extrinsically, that the intellect perceives when it perceives the first one, this does not imply that the noun signifies it according to the first imposition. [ . . . ] The intention signified by a word is twofold, a primary and a secondary one. [ . . . ] Thus here there is a true, primary signification, and a secondary, extrinsic one. For when a word will have signified what it signifies, the intellect will know that something external adheres to it, which does not belong to the signification of the word, neither as what is contained , nor as a primary or an equivalent signification.” A similar passage can be read in al-Ghazali’s Logica, 243–4. On the history and influence of Avicenna’s logic in the thirteenth century, see de Libera’s introduction to the new edition of the Logica (forthcoming).

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naturally according to mode 1.1, since there is a relation of consequence holding between T1 and T2 (DS }}130–2, CST }67). But in this case, even if the vocal sound signifies more than one thing (like the word double which signifies a double by imposition, and a half by inference), it only signifies ad placitum the one on which it has been imposed (DS }}123–5). It signifies T2 merely as a natural sign, and not as something on which it has been imposed. Therefore, since there has been only one imposition, there is no equivocation (DS }129). • But if an utterer intends to signify primarily T2, and makes a new imposition of the word, then T2 becomes signified ad placitum. The consequence of this transfer of meaning due to the “re-imposition” is that the word becomes equivocal, since it has then two significates, corresponding to T1 and to T2.⁴⁰ What was first signified merely naturally and secondarily, i.e., (T2), now becomes the intended significate, or even the only one, if the first one ceases to exist altogether. The transfers of meaning are based on the natural relations holding between things, as between a container and content, for instance (cf. an expression like ‘Have a glass!’ where what is intended is something to drink). Bacon thus enumerates seven types of relations obtaining between the things, which correspond to seven modes of “connotation,” and some of them have a clear theological origin.⁴¹ The notion of connotation was first used in theology, when dealing with the transfer of names from creatures to God.⁴² In all the cases mentioned, the relations between the terms allow some kind of inference between the first and second significate: (1) a relation of privation between being and non-being (DS }105); (2) a relation between the absolute names of God (e.g., Creator) and the names of the creatures (DS }106); (3) a relation between the names of the creatures and the names of

⁴⁰ DS }133: “[ . . . ] if the imposition is renovated, and if a new one occurs for a secondary significate, then the vocal sound will signify the secondary significate ad placitum.” ⁴¹ For a detailed analysis of connotation and inferential relations derived from it, see Marmo, “Bacon, Aristotle (and All the Others),” 148–51. For a complete analysis of relations in a theological context, see Paul Thom, The Logic of the Trinity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). ⁴² Cf. CST }66: “[ . . . ] a name imposed for some thing outside the mind can signify at the same time many things outside the mind, and these are called ‘things co-understood (cointellecta)’ in philosophy, and among ‘things connoted (connotata)’ theologians.” On connotation in theology, see Rosier-Catach, “Res significata et modus significandi” and Valente, “Iustus et misericors. L’usage théologique des notions de consignificatio et connotatio dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” in C. Marmo (ed.), Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (1150–1450) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 36–59.

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God (DS }107); (4) a relation between the names of the creatures themselves (e.g., the name ‘accident’ gives one to understand substance etc.) (DS }} 108–9); (5) a relation between a universal and a particular (DS }}110–20); (6) a relation between the essential parts of an integral whole (e.g., between the roof and basement of a house, which is Avicenna and al-Ghazali’s example), and between a genus and a species (DS }121); (7) a relation between relative terms (DS }122).⁴³ Bacon is again perfectly coherent with what he said in DS }1, namely (i) that R2 (the relation to the significate) is dependent and determined by R1 (the relation to the utterer), and (ii) that there is a difference between being imposed in act and signifying in act (aliud est esse actum impositum ut significet quibuslibet est possibile, aliud esse actu signum, cf. also }36), a claim which echoes what we read above in Avicenna. The process of re-imposition of words, which any utterer tacitly often performs when using a word, results in the constant and daily attribution of new significates to the words (DS }} 155–61). This process is usually done according to certain rules, which explains why the new meanings can be grasped by the listeners.⁴⁴

4. UNDERLYING METAPHYSICS AND SEMANTIC ISSUES

a. Bacon’s Theory of Relation In the previous sections, we investigated the role played by the category of relation in Bacon’s semantics without addressing the question of his conception of that intriguing category. Given that a sign, according to Bacon, belongs to the category of relation, it is uncontroversial to infer that it is a relative (relativum) and that signification is a relation (relatio). But what is a relation according to Bacon? Along Aristotelian (and medieval) lines, Bacon conceives of a relation as an accident, that is, as something that exists in something else and has, besides this esse in, an esse ad. For a relational accident, to be is to be in something, and to relate that thing to something else. In other words, a relation is a monadic predicate, it is nothing existing “between” two entities, i.e., nothing like the

⁴³ Most of the examples are present in CST }66. ⁴⁴ This process of re-imposition is absolutely parallel to the use of figurative speech as explained by Kilwardby, Bacon, and other grammarians following the “intentionalist approach”: a figure which goes against the normal rules of grammar may be used, provided there is a linguistic explanation (ratio qua potest fieri) and a precise intention behind it (ratio qua oportet fieri) (see Rosier-Catach, La parole comme acte, ch. 1).

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R in Russell’s ‘aRb.’⁴⁵ Two texts of Bacon’s have to be taken into consideration in order to get an initial grip on his theory of relation. The first is a passage from his Summulae dialectices, part I.2 (more precisely, }}141–200 in de Libera’s edition). The second one is the chapter on relation in Bacon’s questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In the Summulae, one reads the following: One should note that the names ‘relative’, ‘related’, and ‘relation’ (‘relativum,’ ‘relatum,’ ‘relatio’) differ. A relation is the respect (habitudo) itself, such as paternity, doubleness, etc. But a relative is the concrete derived therefrom, such as father and double. But what is related is that whose respect is signified by a relative or a relation, such as Socrates, to whom paternity (or his being a father) occurs. (SumD I.2 }}195–8, ed. de Libera, p. 213; trans. }84)

In other words: if Socrates has a child, then Socrates falls under the relational concept of pater (he is a relativum) in virtue of a relatio (paternitas), and he himself is a relatum. In the case of vocal sounds, the analogy runs as follows: if ‘Socrates’ is a word, then it falls under the relational concept of signum in virtue of the relation of signification, and is itself a relatum. From the questions on the Metaphysics, one can gather the following three points: first, Bacon is not a relation reductionist (he takes relations with ontological seriousness)—relations exist in rerum natura and are not abusive reifications of ways of thinking or of talking: “Regarding the chapter on relation, one first asks whether a relation is a certain being. . . . Solution: a relation is a being, and every ” (Questiones 159 sq. and 162); second, relations require the coexistence of both their relata (Questiones 164); third, a relation is a thing (res predicamentalis), one of the weakest kind, however. Ontologically speaking, it is located between “true things” and “things of reason”: Whatever is a disposition of a substance is a true thing; but a father is a substance; therefore paternity is a disposition of a substance. For that reason, a relation is a

⁴⁵ On medieval theories of relations, see Mark Henninger, Relations: Medieval Theories 1250–1325 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Rolf Schönberger, Relation als Vergleich: Die Relationstheorie des Johannes Buridan im Kontext seines Denkens und der Scholastik (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Marmo, “Relazioni pericolosi,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 2 (1992), 365–74; Marmo, “La teoria delle relazioni nei commenti alle Categorie da Gentile da Cingoli a Matteo da Gubbio,” in D. Buzzetti, M. Ferriani, and A. Tabarroni (eds.), L’insegnamento della logica a Bologna nel XIV secolo (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia dell’Università di Bologna, 1992), 343–91; Marmo, “The Theories of Relations in Medieval Commentaries on the Categories (Mid-13th to Mid-14th Century),” in S. Ebbesen, J. Marenbon, and Paul Thom (eds.), Aristotle’s Categories in the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Traditions (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2013), 195–215; Jeffrey Brower, “Medieval Theories of Relations,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), ed. E. N. Zalta, ; Thom, The Logic of the Trinity; and Charles Girard (ed.), Relations (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).

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certain nature and a certain true thing . . . Nonetheless, I say that it is the weakest among all the categorical things (res debilissima inter omnes res predicamentales); and I add that it is intermediate between true things and things of intention and reason, so that it is neither the one, nor the other. (Roger Bacon, Questiones 160)

In reply to an (implicit) objection according to which some relations are derived entities (i.e., entities produced by art or by reason), Bacon makes clear that: Many of reason and art (res rationis et artificii) are in the categories, at least those which are made from natural things, because there are some things which are produced by reason and art but are nonetheless caused by nature and made from natural things, such as a house; there are other things of reason (res rationis) which are not made from natural things but exist in them according to a certain diminished being, such as affirmation and negation, subject and predicate, . . . and therefore, a relation can be a thing of reason and nonetheless be grounded in a thing of nature. (Roger Bacon, Questiones 161)

This passage contains a claim of crucial importance for our purpose: although Bacon does not mention signification in this passage, what he says makes it plausible that signification belongs to the class of res rationis et artificii which are not made of natural things (as is a house, for example), but are nonetheless grounded (fundantur) in natural things, in the way affirmation and negation, as well as subject and predicate, are. The claim, then, would be the following: what makes a word (vox significativa) out of mere vocal sound (vox) is a relational feature grounded in the vocal sound and whose existence depends on the rational activity of subjects (i.e., speakers and interpreters). If that is correct, then this passage can be taken to provide something like the metaphysics of the relational semantics developed in DS (it also fits nicely with the claim that R1 is more essential than R2).

b. Semantic Issues: Bacon as a Critic of His Contemporaries The coherence of Bacon’s semantics fully comes to light when one jointly considers its two fundamental aspects, namely, first, the claim that the sign has a twofold relational nature (R1 and R2) and, second, the theory of the constant re-imposition of vocal sounds by language users.⁴⁶ Such a ⁴⁶ A (possibly) similar account of linguistic meaning produced by the actual and intentional use of vocal sounds by rational subjects can be found at different stages in the history of philosophy of language, apart from its presence in theological texts (discussed shortly). It is found in the “intentionalist” grammarians of the thirteenth century, who include Robert Kilwardby and Roger Bacon, and, with respect to medieval logic, one can also mention the anonymous Tractatus de proprietatibus sermonum. On those texts, see Rosier-Catach, La parole comme acte, 173–9; Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 160–6, as well as Cesalli and Majolino. “Making Sense,” where some parallels with the so-called Austro-German tradition (Brentano, Mary, Husserl, Bühler) are drawn.

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systematic constellation allows him to give an original solution to a cluster of key issues widely discussed in the second half of the thirteenth century, especially at Oxford, and which can be summarized, following Alain de Libera, under the heading of “the empty reference.”⁴⁷ Different questions are closely related here: (a) can a word lose its signification? (b) can a word signify univocally beings and non-beings? (c) does the truth of a proposition imply the existence of what its terms stand or supposit for? Question (c) is directly related to a thesis condemned by the Chancellor of Oxford, Robert Kilwardby, on 18 March 1277 (Veritas cum necessitate tantum est cum constantia subiecti).⁴⁸ Such questions are also theologically motivated by the problem of Christ’s humanity in triduo mortis, raised by Augustine, Hugo of Saint Victor, and the Poretans, included in Peter Lombard’s Sentences (III, ch. 22, 1), and accordingly tackled in commentaries on this canonical text. The problem is discussed by the logicians, who, for that purpose, invented sophismata such as Caesar est homo, Caesare mortuo, or the famous Omnis homo (de necessitate) est animal, nullo homine existente. The importance of this debate is attested by the number of texts in which it is present. Bacon, who holds that a name can lose its signification, attacks violently his adversaries, calls them fools, liars, unable to use their reason, up to the end of his life (CST }128), and we find similar insults in a sophisma advocating the opposite position.⁴⁹ The debate, which has already been The claim that a sign involves a twofold relation is also found explicitly in the later Richard Brinkley. In part IV of his Summa logicae (c.1350), Brinkley, when distinguishing between significatio and suppositio, observes that whereas signification is a dyadic relational notion (involving a relation to the thing signified [Bacon’s R2] and another one to the intellect “for which a word signifies” [Bacon’s R1]), supposition is triadic (adding the third, syntactic relation holding between the term at stake to the other main constituent of the proposition). On that issue, see Brinkley, De suppositionibus, 295: “iste terminus ‘homo’ quando significat talem rem homo, includit unum respectum ad intellectum cui significat et alium ad rem illam quam significat.” ⁴⁷ Cf. de Libera, “Roger Bacon et le problème de l’appellatio univoca”; de Libera, “Roger Bacon et la référence vide. Sur quelques antécédents médiévaux du paradoxe de Meinong,” in J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, and A. de Libera (eds.), Lectionum Varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux (Paris: Vrin, 1991), 85–120; de Libera, “Roger Bacon et la logique”; de Libera, La référence vide. Théories de la proposition (Paris: PUF, 2002); Leone Gazziero and de Libera, “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal’ du Parisinus latinus 16135, f. 99rb–103vb,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 75 (2008), 323–68; Braakhuis, “The Views of William of Sherwood on Some Semantical Topics and Their Relation to Those of Roger Bacon,” Vivarium 15 (1977), 111–42; Braakhuis, “Kilwardby vs Bacon?” and below for further references. ⁴⁸ Cf. P. O. Lewry, “The Oxford Condemnations of 1277 in Grammar and Logic,” in English Logic, 235–78; Lewry, “Oxford Logic 1250–1275: Nicholas and Peter of Cornwall on Past and Future Realities,” in Lewry (ed.), The Rise of British Logic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), 19–62. ⁴⁹ Cf. Gazziero and de Libera, “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal,’” 342.

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extensively studied, opposes, on the one hand, philosophers of language belonging to the tradition of speculative grammar (and more specifically the modists, modistae) who take signification to be a substantial property of the vox such that, once the impositio ad significandum has been performed, the word cannot lose its signification and, on the other hand, thinkers, like Bacon himself, who insist that the signification of a word crucially depends on its actual use, and is thus eminently modifiable. Here we want to recall only those aspects of Bacon’s solutions directly connected to his theory of the twofold relational nature of the sign.⁵⁰ The metaphysical framework within which Bacon elaborates his semantic view is characterized by the rejection of the idea that anything can be common to being and non-being: there is nothing like an Avicenna-inspired “being of essence” (esse essentiae) or a “habitual being” (esse habituale) that would be common, say, to Socrates alive and dead Socrates, and the philosophers who accept it are misled by a metaphysical chimera.⁵¹ If one does admit such an ontological category, however, one can claim that the name ‘Socrates’ can be used univocally (i.e., without new imposition) in order to talk about Socrates alive and dead Socrates. As a consequence, a name, according to Bacon, cannot signify univocally beings and non-beings (DS }}134–42, CST }}87–111). Talking about Socrates alive and dead Socrates entails the re-imposition of the word ‘Socrates.’ Bacon’s position is clear: a word can lose its signification (DS }}143–53, CST }}113–28). In the CST }123, we read that a word can lose its signification in two ways. Let us assume that a word S signifies a thing T1

⁵⁰ On the presence of these theses already in Bacon’s SumD, and on the authors holding the positions criticized by Bacon in the thirteenth century, at Oxford (Richard Rufus of Cornwall) and Paris (in pre-modist and modist circles), see de Libera, “Roger Bacon et le problème de l’appellatio univoca”; de Libera, “Roger Bacon et la référence vide”; de Libera, La référence vide; de Libera, “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal: Référence et modalité selon l’Anonymus Erfordensis Q 328 (pseudo-Robert Kilwardby),” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 69 (2002), 201–37; Cesalli and Majolino “Making Sense”; RosierCatach, “Les modistes étaient-ils ‘averroïstes’?,” in J.-B. Brenet and L. Cesalli (eds.), Sujet libre: Etudes offertes à Alain de Libera (Paris: Vrin, 2018). On that issue, see also Mora Marquez, The 13th Century Notion of Signification, 76–106, who offers a recent and exhaustive account of the debate in the thirteenth century. On the relation between this debate and the dispute on the causality of the sacraments, see Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, 156–72. ⁵¹ On that issue, see especially Ebbesen, “Roger Bacon and the Fools of His Time”; Ebbesen, “The Dead Man Is Alive”; de Libera, “Roger Bacon et la référence vide”; de Libera, La référence vide, esp. 62–3; de Libera, “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal ”; de Libera, “Faire de nécessité loi. Théories de la modalité dans le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal’ du codex parisinus 16135, f 11rb–12rb,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 76 (2009), 179–233, as well as Gazziero and de Libera, “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal.’ ”

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(i.e., S has been imposed on T1). Now, a word can lose its signification either because of our will—say, because we re-impose S on another thing T2—or because T1 has ceased to exist. R2 (i.e., the relation to the significate) thereby loses its “term,” and, consequently, S loses its ratio signi just as in the first case (vox cadit a significatione vel per voluntatem nostram vel per hoc quod res cui imposita fuit non est). The claim that the non-existence of T1 entails that the sign loses its signification may seem at first sight to be contrary to the much celebrated beneplacitum, since the signification of the sign seems to depend on the state of the world and not on the will of the interpreter. This is not so for Bacon: the non-existence of T1, once acknowledged by an interpreter, implies that he will no longer want to take S as a sign (it becomes an empty sign), unless he re-imposes it on something else (T2 in our example). While claiming this, Bacon also maintains R2’s essential character for the sign and its dependence on R1 (relation to the interpreter)—recall that according to DS }1, both R1 and R2 are essential for the sign, but R1 is “more essential” (essentialius) than R2. Even if a word has been imposed on something, and thus was given a significate, the relation R2 nonetheless has to be re-actualized in the very process of signification: a word is only “a sign of (something)” if it is, first, “a sign for (some interpreter).” In order to see which is the range of exercise of the interpreter’s freedom, let us assume, as before, that a word S has been imposed on a thing T1, say, at t₀, to the effect that R2 (S-T1) holds. Now at t₁, the interpreter has the following possibilities: uses S-T1: mere re-actualization (no re-imposition) re-impose S (S-T2): S becomes equivocal and T2 can be anything, including a non-being

Interpreter, at t1

does not use S-T1: no mere re-actualization

considers S in a non-relational way: S is not a sign anymore (it is not a sign for . . ., and thus not a sign of . . .)

Bacon interprets the example of the circulus vini accordingly.⁵² The circle has been imposed to signify wine in the tavern. If there is no longer wine, ⁵² The same example is analyzed according to an anti-Baconian’s position by Peter of Cornwall, in Ebbesen, “Talking about What Is No More: Texts by Peter of Cornwall (?), Richard of Clive, Simon of Faversham and Radulphus Brito,” CIMAGL 57 (1987),

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those who know it will not look for the wine in the tavern, since, for them, the circle is no longer a sign: “none of them receives the circle as a sign” (nullus recipit circulum pro signo). It is not the absence of wine as such which turns the circle into an empty sign, but the fact that the interpreter would no longer want to take the wine, which was the significate of the sign, as its significate in this new situation. It is always the same human will which is at stake: the sign “just lost its nature of sign by the very same human will which had formerly constituted it as a sign” (igitur iam cecidit a ratione signi eadem voluntate hominum qua fuit prius signum factum [CST }117]). However, Bacon adds, the client who is not aware of the change of situation sees the circle and seeks for the wine, since the sign remains a sign for him: in doing so he in fact renovates the sign, he gives it a new signification different from the original one, since it is then a sign of the wine as he imagines it rather than of the real wine which is no longer present (DS }147; CST }} 117–18, }127). This position is also linked to Bacon’s strong opposition to the idea that a vocal sound is imposed on something like a “being of essence” (esse essentiae). Bacon, using the case of baptism as a paradigm, insists that when names are imposed on things, they are imposed on them as they exist presently and actually (sub esse praesenti et actuali). As a consequence, these names signify beings and can signify non-beings only by reimposition. This is already expressed in the Summulae dialectices, with the mention of the “new imposition” (cf. SumD II, }}585–6, as well as }} 610–12). It is again stated in DS (}}41, 89) and in CST (}}97–9 as well as }123).⁵³ Note that Bacon’s insistence on the present and actual existence of a thing does not affect the freedom of language users, who remain free to impose words on any thing (DS }}19, 38), beings and non-beings, actual, past and future, or imagined things, either by first imposition or by reimposition. This insistence is much stronger in the De signis. To sum up, Bacon disconnects first or previous imposition and actual signification, in exact opposition to Bonaventure, according to whom, once imposed on something, a sign remains a sign, even in the absence of any interpreter (see section 2b). For the theologians, as for many logicians, signification is determined by imposition once and for all. Once imposed on a thing T, the vocal sound remains a sign of it, and if T ceases to exist, the persistence of its existence apud animam is sufficient to maintain the 144–5, and in Gazziero and de Libera, “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal,’ ” 350. ⁵³ CST }}97–9, especially }97: “[ . . . ] all the names which we impose for things, we impose inasmuch as they are present to us, as it is the case for the names of man, in baptism,” and }123.

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“continuity of the signification,” to use Bacon’s expression (DS }143). For Boethius of Dacia, Siger of Brabant, and others, words do not signify things as they are, but as they are understood.⁵⁴ The two claims are clearly related, and Bacon takes an opposite stand on both of them. For him, it is not enough for a vocal sound to have been imposed in act on something (that is, the obtaining of R2 through imposition is not enough); rather, what is needed is the act of an interpreter who “takes” that vocal sound to signify this thing, or else another thing by re-imposition (in this latter case rendering the vocal sound equivocal). This position goes hand in hand with the idea that a word signifies its significate directly, and not through the mediation of the thing’s species in the mind: as a matter of fact, if any word would necessarily have a mental entity (a species rei) as its immediate significate, R2 would obtain in any case—in such a case any theory of re-imposition would be purposeless. Bacon’s position in the famous controversy about the truthvalue of the sophism Homo est animal nullo homine exsistente—namely that it is false—has to be understood along the same lines: that proposition would not have to be false at all if homo were to signify a species in the mind, for species have the remarkable and useful property of surviving independently of actual, extra-mental men.⁵⁵ If, in the sophismata tackling this same question of empty reference, there are arguments concerning the relational nature of the sign, they are always given considering only the relation R2,⁵⁶ and never, as far as we can see, introduce the relation R1 or the idea of re-imposition.

⁵⁴ See, for instance, de Libera, “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal: Référence et modalité selon l’Anonymus Erfordensis,” 209, 226; Pseudo-Kilwardby, Commentary on Priscian maior, 71; Boethius of Dacia, Sophisma ‘omnis homo de necessitate est animal’, quoted in Mora Marquez, The 13th Century Notion of Signification, 131: “Once the things have been destroyed, it is not necessary that the terms lose their significates; the reason is that for a vocal sound, to signify does not depend on the existence of a thing . . . Again, what is possible for the intellect when it conceives is possible for the vocal sounds when they signify; what can be understood can be the significate of the vocal sound, and in the same way. But once destroyed, the concept of a thing can remain in the intellect just as it was before; indeed the thing can be understood after its destruction, thus it can be signified by a vocal sound just as before.” On the relations between Pseudo-Kilwardby and Bacon, see de Libera, “Roger Bacon et le problème de l’appellatio univoca,” 208–16. ⁵⁵ In spite of the condemnation, Adam Wodeham (c.1330) still found “more reasonable” the logic which maintains Bacon’s solution of the sophism (that the proposition is false), rather than the other logic which stands for the opposite position (text quoted in de Libera, “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal,” 203). ⁵⁶ See, for example, Gazziero and de Libera, “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal,’ ” 339.

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His whole life long, Bacon fights against one of the two positions advocated in the thirteenth-century magna altercatio, namely against the claims that a name cannot lose its signification, and that it can signify univocally a being and a non-being. It is true, as de Libera has shown, that from the Summulae dialectices onwards Bacon defends the idea that a vocal sound imposed on a being cannot signify a non-being except by re-imposition; however, it is only with the later De signis that Bacon—after having integrated the Augustinian heritage thanks to his acquaintance with Richard Fishacre’s and other theologians’ analysis—is able to ground his own position on a powerful theory of the sign at the core of which are the theses of the twofold relational character of the sign and of the constant re-impositions of words in the course of everyday language use. Bacon develops a general theory of signification whose central thought is that speakers (in virtue of R1) freely determine the signs’ significates (i.e., the “terms” of R2). On this basis, he sets out to solve in an original and unified way problems related to signification itself, to supposition, to appellation, and also to the role played by the speakers’ intentions and by the different contexts of a word (i.e., its immediate, linguistic context, and its more extrinsic context of utterance). Université de Genève and EPHE/CNRS, Paris BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Albert the Great. Opera omnia, ed. E. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1890–9). Anonymous. Ars meliduna, in L. M. de Rijk (ed.), Logica modernorum, II.1 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967), 292–390. Anonymous. Tractatus de proprietatibus sermonum, in L. M. de Rijk (ed.), Logica modernorum, II.2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967), 703–30. Augustine. De doctrina christiana, ed. J. Martin (CCSL 32) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967). Avicenna. Logica, in Opera philosophica (Venice 1508; repr. Louvain: Édition de la Bibliothèque, 1961). Avicenna. Logica [Latin translation of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ ], ed. F. Hudry (Paris: Vrin, 2018). al-Ghazali. Logica, in C. H. Lohr (ed.), “Logica Algazelis: Introduction and Critical Text,” Traditio 21 (1965), 223–90. Peter John Olivi. Quaestiones logicales, in S. F. Brown (ed.), “Petrus Ioannis Olivi, Quaestiones logicales: Critical Text,” Traditio 42 (1986), 335–88. Peter John Olivi. Quid ponat ius, in F. Delorme (ed.), “Question de P. J. Olivi Quid ponat ius vel dominium ou encore De signis voluntariis,” Antonianum 20 (1945), 309–30.

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Peter John Olivi. Traité des contrats, ed. S. Piron (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012). Pseudo-Kilwardby. The Commentary on ‘Priscianus Maior’ Ascribed to Robert Kilwardby, ed. K. M. Fredborg, N. J. Green-Pedersen, L. Nielsen, and J. Pinborg, CIMAGL 15 (1975), 1–145. Richard Brinkley. De suppositionibus [extracts of part IV of the Summa logicae], ed. L. Cesalli and J. Lonfat, in L. Cesalli, “Richard Brinkley on Supposition,” Vivarium 51 (2013), 275–303 (295–300). Richard Fishacre. In IV Sententiarum, ed. J. Goering (forthcoming). Roger Bacon. The Art and Science of Logic, trans. T. Maloney (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009). Roger Bacon. Communia naturalium, ed. R. Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). Roger Bacon. Compendium studii theologiae, in T. Maloney (ed. and trans.), The Compendium of the Study of Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1988) [= CST]. Roger Bacon. De signis, in K. M. Fredborg, L. Nielsen, and J. Pinborg (eds.), “An Unedited Part of Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius: De signis,” Traditio 34 (1978), 75–136 [= DS ]. Roger Bacon. On Signs (Opus maius, part III, chapter 2), trans. T. Maloney (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013). Roger Bacon. Opus majus, ed. J. H. Bridges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897–1900; repr. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964). Roger Bacon. Opus tertium, ed. J. S. Brewer, vol. I (London: Longman, 1859). Roger Bacon. Questiones supra libros Primae philosophiae Aristotelis, ed. R. Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930). Roger Bacon. Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus, ed. R. Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937). Roger Bacon. Summulae dialectices, ed. A. de Libera, “Les Summulae dialectices de Roger Bacon. I. De termino. II. De enuntiatione,” AHDLMA 53 (1987), 139–290 (English trans. Maloney, Art and Science of Logic) [= SumD]. Roger Bacon. Summulae dialectices, ed. A. de Libera, “Les Summulae dialectices de Roger Bacon. III. De argumentatione,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 54 (1988), 171–278 (English trans. Maloney, Art and Science of Logic) [= SumD]. Secondary Sources Boureau, Alain. “Le concept de relation chez Pierre de Jean Olivi,” in A. Boureau and S. Piron (eds.), Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298): Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 42–55. Boureau Alain and Irène Rosier-Catach. “Droit et théologie dans la pensée scolastique: le cas de l’obligation et du serment,” Revue de synthèse 129 (2008), 509–28. Braakhuis, Henricus A. G. “The Views of William of Sherwood on Some Semantical Topics and their Relation to Those of Roger Bacon,” Vivarium 15 (1977), 111–42. Braakhuis, Henricus A. G. “Kilwardby vs Bacon? The Contribution to the Discussion on Univocal Signification of Beings and Non-Beings Found in a Sophism Attributed to Robert Kilwardby,” in E. P. Bos (ed.), Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985), 111–42.

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Brower, Jeffrey. “Medieval Theories of Relations,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), ed., E. N. Zalta. . Cesalli, Laurent and Claudio Majolino. “Making Sense: On the Cluster significatiointentio in Medieval and Austrian Philosophies,” Methodos 14 (2014). . De Libera, Alain. “Roger Bacon et le problème de l’appellatio univoca,” in H. A. G. Braakhuis, C. H. Kneepkens, and L. M. de Rijk (eds.), English Logic and Semantics: From the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1981), 193–234. De Libera, Alain. “Roger Bacon et la référence vide. Sur quelques antécédents médiévaux du paradoxe de Meinong,” in J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, and A. De Libera (eds.), Lectionum Varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux (Paris: Vrin, 1991), 85–120. De Libera, Alain. “Roger Bacon et la logique,” in J. Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 103–32. De Libera, Alain. “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal: Référence et modalité selon l’Anonymus Erfordensis Q 328 (pseudo-Robert Kilwardby),” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 69 (2002), 201–37. De Libera, Alain. La référence vide. Théories de la proposition (Paris: PUF, 2002). De Libera, Alain. “Faire de nécessité loi. Théories de la modalité dans le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal’ du codex parisinus 16135, f 11rb–12rb,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 76 (2009), 179–233. De Libera, Alain. “Entre Tolède et Hamadan. La Logica d’Avicenne,” in F. Hudry (ed.), Avicenna’s Logic (Paris: Vrin, 2018). De Libera, Alain and Irène Rosier-Catach. “Intention de signifier et engendrement du discours chez Roger Bacon,” Histoire Épistémologie Langage 8 (1986), 63–79. De Libera, Alain and Irène Rosier-Catach. “La pensée linguistique médiévale,” in S. Auroux (ed.), Histoire des Idées Linguistiques, vol. I (Liège: Mardaga, 1992), 186–215. Ebbesen, Sten. “Roger Bacon and the Fools of His Time,” CIMAGL 3 (1970), 40–4. Ebbesen, Sten. “The Dead Man Is Alive,” Synthese 40 (1979), 43–70. Ebbesen, Sten. “Talking about What Is No More: Texts by Peter of Cornwall (?), Richard of Clive, Simon of Faversham and Radulphus Brito,” CIMAGL 57 (1987), 135–68. Ebbesen, Sten and Jan Pinborg. “Studies in the Logical Writings Attributed to Boethius de Dacia,” CIMAGL 3 (1970), 1–54. Eco, Umberto and Constantino Marmo (eds.). On the Medieval Theory of Signs (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1989). Fredborg, Margareta. “Roger Bacon on impositio vocis ad significandum,” in H. A. G. Braakhuis, C. H. Kneepkens, and L. M. de Rijk (eds.), English Logic and Semantics: From the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1981), 167–91. Gazziero, Leone and Alain de Libera. “Le sophisma ‘Omnis homo de necessitate est animal’ du Parisinus latinus 16135, f. 99rb–103vb,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 75 (2008), 323–68. Girard, Charles (ed.). Relations (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).

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Goubier, Frédéric. “The Role of the Speaker in Roger Bacon and William of Ockham’s Supposition Theories: A Contrast,” in J. Pelletier and M. Roques (eds.), The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Claude Panaccio (New York: Springer, 2017), 169–82. Hackett, Jeremiah. “Roger Bacon: His Life, Career, and Works,” in Jeremiah Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemoratives Essays (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 9–23. Henninger, Mark. Relations: Medieval Theories 1250–1325 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Lewry, Patrick Osmond. “The Oxford Condemnations of 1277 in Grammar and Logic,” in H. A. G. Braakhuis, C. H. Kneepkens, and L. M. de Rijk (eds.), English Logic and Semantics: From the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1981), 235–78. Lewry, Patrick Osmond. “Oxford Logic 1250–1275: Nicholas and Peter of Cornwall on Past and Future Realities,” in P. O. Lewry (ed.), The Rise of British Logic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), 19–62. Maloney, Thomas. “Roger Bacon on the Significatum of Words,” in L. Brind’Amour and E. Vance (eds.), Archéologie du signe (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983), 235–49. Maloney, Thomas. “The Semiotics of Roger Bacon,” Medieval Studies 45 (1983), 120–54. Maloney, Thomas. Three Treatments of Universals by Roger Bacon (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1989). Maloney, Thomas. “Is the De doctrina christiana the Source for Bacon’s Semiotics?”, in E. D. English (ed.), Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 126–42. Marmo, Costantino. “Relazioni pericolosi,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 2 (1992), 365–74. Marmo, Costantino. “La teoria delle relazioni nei commenti alle Categorie da Gentile da Cingoli a Matteo da Gubbio,” in D. Buzzetti, M. Ferriani, and A. Tabarroni (eds.), L’insegnamento della logica a Bologna nel XIV secolo (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia dell’Università di Bologna, 1992), 343–91. Marmo, Costantino. Semiotica e linguaggio nella scolastica: Parigi, Bologna, Erfurt 1270–1330. La semiotica dei Modisti (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994). Marmo, Costantino. “Bacon, Aristotle (and All the Others) on Natural Inferential Signs,” Vivarium 35 (1997), 136–54. Marmo, Costantino. “Inferential Signs and Simon of Tournai’s General Theory of Signification,” in C. Marmo (ed.), Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XII–XIV Century) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 61–82. Marmo, Costantino, “Simon of Tournai’s Institutiones in sacram paginam: An Edition of His Introduction about Signification,” CIMAGL 67 (1997), 93–103. Marmo, Costantino. “Il ‘simbolismo’ altomedievale: tra controversie eucaristiche e conflitti di potere,” Comunicare e significare nell’Alto Medioevo 52 (2005), 765–819.

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Marmo, Costantino. “La funzione del contesto: teorie ‘continentali’ e ‘inglesi’ a confronto sull’eliminazione dell’equivocità tra fine XIII e inizio XIV secolo,” in S. Caroti, R. Imbach, Z. Kaluza, G. Stabile, and L. Sturlese (eds.), “Ad Ingenii Acuitionem”: Studies in Honor of Alfonso Maierù (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales, 2006), 249–80. Marmo, Costantino. “Semiotica della presenza: l’emergere della transustanziazione nel IX secolo e le sue implicazioni semiotiche,” in G. Marrone and N. Dusi (eds.), Destini del sacro: Discorso religioso e semiotica della cultura (Rome: Meltemi, 2008), 59–71. Marmo, Costantino. La semiotica del XIII secolo. Trà arti liberali e teologia (Milan: Bompiani, 2010). Marmo, Costantino. “Logique élargie et sémiotique. Albert le Grand, Roger Bacon et Gilles de Rome,” in J. Brumberg (ed.), Ad notitiam ignoti: L’Organon dans la ‘translatio studiorum’ à l’époque d’Albert le Grand (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 447–62. Marmo, Costantino. “Radulphus Brito on Relations in His Questions on the Sentences,” in J. Leth Fink, H. Hansen, and A. M. Mora-Marquez (eds.), Logic and Language in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honour of Sten Ebbesen (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 373–88. Marmo, Costantino. “The Theories of Relations in Medieval Commentaries on the Categories (Mid-13th to Mid-14th Century),” in S. Ebbesen, J. Marenbon, and Paul Thom (eds.), Aristotle’s Categories in the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Traditions (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2013), 195–215. Meier-Oeser, Stephan. Die Spur des Zeichens. Das Zeichen und seine Funktion in der Philosophie des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997). Mora Marquez, Ana Maria. The 13th Century Notion of Signification: The Discussions and Their Origin and Development (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Panaccio, Claude. “Grammar and Mental Language in the Pseudo-Kilwardby,” in S. Ebbesen and R. Friedman (eds.), Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition (Copenhagen: Institute for Greek and Latin, 1999), 398–413. Pinborg, Jan. “Bezeichnung in der Logik des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Der Bergriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter: Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971), 238–81. Pinborg, Jan. “Roger Bacon on Signs: A Newly Recovered Part of the Opus Maius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981), 403–12 [repr. in Jan Pinborg, Medieval Semantics: Selected Studies on Medieval Logic & Grammar, ed. S. Ebbesen (London: Variorum reprints, 1984)]. Pini, Giorgio. “Species, Concept and Thing: Theories of Signification in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999), 21–52. Pini, Giorgio. “Signification of Names in Duns Scotus and Some of His Contemporaries,” Vivarium 39 (2001), 20–51. Piron, Sylvain. “La question Quid ponat ius?,” Oliviana 5 (2016). .

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Rosier-Catach, Irène. La parole comme acte. Sur la sémantique et la grammaire au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1994). Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Res significata et modus significandi: Les enjeux linguistiques et théologiques d’une distinction médiévale,” in S. Ebbesen (ed.), Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995), 135–68. Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Roger Bacon: Grammar,” in J. Hackett (ed.), Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1996 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 67–102. Rosier-Catach, Irène. La parole efficace: Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Seuil, 2004). Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Intentions, Conventions, Performativity: Medieval Discussions about Sacramental Formulas and Oaths,” Hersetec 3 (2009), 1–14. Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Speech Acts and Intentional Meaning in Medieval Philosophy of Language,” Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52 (2010), 55–80. Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Les modistes étaient-ils ‘averroïstes’?,” in J.-B. Brenet and L. Cesalli (eds.), Sujet libre. Pour Alain de Libera (Paris: Vrin, 2018). Schönberger, Rolf. Relation als Vergleich: Die Relationstheorie des Johannes Buridan im Kontext seines Denkens und der Scholastik (Leiden: Brill, 1994). Tachau, Katherine. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden: Brill, 1988). Thom, Paul. The Logic of the Trinity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). Valente, Luisa. “Iustus et misericors. L’usage théologique des notions de consignificatio et connotatio dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” in C. Marmo (ed.), Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (1150–1450) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 36–59. Valente, Luisa. “Talia sunt subiecta qualia praedicata permittunt. Le principe de l’approche contextuelle et sa genèse dans la théologie du XIIe siècle,” in J. Biard and I. Rosier-Catach (eds.), La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe–xve siècles) (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), 289–311. Valente, Luisa. Logique et théologie: Les écoles parisiennes entre 1150 et 1220 (Paris: Vrin, 2008).

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Is Anything in the Intellect that Was Not First in Sense? Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas Therese Scarpelli Cory

What is the scope of our intellectual knowledge, and how strictly is it bound up with the scope of sensation? Thomas Aquinas—perhaps the best-known representative of medieval empiricism—holds, as one of his core philosophical theses, that all our natural intellectual knowledge depends on sensation. “The beginning of all our cognition,” he says, “is in sense.”¹ The human intellect has as its proper object the “quiddities of material things,” e.g., essences such as ‘oak’ or ‘rhinoceros,’² so that we are intellectually dazzled by incorporeal entities, like an owl dazzled by daylight.³ Indeed, in a muchquoted passage, Aquinas paints a dramatically pessimistic picture of what we can know of incorporeal entities:⁴ Our intellect receives from sense, and therefore that which falls into our intellect’s apprehension are sensibles, and things of this sort have magnitude, which is why

¹ Aquinas, SBDT 6.2 [Leon. 50.164:71–2]; see similar remarks in DV 12.3, ad 2; DV 18.2, ad 7; ST Ia.84.6–7; and the picturesque formulation of ST Ia.12.12 [Leon. 4.136]: “Our natural cognition can extend only so far as it can be guided [manuduci, literally, led by the hand] by sensibles.” All translations from the Latin are my own; for editions and abbreviations, see the bibliography. ² E.g., DV 12.7; ST Ia.84.7; ST Ia.85.3, ad 3; and ST Ia.88.1. ³ See texts in note 67. ⁴ I use “corporeal/incorporeal,” rather than “material/immaterial,” since in Aquinas’s hylomorphic ontology, every form is immaterial in the sense that form and matter are distinct metaphysical principles. In what follows, consonant with Aquinas’s usage, “corporeal” applies to anything that has a bodily existence, whether that be a form, or a substance itself as a whole. “Incorporeal” applies to any form that can or does subsist without a material substrate.

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‘point’ and ‘unity’ are only defined negatively. And therefore everything that transcends these sensibles known to us are not cognized by us except through negation, just as we cognize concerning separate substances that they are immaterial and incorporeal and so on.⁵

Such remarks have led to a widespread impression of the senses as playing, for Aquinas, the role of a gatekeeper restricting what can “get into” our intellects. On this view, sensation not only controls what we can experientially access, but also forces us to conceptualize everything in terms of corporeal, sensible properties. And so incorporeal entities, which lie wholly outside the scope of our experience, can only be conceptualized in corporeal terms, e.g., as not-colored, not-extended, not-corporeal. This way of reading Aquinas, which I will call the Sense-Gatekeeper view, is familiarly encapsulated in the maxim “Nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses,” which is popularly—and, I will argue, incorrectly— believed to be a cornerstone of Aquinas’s philosophical psychology.⁶ The Sense-Gatekeeper view achieved canonical status in the neo-Scholasticism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Grabmann, for instance, writes that “the total content of higher knowledge is ultimately furnished through the medium of the senses,” and that “we can think of incorporeal objects, of which no images exist, only by analogy and by aid of the corporeal of which we have images,”⁷ a sentiment echoed by other major forces such as Mercier, Sertillanges, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Gilson.⁸ In recent ⁵ InDA 3.5 [Leon. 45/1.227:183–92]. ⁶ For just one recent example, see Markus Führer, Echoes of Aquinas in Cusanus’s Vision of Man (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 42. In reality, the nihil in intellectu maxim appears only in Aquinas’s DV 2.3, arg. 19; since this is a disputatio, the language in the argument is not originally Aquinas’s, but is introduced by an audience member. And in fact, the response in ad 19 clearly interprets the principle as applying to abstractive knowledge of corporeal things. Aquinas’s own formulations (see note 1) are more openended, stating merely that the human intellect’s operation depends on or originates in sensation. Contra Pickavé, who takes those formulations as equivalent to the nihil in intellectu maxim (see Martin Pickavé, “Human Knowledge,” in B. Davies and E. Stump (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 314), it seems to me that the nihil in intellectu maxim restrictively portrays the senses as a conduit for intellectual information, whereas Aquinas’s other formulations leave open the possibility of a variety of ways in which intellectual knowledge might be causally related to sensation. ⁷ Martin Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas: His Personality and Thought, trans. V. Michel (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 138 and 147 (emphasis mine). ⁸ Étienne Gilson, Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1954): “The intelligible cannot reach [us] unless mixed with the sensible” (219) . . . “We only know the incorporeal by comparing it with the corporeal” (221); R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. P. Cummins (St. Louis: Herder, 1950), 188: “Since its proper object, however, is the essence of the sense world, our intellect can know God and all spiritual beings only by analogy with the sense world, the

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scholarship, the senses have maintained their role as exclusive purveyors of intellectual information. According to Pickavé, “the senses provide the intellect with the basic ‘raw material’ for higher-level cognitive activity.”⁹ Similarly, Pasnau and Shields attribute to Aquinas the belief that “we know absolutely nothing about the essences of the separate substances, except what they are not . . . Our only positive information about the world comes through the senses, and we have no reason to suppose that what holds true of the sensory, material realm holds for substances separate from matter.”¹⁰ The Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation has drastic implications, effectively encapsulating the human knower in the sensible realm, like a space traveler trapped in a windowless spaceship who wonders what, if anything, is “outside.” But proponents of the Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation have not always faced up to these drastic implications, which are supposed to be warded off by adding a qualification along the following lines: We are not wholly cut off from incorporeal entities, for we can reason to their existence;

lowest of intelligible realities, to know which it needs the sense faculties as instruments. In this state of union with body, its maner of knowing the spiritual world is not immediate like that of the angel. So its very definition of the spiritual is negative. Spiritual, it says, is what is immaterial, i.e., non-material. And this negative mode of knowing the spiritual shows clearly that its proper sphere is in the world of sense”; Désiré Mercier, Psychologie, 8th edn., vol. 2 (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1908), 7–8; A.-D. Sertillanges, S. Thomas d’Aquin, 4th edn., vol. 2 (Paris: Alcan, 1925), 144–5; as well as Boedder and Roland-Gosselin in notes 45–6 in this chapter. Of course, no movement is monolithic, and the challenges to this thesis posed by Romeyer and Gardeil are discussed in section 2. ⁹ Pickavé, “Human Knowledge,” 314–15. ¹⁰ Robert Pasnau and Christopher Shields, The Philosophy of Aquinas (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2004), 61 (emphasis mine). See also Ralph McInerny, A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 192; Robert Schmidt, “The Evidence Grounding Judgments of Existence,” in C. O’Neill (ed.), An Etienne Gilson Tribute (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959), 243; Marie de l’Assomption, L’homme, personne corporelle: La spécificité de la personne humaine chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2014), 169. Where the Sense-Gatekeeper view is not explicitly affirmed, I have not found an alternative suggested; a tendency in these cases is to hedge by phrasing the relationship between sensation and intellection ambiguously, without taking a stance on what the exact relationship may be; see, e.g., John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite to Infinite Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 35; Ruedi Imbach and Adriano Oliva, La philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin: Repères (Paris: Vrin, 2009), 44; Gabriele Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia of Separate Substances,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 18 (2007), 343–61, here 344. An exception, however, is the brief remark in Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (New York: Routledge, 1993), 126, which articulates the main lines of the position I unfold in detail here.

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it is just that we cannot grasp them without reference to corporeal realities.¹¹ In reality, this qualification secures just enough room for inferring the existence of incorporeal entities from corporeal objects and saying that they are unlike everything we know. The traveler remains trapped in the spaceship, but she can reason from the characteristics of the spaceship that something lies outside that is entirely other from everything she knows. That is not nothing, of course. But the qualification fails to block two serious implications. First, even with the qualification, my own incorporeal intellect remains experientially inaccessible to me, rendering self-awareness impossible—and so one must explain away the evidence for experiential self-awareness in Aquinas.¹² Second, if I do manage to discover by reason that something incorporeal exists, I still cannot say anything meaningfully positive about it at all—and so it becomes impossible to explain why Aquinas himself dedicated so much time to theorizing about the incorporeal.¹³ My own view is that these implications contradict Aquinas’s stated positions, and so the Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation is to be rejected as well—indeed Aquinas himself explicitly rejects it in his seldom-read ¹¹ See for instance McInerny, A First Glance, optimistically expanding the scope of intellectual knowledge: “Sensible reality is a bridge to what is beyond sense. It is in reflecting on our knowledge of sensible things that we come to see that coming to know is very different from such things coming to be. The chalky squiggles on the board enable the mind to think of abstract entities. So, too, the world shows forth the glory of God” (149); and “[We] have the capacity to understand spiritual things, but only by looking through material things first, and we have a natural tendency to dwell where we must first look—in our natural environment, the sensible world, which alone afford a window on the spiritual” (186). But given that “sensory images constitute the original data of thought” (190), it is hard to see how they could communicate anything positive about the incorporeal world, to the extent of providing a “window” to it. ¹² This pessimistic conclusion is explicitly embraced by the neo-Scholastic defenders of the Sense-Gatekeeper view. In the works cited in notes 6–7, Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas, 148–9, and Gilson, Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 473, n. 44, both go on to assert that the human soul merely infers its own existence, although they curiously allow that the soul directly experiences its acts. The Pasnau and Shields volume cited in note 10 likewise goes on to allow that “insofar as separate substances just are minds, we can ascribe to them all the properties that beings with minds have” (61). But if “our only positive information about the world comes through the senses,” how do we know what properties (non-sensible) minds have? Something similar happens with the mention of “reflecting on our knowledge” in the passage cited from McInerny in note 11. ¹³ Taking matters one step further, Carlos Steel has even suggested that Aquinas’s commitment to the dependence of knowledge on sensation (apparently construed in a Sense-Gatekeeper way) threatens the very possibility of metaphysics. See Carlos Steel, “Siger of Brabant versus Thomas Aquinas on the Possibility of Knowing the Separate Substances,” in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, and A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 211–31.

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commentary on the Sentences.¹⁴ In its place, I propose that his real view is as follows: (a) The scope of our intellectual experience encompasses anything ontological equal to and below the human intellect itself, and hence extends beyond the sensible realm to encompass our own incorporeal intellect; (b) We can conceptualize the incorporeal positively in itself, without invoking the properties of physical objects, and the content of this positive concept is precisely ‘intellectuality’; (c) Our concept of intellectuality is precisely what enables us to theorize meaningfully, though with an important and ineliminable imperfection, about other kinds of incorporeal (intellectual) entities such as angels. The aim in this study, then, is to reconstruct precisely Aquinas’s account of how we are epistemically situated vis-à-vis incorporeal realities. The first step is to differentiate between two related but distinct questions we might ask about our intellect’s epistemic scope: namely, whether we can experientially access incorporeal entities, and the degree to which we can conceptualize incorporeal entities, if at all.¹⁵ The Sense-Gatekeeper view, I think, has been implicitly strengthened by the tendency to conflate these questions. Moreover, it is not initially clear what conceptualizing might be, in Aquinas’s framework, or what it would mean to conceptualize something adequately. In particular, the Sense-Gatekeeper view sometimes seems to be linked with a tendency to conflate conceptualizing and imagining: As evidence that we have no positive concept of the incorporeal, some authors point to Aquinas’s assertion that we always have recourse to imagination even when thinking about incorporeal objects—as though the role of imagination is to substitute for intellectual conceptualization.¹⁶ So it is necessary to understand exactly

¹⁴ The following argument appears in Sent. 3.23.1.2, arg. 5 [Moos 3.701 n. 32]: “If someone says that [spiritual habits] are cognized by their having a likeness in the intellect, it can be argued to the contrary that a likeness in intellect is founded in a likeness in imagination in sense . . . But there is no likeness of such habits in imagination or sense, so they cannot be cognized by their likeness.” Aquinas responds, ad 5 [Moos 3.704 n. 47]: “All cognition whereby the intellect cognizes what is in the soul is founded upon its cognizing its object, to which a phantasm corresponds. But its cognition need not remain solely in [those] phantasms; rather, it is necessary that its cognition arise from phantasms, and that it leave imagination behind in some cases.” Given the claims made in the argument, it is clear that Aquinas is rejecting the claim that intellectual cognition of x presupposes an imaginative likeness of x, defending instead the weaker claim that some imaginative likeness of something (not necessarily of x) is a precondition for intellectual activity. This amounts to denying that the conceptual content of intellect is restricted to the content provided by phantasms: a rejection of the Sense-Gatekeeper view. (The relationship between likeness and content will be discussed in section 1.) ¹⁵ I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this way of framing the issue at stake. ¹⁶ See Grabmann, Gilson, and Marie de l’Assomption, cited at notes 8 and 10.

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how intellectual conceptualizing works in Aquinas, a topic that has received little attention. Consequently, in section 1, I spell out how Aquinas’s cognition theory accounts for different modes of experiential access and conceptualizing, and how access is related to conceptualizing. Then in section 2, building on an interpretation I have defended elsewhere,¹⁷ I discuss self-awareness as a counterexample to the Sense-Gatekeeper view, arguing that self-awareness not only constitutes experiential access to some incorporeal reality, our own soul, but also even enables us to conceptualize incorporeal being positively on its own terms, as ‘intellectual.’ Why then does Aquinas insist that we are owlishly bedazzled by incorporeal entities? In section 3, I show that he is referring to God and angels, and explain why he thinks angels pose a special epistemic challenge to us. (By focusing on angels, we can isolate the challenges posed by “higher incorporeality” without muddying the waters with the problem of an infinite object.¹⁸ In fact, in my view, the scholarly tendency to treat our knowledge of non-sensible realities almost exclusively in connection with knowledge of God is partly responsible for the appeal of the Sense-Gatekeeper view.¹⁹) As we will see, angels dazzle us, for Aquinas, not because they are ¹⁷ Therese Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). ¹⁸ But it should be noted that Aquinas’s treatment of our philosophical knowledge of God is not as restrictive as one might expect; for instance, as Wippel has shown, even Aquinas’s most pessimistic statements about our knowledge of God apply only to definitional and comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence (John Wippel, “Quidditative Knowledge of God,” in Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 215–41). Note that in the case of God, the likeness of effect to cause (creature to creator) legitimates analogical predication, which allows Aquinas to present a more optimistic picture of our predications concerning God. But against his Neoplatonist sources, he denies that non-divine intelligences are mediate causes of corporeal entities, so he cannot invoke the likeness of effect to cause to explain what we know about angels. ¹⁹ Scholars have increasingly recognized how medieval treatments of angels serve as philosophical test cases for various problems. See for instance Tobias Hoffmann (ed.), A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), and Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz (eds.), Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Nevertheless, no one has examined whether Aquinas’s extensive philosophical conclusions about angels are in tension with his pessimistic remarks about what we can know of them—not even in the small body of literature on our knowledge of angels in Aquinas. See Steel, “Siger of Brabant versus Thomas Aquinas”; David Wirmer, “Avempace—ratio de quiditate: Thomas Aquinas’s Critique of an Argument for the Natural Knowability of Separate Substances,” in A. Speer and L. Wegener (eds.), Wissen über Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 569–90; John McKian, “What Man May Know of the Angels: Some Suggestions of the Angelic Doctor,” New Scholasticism 29 (1955), 259–77 and 441–60; 30 (1956), 49–63.

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incorporeal, but because they are ontologically disproportionate to the kind of incorporeal reality we experience, i.e., our own intellects. Indeed, he thinks that even after experiencing angels in the afterlife, the human soul will still fail to conceptualize them adequately. Drawing on the principles concerning access and conceptualizing established in section 1, I will attempt to pin down the precise sense in which their “higher” status thwarts our attempts to conceptualize them. The findings of this last section, I hope, will finally reveal why Aquinas—despite his avowed pessimism about our knowledge of angels— gives himself license to indulge in extensive theorizing about the nature and activity of angels.

1. A C C E S S A N D CO N C E P T UA L I Z I N G In inquiring into the scope of our embodied intellects, it is useful to distinguish two possible questions: namely, a question about what our intellects can experientially access, and a question about what our intellects can properly conceptualize.²⁰ And hence it is important for our purposes to get clear on what counts as experiential access and how the mode of access limits our conceptualizing of x, on Aquinas’s account. These principles will help determine in section 2 what kind of concept of incorporeality can result from the experience of our own incorporeal intellect, and enable us to distinguish in section 3 between epistemic obstacles traceable to our lack of experience of angels, and those traceable to their ontological superiority to us.

a. Access Aquinas recognizes two ways in which we become acquainted with some entity x: either “in itself,” or “through another.” To cognize x in itself implies having experience of x, present to the knower in its real being (I will call this “experiential access”). To cognize x through another implies that the knower has first experienced something else, y, from which she then infers something about x (I will call this “indirect access”).²¹ The paradigm case of cognizing x “in itself”—accessing x experientially— is of course sensation of physical objects.²² But, on Aquinas’s view, the senses ²⁰ Aquinas does not use this terminology himself; what I am designating “experiential access” and “proper conceptualizing” represent two dimensions of the case he describes as “cognizing something by its own likeness.” ²¹ E.g., SCG 3.49, Quodl. 7.1.1. ²² The “experience” with which we are concerned here is a direct and immediate acquaintance of the sort we associate with sensation of “some present thing” (see DM

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are not the only cognitive powers capable of accessing realities experientially. Our intellect, too, can cognize realities “in themselves,” including even essences abstracted from sense and imagination, such as ‘rhinoceros’ or ‘triangularity.’ When the intellect accesses its objects in this way, Aquinas sometimes underscores the act’s experiential character by describing it in terms drawn from sensation—e.g., as an “intellectual vision.”²³ But not all intellectual cognition counts as intellectual vision, for Aquinas. So what is the condition under which my intellect experientially accesses some extramental x, i.e., “intellectually sees” x or understands x “in itself ”? (Here, x is something extramental—as we shall see in section 2, experiential access must be described differently in the case of self-awareness, where the knower is the known.) One answer that Aquinas gives, strangely, is that x must be cognized by its own likeness. “A thing is cognized in the manner of intellectual vision whose likeness exists in the intellect, just as the likeness of a thing corporeally seen is in the sense of the one seeing it.”²⁴ Now this criterion is at first glance puzzling. For Aquinas, all cognition—whether sensory, imaginative, or intellectual—requires the assimilation of the knower to the known. If the knower is not already ontologically identical with the known, the knower must be made “like” the known, i.e., be formed by a “likeness” (similitudo) of the known. (This intellectual likeness is just what he calls the “intelligible species.”²⁵) So “to understand x by its likeness” hardly seems distinctive of experiential access to x ! As a criterion for intellectual vision, however, Aquinas seems to be using “its own likeness” in a narrow technical sense referring to the way in which the likeness is produced. Elsewhere, he distinguishes between intellectual vision (experiential access) and the knowledge had by reasoning from effect to cause (indirect access), in terms of how the likeness in the cognitive power results. In the former case, something is cognized “by the presence of its likeness in the cognitive power, as when a stone is seen by the eye because of 16.7, ad 12)—not the experientia equivalent with Aristotle’s empeiria, which has to do with repetition and expectation as the basis for induction (on the latter, see Matthias LutzBachmann, “ ‘Experientia’ bei Thomas von Aquin,” in A. Fidora and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007) 153–62; and Peter King, “Two Conceptions of Experience,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003), 203–26). ²³ E.g., Sent. 4.49.2.7, ad 6; SCG 3.41; ST Ia.56.3. Note that although Aquinas clearly allows for a direct intellectual acquaintance with essences, he tends not to apply the language of “experience” (experientia, experiri) to such cognition; this terminology in his writings tends to be associated more narrowly with cognition of singular objects. ²⁴ SCG 3.41 [Leon. 14.102:4–7]. ²⁵ He describes the intelligible species as “that by which” one cognizes, not “that which” one cognizes, though the interpretation of this phrase remains controversial.

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its resulting likeness in the eye.” In the latter case, “the likeness is not taken immediately from the cognized thing, but from something else from which it results, as when we see a man in a mirror.”²⁶ The distinction here is between an intellectual likeness produced by x itself, and a likeness produced by something else, from which we draw inferences about x. So I would argue that a likeness is x’s own, in the sense required for experiential access, only when x itself is the cause of the likeness. Another way that Aquinas formulates the criterion for intellectual vision of x, I think, amounts to the same thing. In his commentary on the Sentences, in laying out the requirements for intellectual vision of God, he stipulates that the likeness whereby x is understood must have the “same specific ratio” as x: In order for sight to cognize white, it must receive the likeness of white according to the specific ratio [of white], although not in the same mode of being. For the form has one mode of being in sense, and another in the extramental thing. But if the form of yellow were in the eye, it would not be said to see white. And similarly, in order for the intellect to understand some quiddity, there must come to be in it a likeness with the same specific ratio (ejusdem rationis secundum speciem), even if the mode of being is not the same.²⁷

The Scholastic term ratio is notoriously untranslatable, but here “same specific ratio,” contrasted as it is with “different mode of being,” arguably means something along the lines of determination to a kind. The point is that in order to “see” x intellectually, one needs a likeness whose determinacy is the same as that of x. To access experientially an essence that is determinately—if one might excuse the awkwardness—“rhinocereic,” the knower must be formed with a determinately “rhinocereic” likeness or intelligible species. But whence does the likeness acquire this determinacy? There cannot be more in the effect than there is in the cause: The “rhinocereic” determinacy of the likeness can be brought about only by a

²⁶ ST Ia.56.3 [Leon. 5.67]. Elsewhere Aquinas says that intellectual vision occurs when the object’s form “offers itself” to the intellect, again suggesting a causal relationship (Sent. 3.24.1.4, qc. 3 exp.). ²⁷ Sent. 4.49.2.1 [Parma 7.1198]. Note that here Aquinas sets up this criterion as necessary for all understanding of essences (“ad hoc quod intellectus intelligat aliquam quidditatem, oportet . . . ”)—not because he thinks that experiential access is required for any intellectual cognition, but because in this context, discussing the beatific vision, he is only interested in the kind of intellectual activity that would count as intellectual vision (for intelligere defined in terms of vision, see Sent. 1.3.4.5). See also Quodl. 7.1.1 [Leon. 25/1.8:106–11], stating the requirement that “when something is immediately seen by its species, that species must represent the thing according to the complete being of its species; otherwise the thing itself is not said to be seen, but only, as it were, its shadow”; as well as Sent. 3.23.1.2; SCG 3.49; ST Ia.56.3.

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determinately “rhinocereic” agent.²⁸ In this way, the “same specific ratio” criterion seems to amount to the same as the “by its own likeness” criterion. To summarize, then, Aquinas defends a causal criterion for experiential access of extramental x’s: I intellectually experience x-ness if and only if I cognize x-ness by an intellectual likeness that is directly caused by x.

This criterion is linked to a broader principle that is the foundation of Aquinas’s theory of causation: “Every agent makes its patient like itself.” To be an agent just is to impart one’s likeness to something else. In fact, as it now appears, Aquinas also holds the stronger position that an x-likeness, properly speaking, can only be caused by an x-agent. Only a rhinoceros (acting through our sense and imagination²⁹) has the causal power to make our intellect rhinoceros-like. In contrast, if a pig is what I actually experience, then the likeness or intelligible species that results in my intellect is a pig-likeness. This pig-likeness makes my intellect indirectly like rhinoceri only to the extent to which pigs and rhinoceri are themselves alike, and to that extent I can indirectly cognize ‘rhinoceros’ through ‘pig’ (more on this in a moment). For Aquinas, then, indirect access to x is possible only because essences themselves have real commonalities amongst each other, such that x can be cognized from an experience of some y that is like x.

b. How Access Affects Conceptualizing Now two people who both have the same kind of access to x may nonetheless conceptualize x quite differently—in other words, the content of their concept of x may vary considerably. (I use “conceptual content” here to refer to whatever the knower in question understands to be true of x and might subsequently express in statements about x; e.g., for ‘rhinoceros’ the content might be ‘horned,’ ‘thick skinned,’ ‘bulky shaped,’ ‘grey,’ etc.) While Aquinas does not provide a taxonomy of possible variations in conceptual content, one can identify in his writings at least three different ways in which conceptual content can vary. First, conceptual content can be positive or negative. For Aquinas, conceptual content need not always be expressible in some positive assertion

²⁸ See, e.g., DV 10.6, ad 7. ²⁹ Note that Aquinas apparently does not consider the intermediacy of sense and imagination as having any bearing on whether the likeness is “x’s own” or not. And notice too that the indispensable role of imagination entails, for him, that any “malforming” of the intellect’s assimilation to external objects is traceable to the imagination; see, e.g., Sent. 2.39.2.2, ad 4; ST Ia.17.2, ad 2.

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about rhinoceri. A concept can also be usefully enriched by negations that fix its boundaries: My concept ‘rhinoceros’ improves when I learn that they are not a type of pig, or that they do not live in herds. Nevertheless, my concept needs to have at least some positive content in order for me to be able to formulate a definition of rhinoceri: On Aquinas’s view, a definition must say positively what distinguishes this kind from other kinds in the same genus.³⁰ Second, conceptual content ranges along a spectrum from poor to rich, which has to do with how complete my knowledge is.³¹ The zoologist’s concept ‘rhinoceros’ is very rich in comparison to my relatively impoverished concept. The more I experience and study rhinoceri, the richer my conceptual content is—that is, the more my concept ‘rhinoceros’ “fills out,” and hence the more I have to say about rhinoceri. Third, conceptual content ranges along a spectrum from vague to distinct (i.e., more generic to more specific), which has to do with how far my categorization of the essence falls from the gold standard of the Aristotelian definition.³² For instance, to grasp a rhinoceros in terms of a more specific genus, e.g., mammal, is better (more distinct) than grasping it in a higher genus, e.g., living thing. My knowledge is at its most distinct when I can define rhinocerity, which requires placing it correctly in its most proximate genus, and identifying the specific difference that distinguishes it from everything else in that genus. Distinctness, however, is more than merely the precision with which a concept picks out the essence. A definition not only locates the essence within the space of reality, but also provides a unified explanation of the distinctive features of entities that have this essence.³³ (For instance, in the classical definition of ‘human’ as ‘rational animal,’ ‘rational’ is supposed to explain other uniquely human properties, such as ‘risible,’ ‘political,’ ‘artistic,’ etc.)

³⁰ See SCG 3.39. ³¹ I take it that Aquinas’s references to “comprehension” (comprehensio) refer to knowledge that is as rich as it can be, i.e., in which nothing of x’s reality remains unknown to the knower. See for instance Sent. 2.11.2.6, expos., which gives two reasons for failures in cognition, i.e., something in the object remains hidden to the knower, and/or the knower is defective relative to the object and hence “fails to comprehend it”; and Sent. 3.14.1.2.1, ad 2, where comprehension is equated with “seeing totally,” such that nothing that is actually visible in the object escapes vision. ³² See InPhys 1.1; InMeteor 1.1; ST Ia.85.3. ³³ See InMeta 7.3, n. 1325 [Marietti 329]: “Something’s definitive ratio (if there is one) does not signify whatever the name signifies, as when I say ‘someone who bears weapons,’ which signifies the same as ‘weapons-bearer.’ Otherwise, all rationes would be terms, that is definitions”; a similar remark appears in InMeta 7.4, n. 1339, and InPostAn 2.8, n. 6. On the relationship of the nature to its per se accidents, see DV 1.3 and InMeta 6.3, no. 29.

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With all of this in mind, how does lack of experiential access to x affect conceptualization of x? Significantly, Aquinas holds that all our conceptual content comes from experience. So if I have not experientially accessed x, the content of my concept ‘x’ is taken from my experiences of other objects.³⁴ Suppose, for instance, that Jane has never encountered a rhinoceros, but has seen its tracks and heard eyewitnesses describe it by comparing it to more familiar animals. The content of her concept ‘rhinoceros,’ then, is drawn from what she has experienced, e.g.: ‘An animal like an enormous grey pig with very thick skin and a horn on its nose, which moves on all fours and leaves tracks of such and such shape.’ Notice that the likenesses on which Jane relies for conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros’ are not rhinoceros-likenesses, but likenesses of various proxies such as pigs or deer. How well can this concept—a pastiche of borrowed likenesses— assimilate Jane to real rhinocereity? The answer, in any given case, depends on the extent to which the relevant intermediary objects have something in common with rhinoceri. The less rhinoceri have in common with the objects of her experience, the poorer and vaguer Jane’s concept ‘rhinoceros’ is.³⁵ Comparing rhinoceri to rocks (“a kind of grey, pointy rock that moves by itself”) is less informative than comparing them to pigs. In contrast, an accumulation of borrowed content, refined by negations that further narrow down the conceptual “space” that rhinoceri occupy (“doesn’t fly, doesn’t swim”), can be very effective in approximating an essence. The power—and limitations—of a concept acquired through comparisons can be illustrated by two depictions of rhinoceri that were drawn on the basis of testimony alone, without any experience of the real thing: namely, Albrecht Dürer’s astonishing woodcut (Fig. 1), and a medieval drawing of the so-called “monoceros” (Fig. 2).³⁶ In Jane’s case, Aquinas can allow that she does know vaguely “something of” the essence ‘rhinoceros’: namely, its genus ‘animal,’ with which she is

³⁴ SBDT 1.1.2, ad 5 [Leon. 50.85:183–6]: “When something is not cognized by its own form but rather by its effect, the form of the effect takes the place of the form of the thing itself”; and Sent. 3.23.1.2. ³⁵ See Sent. 4.49.2.1, cited at note 27. ³⁶ “They give the name monocerus to an animal that is composed from many animals. It has a terrifying bellow, the body of a horse, the feet of an elephant, a pig’s tail, the head of a deer, and in the middle of its forehead it bears a horn which is beautiful for its wondrous splendor. The horn is four feet long and is so sharp that it easily pierces everything it strikes with one blow. The animal is almost never able to be tamed and hardly ever comes into the power of men while still alive, for seeing itself beaten, it kills itself in a rage.” Albertus Magnus, On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. K. F. Kitchell, Jr. and I. M. Resnick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), vol. 2, bk. 22, p. 1521, line 119.

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Figure 1 Albrecht Dürer, ‘The Rhinoceros’, 1515 Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art.

Figure 2 Anonymous illustration in Jacob van Maerlant, Der Naturen Bloeme, c.1350 Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 71r.

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directly acquainted from experiences of other animals, such as pigs.³⁷ Nevertheless, Jane’s concept has a key deficiency: According to Aquinas, what is proper to rhinoceri as such—what he calls the ratio speciei, the determinacy of the species—necessarily eludes Jane as long as she lacks experience of rhinoceri. In other words, borrowed conceptual content can enable her to approximate conceptually what is proper to rhinoceri as such. But it cannot substitute for the content provided by an “intellectual vision” of ‘rhinoceros.’ The reason is precisely what we saw earlier: She lacks experience of ‘rhinoceros,’ i.e., her intellect has not been causally affected by a rhinoceros. The intelligible likeness whereby she knows ‘rhinoceros,’ then, cannot be determinately rhinocereic, since it was not produced by the causal activity of a rhinoceros through sense and imagination.³⁸ Now Aquinas does not say what the lack of the “determinacy of the species” (ratio speciei) implies for Jane’s conceptual content. At least it seems to be the case that she is ignorant of the specific difference of ‘rhinoceros,’ and hence will not be able to conceptualize ‘rhinoceros’ distinctly, in terms of its proper definition.³⁹ But it seems to me that the deficiency that Aquinas is describing goes beyond a mere inability to articulate a proper definition. On his view, I think, what Jane lacks is not only a piece of information about part of the definition of ‘rhinoceros,’ but more broadly a familiarity with the uniquely rhinocereic way in which common mammalian physical structures and behaviors are instantiated in rhinoceri.⁴⁰ For instance, Jane certainly understands something of rhinocereity when she understands that rhinoceri ³⁷ InPostAn 2.7, n. 6 [Leon. 1*2.199:139–47]: “Someone who cognizes that something exists must cognize that by something that belongs to the thing: either something beyond its essence, or something of its essence,” giving the example of cognizing thunder as “some sound in the clouds, which pertains to the essence of thunder but is not the whole essence”; and Sent. 4.49.2.1 [Parma 7.1198], saying that it is possible to grasp “the same ratio of the genus (eamdem rationem generis)” without intellectually seeing the essence. ³⁸ Sent. 3.14.1.2, ad qc. 1 makes this point clearly [Moos 3.445–6 n.79]: “If something exceeds the intellectual likeness whereby that thing is understood, the intellect does not achieve seeing the essence of that thing. For as was said, the intellect is determined to the cognized thing by that likeness. For instance, if the intelligible species represents human insofar as it is sensible and not insofar as it is rational, then the essence of human is not seen; for when something has been taken away from the essence of a thing, the essence of something other remains”; see also Sent. 4.49.2.1, and SCG 3.39. ³⁹ This seems clear from the example given in Sent. 3.14.1.2, ad qc. 1, in the previous note. ⁴⁰ One reason to think that this is Aquinas’s view has to do with his metaphysics of essence. For instance, in explaining how the definition ‘rational animal’ maps onto this human being Socrates, he insists that there is not some part of Socrates that is ‘animal’ and another part that is ‘rational.’ Although the parts of the definition are “taken from” parts of Socrates, i.e., reason (as something distinctive) and other vital powers (common to Socrates and other animals), humanity in Socrates is not composed of two natures, animality and rationality. Rather, the humanity that Socrates instantiated is just one—and

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have a distinctive gait. But lacking experience of rhinocereity, no matter how carefully she qualifies the comparisons—‘with a gait like that of a pig, but slower and heavier’—her concept can only approximate, never replicate, the unique character of this specific kind of gait. She has, so to speak, used a multiplicity of comparisons to construct a many-sided hole into which this round peg does fit, but not snugly. Jane’s concept ‘rhinoceros’ is deficient, then, in that it fails to reflect the distinctively rhinocereic way of being an animal. In contrast, a rhino observer experiences the multifarious ways that rhinoceri express their nature in their distinctive physical structures and behaviors, and hence can conceptualize ‘rhinoceros’ in terms of what is proper specifically to this animal species, without having to borrow content from concepts of other animals. I will call this sort of conceptualizing “proper conceptualizing.” Experiential access is necessary for proper conceptualizing. And I take proper conceptualizing to be necessary, but not sufficient, for defining x. (So it may be the case that a long-term rhino observer, despite having great experiential familiarity with uniquely rhinocereic features and behaviors, never manages to find the right way to articulate the essence in terms of a genus and specific difference.) In sum: Lacking experiential access to ‘rhinoceros,’ Jane, our armchair zoologist, can know “something” (vaguely) of the essence ‘rhinoceros’ and its characteristic properties, by what it has in common with the entities she does experience. By adding qualifications to these common features, she may even develop a much richer and more precise concept ‘rhinoceros’ than the uninformed zoo visitor. But without acquiring experience of rhinoceri themselves, she cannot properly conceptualize the rhinocereic way in which these common features are instantiated, and hence also will not be able to formulate a definition of ‘rhinoceros.’

c. Are the Senses My Intellect’s Gatekeepers? Now that we understand how Aquinas construes the relationship between access and conceptualizing, we can understand more clearly what exactly the Sense-Gatekeeper view would commit him to. From cases like Jane’s, in which lack of sense-experience leads to conceptual inadequacies, the Sense-Gatekeeper view extracts (a) a universal limitation on what the embodied human intellect can access: namely, sensory experience is the parts of the definition, ‘rational’ and ‘animal,’ are predicated of Socrates as a whole qua human: see esp. InMeta 7, lect. 9, and the references in note 84.

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necessary for intellectual experience; and hence (b) a corresponding restriction on conceptualizing: namely, conceptual content is limited to what is provided by sense-experience (“Nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses”). What are the implications for human knowledge of incorporeal entities? The picture is a grim one. Precisely because they are incorporeal, such entities are experientially inaccessible to us, since they have no color, smell, etc. with which to act upon the senses. If we cannot have sense-experience of incorporeal entities, then neither can our intellect be affected by them so as to access them experientially. And hence when we do think about them, our conceptual content must be drawn from sense-experience, i.e., we must compare them to the corporeal essences that we have experienced. But the essences of corporeal objects “fall short in every way of representing [angelic] quiddities, because separate substances and material things do not have quiddity in the same mode at all.”⁴¹ So any comparison between incorporeal entities and the corporeal entities we do access directly would be eminently uninformative. On this picture, at best we can merely reason that some entities exist that do not have any of the properties familiar to us from corporeal quiddities. This grim portrait appears to be confirmed above all by InDA 3.5, quoted above in the introduction: “Everything that transcends these sensibles known to us are only cognized by us by negation, just as we cognize concerning separate substances that they are immaterial and incorporeal and so on.” Nevertheless, this portrait hangs on two assumptions, which I will attempt to dislodge, one at a time, in the upcoming sections. The first is that the intellect’s scope for experiential access is restricted to what can be experienced by the senses. The second is that when Aquinas speaks pessimistically about our knowing “incorporeal entities,” he is speaking about everything non-bodily. To the contrary: In section 2, we will see that Aquinas thinks that we not only experientially access, but also properly conceptualize, some incorporeal entity—namely, our own intellectual souls. And in section 3, we will see that his pessimistic remarks about knowledge of incorporeal entities refer specifically to intelligences that are ontologically “above” our intellects (i.e., angels), which stymie our conceptual abilities qua ontologically superior, and not qua incorporeal, regardless of whether we access them experientially or not. In working out the details, we will be able to see why despite such pessimistic formulations, Aquinas allows himself considerable license to theorize about these sorts of intelligences.

⁴¹ DV 18.5, ad 6 [Leon. 22/2.547:254–548:261]; see also Sent. 4.49.2.1; SCG 3.41.

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a. Accessing the Incorporeal Intellect It may seem strange to call on Aquinas’s account of self-awareness as a key witness against his commitment to a Sense-Gatekeeper view, for the argumentation has usually gone the other way. For centuries, a steady stream of interpreters have appealed to Aquinas’s alleged commitment to a SenseGatekeeper view as evidence that he holds a theory of purely indirect selfknowledge: Only sensible things can be objects of experience; so since the human intellect is immaterial, it cannot experience itself. In the late thirteenth century, Aquinas’s Franciscan critics are already attributing to him just such a view.⁴² (The view itself predates Aquinas’s arrival in Paris: In a work from the mid-1240s, Roger Bacon considers and rejects an argument that appeals to the Sense-Gatekeeper view against the possibility of any human self-knowledge;⁴³ Aquinas likewise rejects a similar argument a few years later in his Sentences commentary.⁴⁴) The same pessimism concerning what we can know about the human soul was widespread in early neo-Scholastic interpretations of Aquinas. Boedder’s classic 1899 textbook went so far as to define the human soul as “a being that subsists in itself, lacking three dimensions (ens in se subsistens carens trina dimensione).”⁴⁵ This approach reflects perfectly the implications of the Sense-Gatekeeper view, described in the previous section: If our own soul is experientially inaccessible to us, and we can only reason to its existence from its sensible effects, then we can conceptualize it only in terms of content taken from experience of objects that are totally unlike it, i.e., corporeal, sensible objects.⁴⁶

⁴² See, e.g., Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 335, and, for the historical background, F.-X. Putallaz, La connaissance de soi au XIIIe siècle: De Matthieu d’Aquasparta à Thierry de Freiberg (Paris: Vrin, 1991). ⁴³ See Roger Bacon, Questiones supra Librum de causis, ed. Robert Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), 79, ll. 8–17. ⁴⁴ See note 14. ⁴⁵ Bernard Boedder, Psychologia rationalis, 2nd edn. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1899), 174. ⁴⁶ This line of thought is explicitly defended in Marie-Dominique Roland-Gosselin’s review of Blaise Romeyer, “Notre science de l’esprit humain d’après S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Archives de philosophie 1/1 (1923), 32–55, in Bulletin thomiste 1/4 (1924), 113–15, and also in his review of Blaise Romeyer’s “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Archives de philosophie 6/2 (1928), 137–250, in Bulletin thomiste 6/2 (1929), 469–74.

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In the 1920s, however, two French thinkers, Blaise Romeyer and Ambroise Gardeil, independently observed that since Aquinas considers the study of the human soul to be a “science” (scientia), he cannot have been so pessimistic about our knowledge of it. In an Aristotelian framework, a science of the soul would require defining the soul’s essence, which in turn assumes a proper concept of the soul and hence experiential access to it.⁴⁷ Although their proposal was crushed by an avalanche of criticism, it seems to me that their reading of Aquinas (even if considerably flawed in other respects) was in this respect correct.⁴⁸ In fact, I have elsewhere argued at length that Aquinas construes selfawareness as a genuine self-experiencing : When the intellect receives the likeness of an extramental thing and is actually performing an act of understanding, it becomes manifest to itself, experiencing itself “in its acts.” Experiential self-awareness is consistent with Aquinas’s claim that “the beginning of all our intellectual knowledge lies in sensation,” because the soul experiences itself only when it is activated in understanding—an activation that in this life always presupposes sensation. On my view, then, the embodied human intellect in Aquinas does have experiential access to something incorporeal: itself (when it is actually understanding something). I will not rehearse the evidence for this interpretation of Aquinas’s theory of self-awareness again here.⁴⁹ Instead, taking it for granted, I want to explore its implications for the questions at hand concerning the scope of the human intellect’s conceptualizing.

b. Conceptualizing the Incorporeal? A Misconception In the case of Jane and the rhinoceros in section 1, experiential access to x yields a proper concept of x. Nevertheless, given Aquinas’s pessimistic remarks about our knowledge of incorporeal substances, it is tempting to ⁴⁷ Blaise Romeyer, “Notre science de l’esprit humain d’après saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Archives de philosophie 1/1 (1923), 32–55; “La doctrine de Saint Thomas sur la vérité,” Archives de philosophie 3/2 (1925), 1–54; “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Archives de philosophie 6/2 (1928), 137–250; “À propos de S. Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Revue de philosophie 36 (1929), 551–73; Ambroise Gardeil, “La perception expérimentale de l’âme par elle-même d’après Saint Thomas,” in Mélanges Thomistes (Le Saulchoir: Kain, 1923), 219–36; “L’habitation de Dieu en nous, et la structure interne de l’âme,” Revue thomiste 28 (1923), 238–60; La structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique, 2nd edn., 2 vols (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1927); “Examen de conscience,” Revue thomiste 33 (1928), 156–80; “À propos d’un cahier du R. P. Romeyer,” Revue thomiste n.s. 12 (1929), 520–32. ⁴⁸ For a new look at Gardeil, see Camille de Belloy, Connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin: l’herméneutique d’Ambroise Gardeil (Paris: Vrin, 2014). ⁴⁹ See Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, esp. chs. 3–4.

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think that the case of self-awareness is different: We experience something incorporeal without being able to conceptualize it properly. This proposal secured some measure of consensus in the early twentieth-century debate, with both sides agreeing that for Aquinas, the embodied human knower can cognize something that happens to be incorporeal, but not incorporeality itself. As one polemicist, Peillaube, wrote in an entertaining display of the era’s elegant acrimony: “Experience of the spirit, of spiritual realities? Yes. Experience of the spiritual? No. And let us repeat: If some privileged individual possesses such an exceptional experience, we beseech him to tell us in positive terms what it is to be spiritual.”⁵⁰ Peillaube’s challenge disguises a crucial misconception about incorporeality, which has severely hampered efforts to clarify Aquinas’s approach to our intellect’s epistemic scope. The misconception only comes to light when one further inquires: How exactly ought one to make sense of the claim “I experience something incorporeal, but am incapable of conceptualizing incorporeality” within the framework of Aquinas’s cognition theory? It is not enough simply to make a distinction, if it does not line up meaningfully with anything in Aquinas’s own system. Given the relationship between access and conceptualizing discussed in section 1b, there are two possible ways of accounting for the claim under consideration. The first possible thesis is that although I experience my own intellect in the act of thinking, the incorporeality of my intellect falls outside the scope of my experience (and for that reason is not properly conceptualized). The second possible thesis is that I do experience my intellect’s incorporeality, but am unable to conceptualize it properly, because this kind of being lies beyond the scope of my own intellect.⁵¹ A closer look at the first thesis shows why the very idea of a proper concept of ‘incorporeality’ is misleading. Let us consider what it would mean to say that I experience my intellect but not its incorporeality. The assertion evokes familiar cases, in which someone experiences some x that has some property P, but never experiences x as having P. For instance, suppose Jane has seen birds, but never seen a bird hatching from an egg: She has experienced a thing that has hatched from an egg, but not its hatching— so she has no proper concept of ‘hatching.’ Similarly, the claim above might be interpreted as meaning that I experience my intellect, which happens to ⁵⁰ Émile Peillaube, “Avons-nous l’expérience du spirituel” (in two parts) Revue de philosophie 36 (1929), 245–67, 660–86; here 262 (my translation); see also 662–4. Responding to Peillaube, Romeyer accepts the distinction, in “À propos de S. Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain.” ⁵¹ Peillaube seems to suggest both at different points (“Avons-nous l’expérience,” 263–4).

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have the property of incorporeality, without experiencing (and hence properly conceptualizing) that property itself. But now that things are put this way, the fundamental misconception is abruptly laid bare. As a negative term, incorporeality is not some real property or kind of being that we have failed to observe and that hence remains hidden to us, like ‘human’ or ‘prickly’ or ‘three-dimensionally extended.’ Rather, the term ‘in-corporeal’ merely serves to differentiate its referent from corporeal being, as when we say that a worm is ‘non-rational.’⁵² A worm’s non-rationality is not some kind of actuality or being that could be the object of experience or that could be conceptualized in positive terms. What there is to experience and conceptualize in positive terms is the worm and its various cognitive states and behaviors. After studying the worm, one can infer that it is not rational. In doing so, one is not positing some ungrasped or ungraspable worm-reality, but merely classifying the worm’s kind of cognition, distinguishing it from rational cognitions. It would be absurd to draw sweeping claims about the scope of the human intellect, or the inherent transcendent mysteriousness of non-rationality, or the knowability of worms, from the mere fact that it is impossible to observe a worm’s nonrationality. Similarly, the reason that I cannot conceptualize incorporeality in positive terms is not that I am missing some conceptual content that would enable me to conceptualize incorporeality properly. Rather, it is that there is nothing positive to be said about incorporeality as such—not even for an intellect much more powerful than ours—because incorporeality is not some actuality in itself. What there is to experience and conceptualize and discuss in positive terms is ‘intellectuality’, with its various positive features which justify the claim that intellects are not corporeal (just as there is nothing positive to be said about a scalene triangle’s inequality, except to cite the triangle’s positive features such as the measurements of the sides, which justify the claim that the triangle is not equal). The procedure that Aquinas follows in discussing the nature and incorporeality of the human soul reflects these constraints. For him, the human soul’s “specific difference”—its positive, distinctive feature—is intellectuality.⁵³ And it is on the basis of the soul’s intellectuality that he argues that it is not corporeal. “Whence Aristotle . . . demonstrates from the act of understanding the nature of the possible intellect—namely, that it is unmixed [with matter] and incorruptible.”⁵⁴

⁵² On negative terms, see Sent. 1.13.1.4; 1.24.1.3, ad 1. ⁵³ See ST Ia.76.3, ad 4; and for discussion, Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, ch. 7. ⁵⁴ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]; see also DV 10.8.

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In short: It is a mistake to draw any conclusions for the scope of our conceptualizing from the fact that we cannot properly conceptualize incorporeality in positive terms. The real question is whether we can properly conceptualize “the kind of being that is not corporeal”—namely, intellectual being. What there is positively to say about the kind of being that is incorporeal concerns its intellectuality. Or to put it another way, the only positive, proper content that could ever be supplied for the concept ‘incorporeal’ is precisely ‘intellectual’ and other content having to do with intellectuality.

c. Conceptualizing a Kind of Being that is Not Corporeal So in evaluating whether the usual link between access and conceptualizing is disrupted in the case of self-awareness, let us reformulate the two possible theses considered above, in terms of intellectuality rather than incorporeality. Could Aquinas hold either (1) that we experience something intellectual without experiencing intellectuality; or (2) that we do experience intellectuality, but it remains beyond our powers to conceptualize? Rephrased this way, the first thesis is clearly incompatible with Aquinas’s remarks about self-awareness. On his view, self-awareness occurs precisely in encountering oneself as understanding, i.e., exercising intellectuality: “No one perceives herself to be understanding except from understanding something: for understanding is prior to understanding oneself to be understanding; and therefore the soul manages actually to perceive itself existing, by that which it understands or senses.”⁵⁵ On this construal, to be self-aware just is to experience one’s own actualized intellectuality (which is not to say that one distinctly and definitively understands what intellectuality is). So our own intellectuality cannot be something that escapes the scope of our experience. The second thesis (denying that we can properly conceptualize our own intellectuality) is incompatible with Aquinas’s remarks about defining the intellectual soul. As we saw in section 1b, definitions imply proper and positive conceptual content. So on his view, if we can define the intellectual soul, then we can also properly and positively conceptualize it. Now in fact, Aquinas explicitly states that we can define the nature of our own souls.⁵⁶ Definitive knowledge of “what the soul is” (quid sit anima),⁵⁷ even reaching ⁵⁵ DV 10.8 [Leon. 22/2.321:229–34]; and see also ST Ia.88.2, ad 3, cited in note 60. ⁵⁶ See ST Ia.76.3, ad 4. ⁵⁷ DV 10.8 describes how the “human mind is defined by specific or generic cognition” [Leon. 22/2.322.247.49], and how “one knows scientifically (scitur) what the soul is and what its per se accidents are” [Leon. 22/2.321]; see also SCG 3.46 and ST Ia.87.1.

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the status of “science of the soul” (scientia de anima),⁵⁸ is one of the two main kinds of self-knowledge that he attributes to us in our embodied state. He sharply contrasts our ability to define the human soul with our inability to define higher incorporeal substances, e.g., angels: “The angel cannot be properly defined. For we do not know what the angel is, but can only get hints of it through various negations and indications. But the soul is defined as the form of the body.”⁵⁹ Since Aquinas thinks we can define the intellectual soul, then he must accept that we can conceptualize our own intellectuality properly, on its own terms, without having to rely on conceptual content borrowed from experiences of corporeal essences. Moreover, Aquinas insists repeatedly that our own intellectuality does not exceed our own cognitive abilities: “The human soul understands itself by its understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating its power and nature.” (He immediately adds, however, that this self-understanding does not enable us to cognize angels “perfectly,” whose power and nature are disproportionate to the power and nature we experience in ourselves—more on this in section 3.)⁶⁰ Again, in DV 10.8, an objector worries that selfawareness would require the intellect to “inform itself,” resulting in an absurdity: The intellect-as-known would be simpler than (and therefore not ontologically proportionate to) the intellect-as-knower, per impossibile since they are in reality one and the same thing. In his response, Aquinas explains why his account of self-awareness does not make the intellect be simpler than itself, essentially agreeing that it would be absurd to posit a disproportion between the intellect itself qua “known” and the intellect’s intellective abilities qua knower.⁶¹ And in responding to another objection in the same article, he describes the human intellect’s self-knowledge as an “intellectual vision,” while asserting the broader principle that there can be no intellectual vision unless the knower and known are proportionate to each other.⁶² On his view, then, it appears that our own intellectuality does not fall outside our own powers of conceptualization.

⁵⁸ DV 10.8, ad 8 s.c. [Leon. 22.2/325:521–4]: “The science of the soul is most certain, because each one, within himself, experiences himself to have a soul and experiences acts of the soul to inhere in himself”; see also InDA 1.1. ⁵⁹ QDDA 7, ad 16 [Leon. 24/1.62:470–4]. ⁶⁰ ST Ia.88.2, ad 3 [Leon. 5.367]; and Sent. 3.23.1.2, ad 2, stressing the proportionality of knower and known in our self-knowledge but not in our knowledge of angels, in response to objections 1–2, which claim that since the soul cannot know angelic essences, it also cannot know what is present in its own soul. In contrast, on the neo-Scholastic view expressed by Peillaube, “while our soul is substantially united to a body, it is not currently proportioned to grasp itself in its own spirituality” (“Avons-nous l’expérience,” 263, translation mine). ⁶¹ DV 10.8, arg. 16 and ad 16. ⁶² DM 16.8, ad 2.

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Aquinas’s doctrine of self-awareness, then, provides the crucial counterexample to the Sense-Gatekeeper view. The activated human intellect experiences something that is not corporeal (itself), and this experience provides content for conceptualizing the incorporeal soul on its own terms: content that is not and could not be acquired via sensation, though its acquisition is dependent on the intellect’s actualization by corporeal quiddities. There is, in fact, “something in the intellect”—the content of our concept ‘intellectuality,’ taken from the intellect’s self-experiencing—that was not “first in the senses.” In other words, while sensation is a precondition for the acquisition of this conceptual content, that content was not originally the content of senseexperience. And thus to grasp ‘intellectuality,’ in short, is precisely to conceptualize a non-corporeal kind of being as it is in itself. Incorporeality is not, for Aquinas, a kind of mystery-being that surpasses and dazzles our embodied intellects. No intellect, no matter how powerful, could form a positive concept of incorporeality, because there is no positive characteristic in a thing that is its “incorporeality.” What there is positively to know in an incorporeal entity is merely intellectuality. And that is something we experience, and for which we have a positive and proper concept. Of course, that does not mean that self-awareness is sufficient for the human soul to intuit everything there is to know about itself (including that it is not corporeal), any more than a few rhinoceros sightings would make Jane an expert. For Aquinas, it is always the case that we first know things indistinctly and then refine our knowledge through further experience and reasoning.⁶³ Similarly, self-awareness only generates a very indistinct and impoverished concept of our own intellectual, incorporeal being. But because we thereby conceptualize that intellectual, incorporeal being properly, on its own terms (instead of cobbling together content from experiences of other entities), the door is open to the possibility of defining this kind of being much later, after much strenuous reasoning,⁶⁴ and recognizing that it cannot fall into the same genus as corporeal being. 3. H U M AN S A N D T H E I N C O R P O R E AL “ ABO V E ”

a. Central Intelligence Puzzles From what we have just seen, then, it is clear that when Aquinas remarks pessimistically on what we know of “immaterial substances” that “transcend

⁶³ ST Ia.85.5.

⁶⁴ DV 10.8, ad 8 s.c.

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sensibles,” he is not referring to the knowledge we have of our own incorporeal soul. Instead, I argue, he is referring to our knowledge of a kind of incorporeal substance, namely, the “separate substances” that are ontologically superior to the human soul, i.e., angels and God. (In fact, in giving examples of “immaterial substances” that can be known only by negation, he never includes the embodied human soul.⁶⁵) These “higher” incorporeal entities are incorporeal in the sense that they are ontologically complete without matter—unlike the human soul, which despite being incorporeal in the sense that its existence does not depend on being materially instantiated, nonetheless is by nature a hylomorphic form and hence remains ontologically incomplete without material instantiation.⁶⁶ Aquinas explicitly links their ontological superiority with the epistemic challenges they pose to us: It is because they are “higher intelligibles,” “existing above the human soul,” that the owlish eyes of our intellect cannot bear them.⁶⁷ Hence, not only are we incapable of defining their essences⁶⁸—but we even fail to know anything of their essences.⁶⁹ Indeed, “we do not cognize them except by negation.”⁷⁰ Clearly, we are at a serious epistemic disadvantage in approaching such entities. But why? And what exactly is the disadvantage? In uncovering how the human intellect is situated vis-à-vis incorporeal realities, it is our last remaining task to determine how, exactly, we are epistemically situated relative to these “higher” entities—more specifically, the angels that Aquinas identifies with the subsistent intelligences of “the philosophers.”⁷¹

⁶⁵ See for instance SCG 3.41–5, QDDA 16, QDSC 10, ad 7. In ST, the discussion of how we cognize “immaterial substances” in Ia, q. 88, is set under the heading of “how the human soul cognizes that which is above itself, namely, immaterial substances,” and comes after the discussion of self-knowledge in Ia, q. 87. ⁶⁶ ST Ia.75.7, ad 3. ⁶⁷ Aquinas discusses the owl analogy at length in commenting on its source in InMeta 2.1, nos. 282–6; and takes it up also in Sent. I.17.1.4; DV 8.3, ad 5; SCG 3.45; QDSC 10, ad 7; ST Ia.88, proem., etc. ⁶⁸ The attention he devotes to establishing this thesis seems excessive unless one is familiar with the historical background: One of the views that entered the thirteenthcentury Parisian academy with the Arabic-to-Latin translation movement was the view that ultimate human beatitude consists in the contemplation of separate intelligences other than God, and that this contemplation is achievable exclusively by philosophical means (see Sent. IV.49.2.1 for his summaries of the various arguments on offer). So Aquinas’s denial that we can experientially grasp angelic quiddities is charged with implications about key topics such as human teleology and its completion by grace. ⁶⁹ See note 92. ⁷⁰ See note 5. ⁷¹ For an evaluation of the philosophical argumentation in Aquinas for the existence of such finite self-subsisting intelligences, see Gregory Doolan, “Aquinas on the Demonstrability of Angels,” in Hoffmann (ed.), A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy, 13–44.

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At first, it looks as though the obstacle to our grasping angelic essences is simply that we have no experiential access to angels.⁷² As we saw in section 1a, experiential access to some extramental x implies x’s action on the intellect. And, for Aquinas, all natural causal action on our intellects in this life comes through the senses and imagination. He insists that even when angels act upon us, they do so by causing changes in our senses or imaginations.⁷³ So if angels do not act on embodied intellects, we cannot properly conceptualize them, nor define their essences. But lack of experience cannot be the whole story—in fact, Aquinas’s position on what and how we can conceptualize concerning angels is much more complicated. One clue is that for Aquinas, even when the disembodied human soul finally experiences angels in the afterlife, it remains at a cognitive disadvantage because of its lower ontological status: “The mode of the substance of a separate soul is below the mode of an angelic substance, though it conforms to the mode of other separate souls. And therefore it perfectly cognizes other separate souls, but cognizes angels imperfectly and deficiently.”⁷⁴ Another, even more important, clue is that Aquinas is much more pessimistic about our embodied knowledge of angels than he ought to be, if the difficulty were merely a lack of experience. Our character Jane, lacking experience of rhinoceri, can still grasp “something of” their essence when she conceptualizes them positively as ‘animals,’ which they have in common with the pigs she does experience. So one might expect that our own selfknowledge should provide a positive reference point for conceptualizing “something of” an angelic essence that our souls have in common with them, e.g., intellectuality. Even if we cannot grasp the specifically angelic way of being intellectual, surely we should be able to conceptualize “something of” angelic essences positively by comparison with human souls, insofar as both have a generic intellectuality in common, as some scholars have suggested.⁷⁵ Now Aquinas was in fact familiar with just such a line of reasoning from Augustine: “Just as the mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things through ⁷² Thus Aquinas denies in ST III.30.3, ad 1 that we “intellectually see” them in this life; see also the intuitus mentis in Sent. 1.2.1.5, expos.; SCG 3.45’s repetition of videre; and the use of percipere in SBDT, Prooem. A number of other reasons that he gives for our difficulties in knowing angels also amount to a denial of experiential access: e.g., that angels fall outside the proper object of our embodied intellects (Sent. 4.49.2.1); that angelic substances do not act on the senses (ST Ia.88.1); that angels, being already intelligible by nature, cannot be made intelligible by our agent intellect (DV 18.5). ⁷³ See ST Ia, q. 111, and DM 16.12. ⁷⁴ ST Ia.89.2 [Leon 5.375]. ⁷⁵ See, e.g., Pasnau and Shields, The Philosophy of Aquinas, 66; Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,” 344.

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the senses of the body, so [it gathers knowledge] of incorporeal things through its own self.”⁷⁶ And curiously, when Aquinas discusses this Augustinian argument, his portrait of our knowledge of angels looks considerably more optimistic. On the one hand, he insists that knowledge of our own intellectuality does not enable us to define angelic quiddities (the same, of course, is true of any case where the knower has no experiential access of the quiddity to be defined), “for the act of understanding, whence we derive our scientific knowledge of our soul’s quiddity, is far removed from the intelligence of a separate substance.”⁷⁷ On the other hand, he agrees that our self-knowledge does play an important role in our conceptualizing of angels. We could not even grasp angels as intellects at all, “if our soul did not cognize, from its own self, what intellectual being is.”⁷⁸ It is even the case that “by what we know of our soul’s quiddity, we can arrive at scientific knowledge of some remote genus of separate substances.”⁷⁹ In one of the most optimistic formulations, from ST Ia.88.1, ad 1, he goes so far as to say that Augustine is right, “to the extent that, as the philosophers also say, the science of the soul is a certain principle for cognizing separate substances. For by cognizing itself, our soul achieves a certain cognition of incorporeal substances, to the extent that it is able, though not so as to cognize them simply and perfectly by cognizing itself.”⁸⁰ In these passages, Aquinas seems to allow that, due to what we have in common with them, we can conceptualize angels vaguely and in positive terms—which seems strangely inconsistent with his much more pessimistic claim that we cannot know anything of their quiddities and cognize them only by negation. So Aquinas’s treatment of our knowledge of “higher” incorporeal entities poses three puzzles for us to solve. First, what is the status of our concepts of these higher intelligences? Second, what explains the alarming looseness in Aquinas’s optimistic and pessimistic descriptions? Third, given that even in his most optimistic moments, he insists that we cannot know what is distinctive of angelic intelligence in this life, how can he justify his extensive treatments of their substance, mode of operation, willing, etc.? (Indeed, he even seems to push his position to the point of incoherence by invoking these detailed treatments in order to explain why we cannot know anything about angelic quiddities!)

⁷⁶ Augustine, De Trinitate 9.3.3 [Mountain, 296], cited by Aquinas specifically in connection with knowing angels in SCG 3.46 and ST Ia, 88.1, arg. 1; see also ST Ia.88.2, arg. 3 and QDDA 16, arg. 8. ⁷⁷ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]; see also ST Ia.88.1, ad 1. ⁷⁸ InDA 1.1 [Leon. 45/1.5–6:118–22]; SCG 3.46; ST Ia.88.1, ad 1. ⁷⁹ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]. ⁸⁰ ST Ia.88.1, ad 1 [Leon. 5.365–6].

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b. The Two Kinds of Genus–Species Relationships The key to all three puzzles lies in Aquinas’s distinction between composite and simple quiddities, which he associates with two different ways of differentiating species within a genus. The quiddities of material substances, Aquinas explains, are composite, i.e., composed of a genus and a specifying difference, which are related to each other as indetermined to determiner, or material to formal. “In material things, that which determines [that thing] to a specific grade, namely form, is other than what is determined, namely matter: whence the genus is taken from the latter, and the difference is taken from the former.”⁸¹ (The ‘matter’ and ‘form’ here are not the prime matter and substantial form that constitute the physical substance, but rather genus and specifying difference—e.g., ‘animal’ and ‘rational’—which are two formalities with a material-to-formal-type relationship inasmuch as one formality is rendered determinate by the other. Nevertheless, only the quiddities of material substances are composed in this way, for reasons that cannot be discussed here.⁸²) The crucial point here is that in composed quiddities such as ‘rhinoceros,’ the genus and specifying difference represent two distinct formalities: ‘animal’ and a specifying difference that can be labeled ‘DiffR.’ (Although I properly conceptualize ‘rhinoceros,’ I cannot define it!) One of those formalities, the genus ‘animal,’ is something that ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig’ have in common, meaning that rhinoceri and pigs are animals equally and to exactly the same extent. What distinguishes rhinoceri and pigs is not anything in their animality as such, but rather the addition to their animality of formal determinations (DiffR and DiffP) that exclude each other.⁸³ To put it another way, ‘rhinoceros’ has more formality or actuality than ‘animal,’ and this formality over and above that of ‘animal’ is contributed by DiffR, which makes animality determinately “rhinocereic.”⁸⁴ In contrast, Aquinas holds that quiddities that have no relation to matter, i.e., those of angelic intelligences, are simple. Their determinacy is not

⁸¹ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6]. ⁸² For further discussion, see Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,” 345–50. ⁸³ QDDA 7, ad 18. ⁸⁴ As Aquinas explains, however, the composition of genus and difference should not be construed as corresponding to two distinct and composed natures in the thing. Rather, a rhinoceros has one nature, ‘rhinoceros,’ which is a determination of animality; see SCG 2.95; InMeta 7.9; and for discussion, Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,” 345–50—but see also note 91.

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attributable to the composition of undetermined + determiner.⁸⁵ “In immaterial things, that which determines is not other than that which is determined. Rather, each one according to itself holds a specific grade among beings. And therefore, among such beings, genus and difference are taken, not from what is other and other (aliud et aliud), but from what is one and the same, differing only in our consideration.”⁸⁶ “According to metaphysics and natural [science], which considers what is real, genus and difference must be grounded on diverse natures. And in this way we can say that there is no genus and difference for spiritual substance, but only forms and simple species.”⁸⁷ We cannot help treating angelic quiddities as though genus and difference were distinct formalities in them (we will see in a moment why, and what implications there are for our conceptualizing them). But in reality, an angelic quiddity is “determinate by itself, nor does it have to have two parts, a determining and a determined.”⁸⁸ What differentiates angelic species, in short, is their determinate intensity of perfection within the genus ‘intellect’: An angelic species is “higher” in the genus to the extent to which its native intellectuality is “more perfect” than others. To put it another way, each angelic quiddity is a discrete, utterly simple, and wholly unique intellectual quantum.⁸⁹ One angelic species, say, ‘Gabrielity,’ does not have a kind of being that another, say, ‘Michaelity,’ lacks. All angelic species have the same kind of being, i.e., intellectuality— nothing more and nothing less. ‘Michaelity’ and ‘Gabrielity’ are distinguished only insofar as ‘Michaelity’ represents a more perfect and simple actualization of the same kind of formality that Gabriel has. Aquinas explains these degrees of perfection as degrees of intellectual actuality: namely, increasingly superior intelligences are increasingly virtuosic in their understanding, understanding more of reality in an increasingly simple intuition, “needing fewer forms [i.e., intelligible species] to complete them.”⁹⁰ (The ⁸⁵ Angels themselves are not absolutely simple: Aquinas posits in them the composition of essence and existence, potency and act, distinguishing them from God, who is not so composed (see, e.g., ST Ia.50.2, ad 3). It is worth noting, too, that each angel has a unique quiddity, i.e., each angelic quiddity is instantiated once, since for Aquinas, matter is necessary for multiplication of individuals within a species; ST Ia.50.4; QDSC 8, ad 4; SLDC 9. ⁸⁶ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6]; see also SCG 2.95. ⁸⁷ QDDA 7, ad 17 [Leon. 24/1.62:476–82]. ⁸⁸ SCG 2.95 [Leon. 13.568]. ⁸⁹ QDDA 7, ad 6 [Leon. 24/1.61:383–92] emphasizes that the gradation of angelic perfection is not a gradation in terms of “participating a form in different ways, as wood participates in white,” but rather a gradation of “perfection of forms.” The point, I take it, is that Aquinas prefers to say that one angel is more perfect in its intellectuality than another, rather than that one angel is more an intellect (“more” a member of the genus intellect) than another. ⁹⁰ QDDA 7 [Leon. 24/1.60:304–8]; see also Sent 2.3.1.3; QDDA 7, resp and ad 5; SCG 2.95–6.

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human intellectual soul also has a place on this spectrum, which we will discuss in section 3c.) Now the crucial idea here emerging is that species-differentiation happens differently within the two main genera of ‘substance.’ In the genus of ‘body,’ species-differentiation is “horizontal/additive.” The determinacy of each species implies formality over and above that of the host genus. Thus each species is constituted as a determinate kind of being by a specifying difference added to a genus. By contrast, in the genus ‘intellect,’ speciesdifferentiation is “vertical/quantitative.” The determinacy of each intellectual species is not attributable to any formality over and above ‘intellectual,’ but consists merely in having that intellectuality to a unique degree of perfection. The upshot is that intellectual (incorporeal) quiddities are related to the genus ‘intellect’ differently than corporeal quiddities are related to their genera, such as ‘animal’ or more remotely ‘body.’ The composite quiddities ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig’ are animal in the same way but distinguished by their specifying differences, which are contrary formalities. So they are differentiated in that they are different kinds of animals, not in that one represents a “higher degree of animal perfection” than the other. In contrast, the simple angelic quiddities ‘Michaelity’ and ‘Gabrielity’ are distinct in that intellectuality in one is more perfect (more comprehensively actualized) than in the other, not in that their intellectuality is additionally determined by contrary formalities.⁹¹ ⁹¹ My interpretation of Aquinas on this point is significantly different from that of Galluzzo, who is puzzled by why Aquinas distinguishes material vs. incorporeal quiddities as composed vs. simple, when genus and difference even in material quiddities never map onto a real composition of natures in the corresponding material substances (see note 84, and Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,” 354). As a solution, Galluzzo proposes that for both material and incorporeal quiddities, genus and difference never correspond to a real composition of natures in the relevant substances, but they always correspond to a real composition of some sort—a matter–form composition for material quiddities, and an essence–existence composition for incorporeal quiddities (355–8). On his reading, then, angelic quiddities are (like material quiddities) composed of genus and difference, a composition that corresponds to the composition of existence and essence in angels (358). I cannot see how this reading can be reconciled, however, with the explicit contrast that Aquinas draws between angelic and material quiddities precisely with respect to whether their genus and difference are really or only rationally distinct, e.g., in QDDA 7, ad 17 and ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 (Galluzzo’s attempt at reconciliation in 353 does not account for the contrast being drawn in precisely that way). Without getting into too much detail, I think Galluzzo’s interpretation misses the point of Aquinas’s insistence that differentiation among material species is “founded upon diverse natures” whereas differentiation among intellects is founded “upon one nature” (QDDA 7, ad 17, cited at note 108). I agree with Galluzzo that the “diverse natures” in question are not ‘animality’ and ‘rationality,’ but I am not convinced by his suggestion that instead they are matter and form. Rather, as I read Aquinas, the “diverse natures” are, e.g., ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig,’ each

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Now what is interesting for our purposes is the conclusion that Aquinas draws for our conceptualizing of composite vs. simple quiddities. A composite quiddity, he explains, can be known partially (vaguely), whereas a single quiddity must be known wholly or not at all. In other words, composite quiddities can be conceptualized vaguely when we grasp one of the parts of the quiddity. And hence even if Jane lacks a proper concept of ‘rhinoceros,’ she is still able to properly conceptualize “something of” its quiddity when she conceptualizes it as ‘some kind of animal,’ drawing the conceptual content of ‘animal’ from her experiences of other kinds of animals.⁹² This part of the quiddity ‘rhinoceros’ is one that it shares in common with ‘pig’: rhinoceri and pigs are equally and in the same sense animals. Consequently, Jane can prescind from the determining formality of ‘pig’ to arrive at the indeterminate formality ‘animal,’ and apply this conceptual content ‘animal’ to rhinoceri without needing to make any further qualification. The experience that enables her to conceptualize properly the animality of ‘pig’ is sufficient to enable her to conceptualize properly the animality of ‘rhinoceros.’ And hence she properly conceptualizes some part of the quiddity ‘rhinoceros’ without properly conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros’ (since she has no experience of rhinoceri).⁹³

of which is in itself one nature, and diverse from the other. Their diversity consists in the fact that the kind of being that rhinoceri have is not found in pigs (‘pig’ and ‘rhinoceros’ are opposed); and yet they have a certain commonality, since both rhinocereity and pigness are determinations of animality. This relationship between commonality and diversity is expressed by a real distinction between genus and difference in their respective definitions. In the case of angels, however, there is no kind of being in Gabriel that is not found in Michael—the only real kind of being they have is ‘intellect.’ So there is no diversity in their formalities that could ground a real distinction between genus and difference in them. ⁹² InPostAn 2.7 [Leon. 1*/2.199:126–39], stating that one way of “knowing something without knowing perfectly what it is” is to know “something of the essence,” e.g., “comprehending that something is a human because it is rational, without cognizing whatever else completes the essence”—which he denies is possible in knowing simple quiddities; see also InMeta 9.11. Aquinas also relies on this distinction between simple and composite quiddities in responding to an argument attributed to Ibn Bājjah (Avempace) in Averroes’s Long Commentary on De anima, namely, that once one has abstracted composite quiddities, one can simply continue abstracting the “quiddity of a quiddity” and then the quiddity of that quiddity, until one arrives at a simple quiddity. But repeating Averroes’s critique, Aquinas argues that simple quiddities are “in every way dissimilar” to composite quiddities. So the proper concept of a simple quiddity cannot be gotten by abstraction from a composite quiddity. See, e.g., Sent. 4.49.2.1; DV 18.5, ad 6; SCG 3.41; and criticizing Aquinas’s misconstrual of Ibn Bājjah, see Wirmer, “Avempace—ratio de quiditate.” ⁹³ In fact, Aquinas holds that conceptual vagueness always precedes conceptual distinctness even for entities that we do properly conceptualize; for details, see InPhys 1.1; SBDT 6.3; ST Ia.85.3; InPostAn 2.7–8.

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In contrast, the simple quiddities of angelic intelligences cannot be conceptualized partially (i.e., vaguely) in this way. What distinguishes ‘Gabrielity’ from ‘Michaelity’ is a difference in degree of perfection, which does not introduce into Gabriel any additional formality distinct from intellectuality. There is no formal characteristic in ‘Gabrielity’ that could be set aside to reveal some undetermined part common to all intellects.⁹⁴ As a result, unlike in ‘rhinoceros,’ there is no generic part in an angelic essence that could be properly conceptualized while leaving vague the specific determination. So, Aquinas concludes, one either conceptualizes an angelic essence wholly, or not at all: “One cannot cognize something of the substance of a simple thing unless one cognizes the whole.”⁹⁵ How then would Aquinas analyze the statement, “At least I know that these higher entities are intellectual, even if I don’t know what is distinctive of these kinds of intellects”? In section 3d, we will investigate further. For now it is merely enough to emphasize that, on his view, when we do approach angels this way, something different is happening from when Jane cognizes ‘rhinoceros’ as ‘animal.’ Before examining what the difference is, however, we need to look more closely at where the human soul fits into the genus ‘intellect.’

c. Situating the Human Intellect in the Scale of Intellectual Perfection Now according to Aquinas, human intellectual souls and angels are members of the same metaphysical genus ‘intellect.’⁹⁶ So the human intellectual soul has a place on the continuum of intellectual perfection—but a special one. To use the analogy of the number line, angels occupy the degrees of intellectual actuality “1, 2, 3 . . . ,” whereas the human soul occupies position “0.” Or as Aquinas puts it: The human intellect is related to the genus just “as prime matter” is related to the genus ‘body.’ It is a potency for intellectual actuality, and becomes actualized only when it has received an intelligible species and is thinking about something.⁹⁷ ⁹⁴ See QDDA 6, ad 16 [Leon. 24/1.53:366–70], denying that “intelligibility is common to many (convenit multis) in the manner of one form of a species distributed among many according to a division of matter; rather, it is diversified according to a diversity of forms.” ⁹⁵ See the texts cited at note 92. ⁹⁶ Aquinas asserts this through his career; for one early example, see Sent. 3.13.2.2, ad qc. 1. In contrast, physical things and angels only share a logical genus; see ST Ia.88.2, ad 4. Metaphysical vs. logical genera are discussed in section 3d. ⁹⁷ E.g., Sent. 2.3.1.3; QDDA 6, ad 16 (speaking of a forma communis for both); QDDA 7; ST Ia.87.1. He attributes to Averroes the idea that there is something parallel to prime matter in the intellectual genus.

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What this means is that the only intellectual actuality that we have is necessarily composed—i.e., composed of the “matter” of our intellectual potency, and the “form” that is the intelligible species abstracted from sensation. (Similarly, physical substances have actuality only as composed of prime matter and substantial form.) All our intellectual actuality is composed in this way and hence dependent on the reception of a form abstracted from sense-experience. In contrast, an angel just is a simple intellectual form. An angel, on Aquinas’s view, must use a received intelligible species to cognize things other than itself, so its manner of cognizing other things is composite. But in itself it has—or better is—a non-composed intellectual actuality, whereas in itself the human soul merely has an intellectual potency whose actualization is wholly dependent on the reception of abstracted forms.⁹⁸ The composite and sense-dependent nature of our intellectual actuality radically shapes how we understand: the kinds of intelligible species that we use and how they represent essences, the vagueness of the concepts we acquire from a first acquaintance with essences, the use of reasoning to acquire more knowledge.⁹⁹ In his early texts Aquinas goes so far as to characterize the human–angel difference in terms of a classical distinction between “reason” and “intellect.”¹⁰⁰ And thus how we conceptualize intellectuality—indeed, our very definition of intellectuality—is dependent on our experience of being intellectual in an embodied way, with all the partiality, discursivity, and dependence on sensation that this mode of understanding entails.¹⁰¹ Nothing in my embodied and sense-oriented experience of my own thinking conveys what the utterly simple thoughts of separate intelligences are like. “The human soul understands itself by its act of understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating its power and nature. But neither by this nor by anything else found in material things can we perfectly cognize the power and nature of immaterial substances, because their powers are not adequated to something of this sort.”¹⁰² In placing human souls at position “0” (sheer potency for intellectual actuality) in the genus ‘intellect,’ therefore, Aquinas seeks to achieve an extremely delicate harmonization among three theses: (1) Humans are authentically intellectual creatures; (2) Humans are not intellectual in the ⁹⁸ See, e.g., ST Ia.87.1. ⁹⁹ As extensively discussed in QDDA 17, ad 1; see also SCG 2.94. ¹⁰⁰ Sent. 2.9.1.4. ¹⁰¹ Sent. 1.3.4.3 [Mandonnet 1.118]: “In the definition of the act of understanding, the phantasm must be included, which is its object.” ¹⁰² ST Ia.88.2, ad 3 [Leon. 5.367]; Sent. III.23.1.2, ad 2; ST Ia.88.2, s.c.

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same way that angels are intellectual¹⁰³ (in order to exclude a substancedualist view of the soul as essentially a weak angel joined to a body); (3) Intellectual essences are distinguished by degrees of perfection, not by differentiating forms. Re (1): The authenticity of our intellectual nature is secured by the fact that we can be in the intellectual genus in any sense at all. Even at position “0,” our souls occupy the same continuum that angels are on relative to each other, and have a potency for acquiring an intellectual formality that angels already naturally possess. Re (2): At position “0,” human souls are distinguished from angels in a different way than one angel is distinguished from another. “0” and “1” represent potency and minimal actuality, whereas “1” and “2” represent weaker and stronger actualities. The lower angel is merely less simple (having less unified and universal knowledge) than a higher. But humans understand in a different (composite) mode of intellect altogether. Nevertheless, re (3): Although ‘simple’/‘composite,’ or ‘angelic’/‘human,’ or ‘embodied’/‘separate’ represent distinct modes of intellection, they do not correspond to distinct formalities added to a common generic intellectuality. Rather, they represent irreducibly distinct intellectual quiddities at distinct degrees of perfection. Another way of saying this is that ‘composite’ does not designate something over and above our intellectuality, in such a way that we could set it aside in order to uncover a generic ‘intellectuality’ that angels and humans have in common and that is essentially indifferent to further specification.

d. Puzzle 1 Solved: Composite Intellects Conceptualizing Simple Ones The pieces are now all in place to solve our first puzzle: namely, what are the precise limitations on our conceptualizing of incorporeal substances “above” us? Recall that since we have no experience of higher intelligences, we can conceptualize their quiddities only improperly, by comparison either to corporeal things or to our own intellectuality. Comparisons to corporeal things are not informative at all, since one could say only that angelic intelligences are not like bodies. Our only lifeline to conceptualizing angels in positive terms comes through comparisons to our own intellectuality— but these are problematic for a different reason. Although our intellects differ “only” by degree from angelic intelligences, the difference between ¹⁰³ E.g., ST Ia.75.7, ad 3; QDDA 7.

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those particular degrees is the difference between potency and act, resulting in different modes of intellection. Consequently, we can apply to angels the concept ‘intellectual’ acquired through self-awareness—but only if we negate the composite, sense-dependent, gradually actualized mode of intellection that we find in ourselves. “We tend to define simple things by negation: e.g., ‘A point is that which has no parts.’ This is not because negation is part of their essence, but because our intellect, which first apprehends composites, cannot arrive at a cognition of simples except by removing the composition.”¹⁰⁴ Hence, we cannot do without negation in conceptualizing higher incorporeal entities, for Aquinas. Even when we describe their quiddities or mode of intellection as ‘simple,’ we are effectively conceptualizing them as ‘intellects, but not ones whose activity involves composition.’ In knowing material quiddities, this reliance on negation would not be so bad: It is after all how Jane knows something of the quiddity ‘rhinoceros,’ when she conceptualizes it as ‘a kind of animal, different from a pig.’ But in negating the body-bound character of our knowing, a further deficiency unavoidably occurs: We are forced to conceptualize the genus ‘intellect’ improperly as though it were the kind of genus divided by different and opposed formalities rather than by degrees of perfection within a single formality. In doing so, we treat ‘embodied, compositely-acting’ as though it were a formality over and above intellectuality that is opposed to some unknown corresponding formality in angels—and we treat intellectuality as something indeterminately common that angels and humans have in the same way. So when we say that angels are intellects, but deny that they have the same mode of understanding as we do, Aquinas explains that we are instituting a distinction of reason (setting up specific differences within the genus ‘intellect’ as though to differentiate opposing kinds of being), where in reality there is just one kind of being differentiated by degrees of perfection. “[In immaterial substances, genus and difference] differ only in our consideration. Insofar as our intellect considers [an immaterial quiddity] as indeterminate, it takes on the account of a genus; but insofar as the intellect considers it as determinate, it takes on the account of a difference.”¹⁰⁵ Consequently, we are worse off vis-à-vis those higher intelligences than Jane is vis-à-vis rhinoceri when she conceptualizes them merely as ‘a sort of animal, different from a pig.’ ‘Animal’ is something that is indeterminately common to both pigs and rhinoceri in the same way, such that what distinguishes them is their determinate form of animality. That is why, despite not properly conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros,’ she can still properly

¹⁰⁴ ST Ia.10.1, ad 1 [Leon. 4.94]; see also Ia.85.8; DV 1.5, ad 15. ¹⁰⁵ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6]; see also SCG 2.95.

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conceptualize “something of” it, i.e., its genus. In contrast, intellectuality is not something angels have in the same way as we do. Hence, when we negate the imperfections of our own understanding in order to conceptualize them as generically ‘intellectual,’ we are not in fact properly conceptualizing “something of” angelic quiddities. Instead, we are creating a conceptual schema that lets us classify them by treating them in a composed way that is foreign to their quiddities.¹⁰⁶ Notice that as long as our concept ‘intellectuality’ refers merely to a certain kind of soul—what we experience in self-awareness—no such problem occurs. A problem emerges only when we prescind from our own mode of intellection to construe ‘intellectuality’ as a genus that includes other members higher than our own souls. We can only take this step by substituting what Aquinas calls a “logical genus” for a “metaphysical genus.” In explaining how angels and human souls can be said to be different species of intellects, he writes: Genus and difference can be understood in two ways. In one way, according to a real consideration by metaphysics and natural [science], and in this way, genus and difference must be grounded on diverse natures. And in this way nothing stops us from saying that there is no genus and difference for spiritual substance, but only forms and simple species. In another way, according to a logical consideration; and in this way genus and difference need not be founded on diverse natures, but on one nature in which there is considered something proper and something common. And in this way nothing stops us from positing genus and differences in spiritual substances.¹⁰⁷ [...] When speaking naturally, the differences must be contraries . . . but in a logical consideration any opposition of any sort will suffice for the differences, as occurs in the differences of numbers, in which there is no contrariety. And something similar holds true for spiritual substances.¹⁰⁸

The point is that although our intellects and angels belong to the same metaphysical genus (as we saw earlier), in order to make sense of higher incorporeal entities in our own way, we have to negate the limitations we find in our own intellectuality, just as if human and angelic intellectuality were diversified through opposed differences. In doing so, we adopt a “logical consideration,” which is blind to the way in which different species ¹⁰⁶ In ST Ia.50.2 [Leon. 5.6], denying that intellectual distinctions always correspond to real distinctions in things, Aquinas says that “because angelic substances are above our intellect, it cannot achieve apprehending them as they are in themselves, but [only] according to its own mode whereby it apprehends composite things.” See also ad 1, quoted repeatedly above. ¹⁰⁷ QDDA 7, ad 17 [Leon. 24/1.62:475–89]. ¹⁰⁸ QDDA 7, ad 18 [Leon. 24/1.62:490–8].

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are opposed to each other within a given genus—or in other words, we formulate the commonality between human and angelic intellects in terms of the logical genus ‘intellectual.’ This logical consideration, broadly speaking, effectively “flattens” the disproportion between the two kinds of genera with their different kinds of divisions. (In fact, logical consideration is also, for Aquinas, what we use when we treat core metaphysical notions such as ‘substance’ or ‘act’ as univocal across both the genera of ‘body’ and ‘intellect.’)¹⁰⁹ This flattening move offers the advantage of a universal conceptual schema that enables us to extend our concept ‘intellectual’ to higher incorporeal entities. The disadvantage is that this schematizing artificially treats angelic quiddities as harboring the very complexity that differentiates our intellects from them. But we have no choice but to accept this disadvantage if we are to conceptualize them at all. And so we conceptualize these higher intelligences not only improperly (as is the case whenever we do not know something through its own likeness), but also incommensurately, in a manner that does not “fit” their metaphysical stature. To put it another way, in this embodied state of life, we have a proper concept of the incorporeal entity that is our intellect, but not of ‘intellectuality’ as a genus encompassing both composite and increasingly simple degrees of perfection. Though our concept of the intellectual genus to which angels belong is not false or misdirected, it is still incommensurate with the reality it attempts to fit. And thus when a philosopher were to say that “at least I know that such higher beings are intelligences, even if I do not know what their intellectuality is like,” she is not really properly conceptualizing their higher genus, but applying to them a logical schematic that mischaracterizes the way in which an angelic species of intellectuality is opposed to ours, and to each other. She has, so to speak, a 2D concept of a 3D reality. It is important to note that this failure in proper conceptualization and reliance on “logical consideration” is the result of attempting to conceptualize angels by comparison to our own intellects, while lacking any experience of those higher intelligences. So this particular deficiency does not persist in the afterlife, when, for Aquinas, the separated human soul does experience and hence properly conceptualize angels. Even then, however, he insists that the soul “imperfectly and deficiently” cognizes angels, because it remains ontologically “lower” than them and must cognize them “in the mode of its own substance.”¹¹⁰ He does not, however, speculate about what ¹⁰⁹ For discussion of metaphysical vs. logical genera and the relevant texts, see Gregory Doolan, “Aquinas on Substance as a Metaphysical Genus,” in Doolan (ed.), The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 99–128. ¹¹⁰ See ST Ia.89.2, cited at note 74.

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this imperfection precisely entails; in any case, it is a moot point for our conceptualizing of incorporeal entities in this life.

e. Puzzles 2 & 3 Solved At this point, we can propose an answer to the second puzzle, namely: What accounts for the curious mix of pessimism and optimism that Aquinas displays in characterizing our knowledge of the incorporeal entities above us? First, I suggest that Aquinas’s pessimistic remarks about angels as knowable to us only “by negation” can be understood as referring to the role of negation in our conceptual approximation of these higher intelligences. On this construal, the pessimism does not run quite as deep as it might have at first seemed. As it turns out, Aquinas’s view is not that the only things we can say about higher intelligences are negative. Rather, he holds that we cannot include them under our concept ‘intellectual’ without negating the imperfections of our own intellectual condition. (And of course anything we say about them by comparison to bodies must be negative.) Negation is a starting point, but importantly, any negation does leave us with a positive conceptual remainder, purging the discursivity and image-dependence in order to isolate the intuitive, instantaneous aspects of understanding as we experience it (even though, as it turns out, this “remainder” can only legitimately be applied to angels through a “logical consideration”). A second set of pessimistic remarks is likewise susceptible to a similarly more moderate interpretation, in light of the previous section’s conclusions. For instance, when Aquinas says that we “do not know something of immaterial substances unless we know them wholly,”¹¹¹ I argue that he is referring to the metaphysical genus of intellectuality, excluding the kind of vague (but proper) conceptualizing of the genus that Jane has when she grasps ‘rhinoceros’ as ‘animal.’ As seen above, in excluding our own imperfections from the concept ‘intellectuality,’ we smuggle an assumption of composition back into the concept. The very attempt to escape our cognitive limitations merely reintroduces the same limitations—so that any concept of intellectuality we apply to higher incorporeal entities remains necessarily inadequate to its object. In the present state, we are simply incapable of conceptualizing intellectuality according to its own proper mode of being, as something that exists at higher degrees of perfection. (Even in writing those words, the composite structure of language itself

¹¹¹ See texts in note 92.

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forces me to describe degrees of perfection as something positive added to a generic intellectuality.) But Aquinas certainly does not wish to exclude the legitimacy of approaching ‘intellectuality’ as a logical genus. In fact, the legitimacy of logical consideration is precisely what he is granting, on my view, when he surprisingly asserts that we can “arrive at knowing some remote genus of separate substances.”¹¹² A logical consideration allows us to use distinctions of reason to make sense of these higher realities according to our own mode of understanding, “flattening” the different modes of diversification whereby simple and composite quiddities are opposed. To put it another way: While denying that we can conceptualize incorporeal quiddities even vaguely as they are in themselves “in 3D,” Aquinas leaves room for our conceptualizing them incommensurately “in 2D.” This moderate pessimism about our knowledge of “higher intelligibles,” therefore, leaves room for a kind of cautious optimism concerning the possibility of an imperfect knowledge of angels, as when Aquinas writes that “we cannot grasp angels perfectly on account of their excessive brightness,”¹¹³ or that we “cannot understand them primarily and per se according to the mode of cognition that we experience in ourselves.”¹¹⁴ The reason, I think, is that despite being compelled to approach these higher intelligences through a merely logical consideration, our souls really do share a metaphysical genus with them. Our degree of intellectual perfection may be the lowest degree possible—a potency actualized only in composition with abstracted forms—but composite intellectuality constitutes a genuine degree of intellectuality nonetheless. Through self-awareness, we have a proper concept of a species of being within the same genus to which angels also belong. It is precisely our own proper concept of incorporeal, intellectual being that enables us to construct the logical genus ‘intellectual’ to extend to angels. Without that proper concept, we would perhaps be able to reason to the existence of something non-bodily, but we would have nothing positive to say about it at all. Certainly, whatever we say positively about such entities is said incommensurately with their real mode of being— nevertheless, we do have something positive (if imperfect) to say about them, drawing on the conceptual content acquired in self-awareness. Hence “by knowing what the soul is, we arrive at knowing some remote genus of separate substances.” Against this background, the third puzzle practically solves itself: Given Aquinas’s insistence that we cannot in this life know what is distinctive of

¹¹² SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]. ¹¹⁴ ST Ia.88.1 [Leon. 5.365].

¹¹³ SLDC, Prooem. [Saffrey 2:3–5].

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angelic intelligence, how can he justify his extensive treatises on angelic modes of knowing and willing? In particular, do his arguments against their conceivability not assume some prior knowledge of what they are? The solution is that everything that Aquinas says positively about angelic knowing is supposed to be derivable from the remainder that is left after negating the features of our intellectuality that are specifically bound to imagination, temporality, embodiment, composition, potency, etc. His doctrine of angelic nature is thus the doctrine of what a non-imaginative, non-embodied, non-composite, permanently actualized intellectuality might be and how it might function, within a set of key constraints derived from basic assumptions about the hierarchy of being and the fittingness of the order of the universe that a good God creates.¹¹⁵ For instance, if reasoning presupposes a vague starting point, and angels do not conceptualize vaguely (since Aquinas links vagueness with the use of universals abstracted from sense), then one might conclude that angels do not reason. This negation leaves intuitive understanding (intelligere) as its remainder, which is precisely what Aquinas takes to be typical of angelic understanding. At the same time, that remainder is still intuitive understanding conceived in the way in which we experience it in ourselves, and attributed to angels as though it were something that we share in common with angels. So anything that we say positively in this way about higher incorporeal entities is true only within the framework of logical consideration, and remains incommensurate with the reality of intuitive understanding as expressed in angelic degrees of perfection. Still, in denying that we can properly conceptualize angels, does Aquinas presuppose some sort of unallowable concept of what angels are like in themselves? I do not think so. Recall that for Aquinas, some terms that originally appear to denote positive properties are actually analyzable as negations: When a Neoplatonist philosopher says that a self-subsisting intelligence is simple, the content of the term ‘simple’ is really just ‘not composite.’¹¹⁶ And Aquinas holds, following Aristotle’s cue, that the

¹¹⁵ We can see these constraints operative in Aquinas’s characterization of how angels know material things, for instance in ST Ia.57.1–2. Strictly speaking, the negating of sense-dependence can only justify saying that angels do not know material things through species abstracted from sense-experience, without providing any basis for determining how angels do conceptualize material things (if at all). But by introducing the principle that “what is contained in lower things deficiently and partially and in multiplicity, is contained in higher things eminently and by a certain totality and simplicity” (Ia.57.1 [Leon. 5.69]), Aquinas can draw the further conclusion that angels do have a way of accessing material realities, and (by combining this with his doctrine of God’s creative knowledge) suggest a mechanism, i.e., they are imprinted with intelligible species reflecting God’s creative knowledge of material realities. ¹¹⁶ See ST Ia.10.1, ad 1, cited at note 104.

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inconceivability of angelic quiddities to us in this life is derivable from their simplicity—which on his view follows¹¹⁷ from their complete nonassociation with matter. Thus our inability to conceptualize angels properly follows, ultimately, from the denial that they are embodied intellects.¹¹⁸

4 . C O N C LU S I O N As we now see, it is not the case that for Aquinas “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” regardless of whether ‘in the senses’ is taken in reference to experiential access or conceptual content or both. Rather, in Aquinas’s more cautious wording, the senses are the “principle” or “origin” of all our understanding. By “origin” he means more specifically that in this life, the senses (through imagination with the help of the agent intellect) are the activators of intellectual understanding—not that they are gatekeepers that restrict the intellect to experiencing and properly conceptualizing sensible objects alone. The senses, on Aquinas’s view, are the means whereby extramental objects act on our intellects, causing in us “their own likenesses.” These likenesses, or intelligible species, are what inform our intellectual potencies, actualizing in us the composite and sense-dependent intellectual actuality that is characteristic of embodied knowers. In this actualized state, however, our embodied intellects experience themselves and acquire a proper concept of the kind of being that is intellectual and incorporeal in just this limited, composite, sense-dependent way. Through self-awareness, occasioned by the senses, the scope of our intellects extends into the incorporeal—or to put it in positive terms, the intellectual—realm. Aquinas’s concerns about our ability to conceptualize incorporeal things in this life, then, have to do with entities that are ontologically superior to our intellects: i.e., simpler, more actualized, having no association with or relation to or tendency toward matter at all. And the barrier to our conceptualizing them properly is not their inaccessibility to sense per se, but the

¹¹⁷ It follows for reasons that we cannot address here. ¹¹⁸ Interestingly, even the notion of degrees of perfection as a way of differentiating species within a genus seems to be something that Aquinas thinks is conceptually derivable from the order among material substances. Although the genus of material substances is divided and subdivided by differences of form, these differences of form also are organized according to degrees of perfection: e.g., broadly, elements, mixed bodies, plant, and animals; a similar ordering is found even within the sub-genera (see QDDA 6). So it seems that even the notion of the incorporeal genus as organized in terms of degrees of perfection is reached as the “positive remainder” after negating contrariety of form (which Aquinas associates with material composition) as a principle of differentiation within a genus.

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superiority of their degree of ontological perfection relative to our own. In approaching them, we are failed by the strategies that we use to conceptualize vaguely corporeal quiddities that we have never experienced, and which persistently assume composition and contrariety of form. Thus, we suffer from a persistent conceptual inadequacy when we attempt to extend to them the concept of ‘intellectual’ derived from self-awareness: “When [our intellect] understands simple things that are above itself, it understands them according to its own mode, namely, in a composite way.”¹¹⁹ Even in the afterlife, when we are supposed to be able to cognize angels experientially, so that we no longer need to conceptualize them vaguely by a logical genus, we still only “know them imperfectly and deficiently.” On Aquinas’s account, then, what limits the scope of the embodied intellect is not fundamentally the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal, sensible and non-sensible—but rather the distinction between composition and simplicity, between intellectual potency and simple intellectual actuality, between what is equal to or below us as knowers and what is ontologically “above.”¹²⁰ University of Notre Dame

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Albertus Magnus. On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. K. F. Kitchell, Jr. and I. M. Resnick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Augustine. De Trinitate (Corpus Christianorum series latina 50–50A), ed. W. J. Mountain (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963). Roger Bacon. Questiones supra Librum de causis, ed. R. Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935). Thomas Aquinas. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio [InMeta], ed. M.-R. Cathala and R. M. Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1964).

¹¹⁹ ST Ia.13.12, ad 3 [Leon. 4.165]. ¹²⁰ I am grateful to the workshop participants at the Martin Center for Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University, the Institut Catholique de Paris, and the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion, for their helpful comments and critiques on various drafts of this paper; to Lorraine Daston and Katja Krause at the Max-PlanckInstitut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, Berlin, for graciously hosting me during the final stages of writing; and to Joshua Lim, Martin Beers, and Daniel Contreras Rios for assistance with the project. Particular thanks are due to Brian Carl for persistent and illuminating critiques that helped redress the significant errors of an earlier version; as well as to an anonymous referee whose suggestions substantially helped in sharpening and clarifying the project. Any errors that remain are, of course, all my own.

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Thomas Aquinas. Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Doctoris Angelici, opera omnia, iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. edita [Leon.]. (Publishers vary), 1882–present. Expositio in libros Meteorologicorum [InMeteor], vol. 3 Expositio libri Posteriorum [InPostAn], vol. 1* In VIII libros Physicorum [InPhys], vol. 2 Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis [QDSC], vol. 24/2 Quaestiones disputatae de anima [QDDA], vol. 24/1 Quaestiones disputatae de malo [DM], vol. 23 Quaestiones disputatae de veritate [DV], vol. 22/1–3 Quaestiones de quolibet [Quodl.], vol. 25 Sentencia libri De anima [InDA], vol. 45/1 Summa contra gentiles [SCG], vols. 13–15 Summa theologiae [ST], vols. 4–12 Super Boetii De Trinitate [SBDT], vol. 50 Thomas Aquinas. Sancti Thomae de Aquino super Librum de causis expositio [SLDC], ed. H.-D. Saffrey (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1954). Thomas Aquinas. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi [Sent], 4 vols., ed. R. P. Mandonnet (books 1–2) and R. P. Maria Fabianus Moos (books 3–4 (to dist. 22)) (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929–47); Book 4, dist. 23–50 are cited according to Opera omnia, vol. 7/2 (Parma: Typis Petri Fiaccadori, 1886–8). Secondary Sources Boedder, Bernard. Psychologia rationalis, 2nd edn. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1899). Cory, Therese. Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). de l’Assomption, Marie. L’homme, personne corporelle: La spécificité de la personne humaine chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2014). de Belloy, Camille. Connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin: l’herméneutique d’Ambroise Gardeil (Paris: Vrin, 2014). Doolan, Gregory. “Aquinas on the Demonstrability of Angels,” in T. Hoffmann (ed.), A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 13–44. Doolan, Gregory. “Aquinas on Substance as a Metaphysical Genus,” in Doolan (ed.), The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 99–128. Führer, Markus. Echoes of Aquinas in Cusanus’s Vision of Man (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). Galluzzo, Gabriele. “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia of Separate Substances,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 18 (2007), 343–61. Gardeil, Ambroise. “L’habitation de Dieu en nous, et la structure interne de l’âme,” Revue thomiste 28 (1923), 238–60. Gardeil, Ambroise. “La perception expérimentale de l’âme par elle-même d’après Saint Thomas,” in Mélanges Thomistes (Le Saulchoir: Kain, 1923), 219–36. Gardeil, Ambroise. La structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1927).

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Gardeil, Ambroise. “Examen de conscience,” Revue thomiste 33 (1928), 156–80. Gardeil, Ambroise. “À propos d’un cahier du R. P. Romeyer,” Revue thomiste n.s. 12 (1929), 520–32. Garrigou-Lagrange, R. Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. P. Cummins (St. Louis: Herder, 1950). Gilson, Étienne. Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1954). Grabmann, Martin. Thomas Aquinas: His Personality and Thought, trans. V. Michel (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963). Hoffmann, Tobias (ed.). A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Imbach, Ruedi and Adriano Oliva. La philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin: Repères (Paris: Vrin, 2009). Iribarren, Isabel and Martin Lenz (eds.). Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Kenny, Anthony. Aquinas on Mind (New York: Routledge, 1993). King, Peter. “Two Conceptions of Experience,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003), 203–26. Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias. “ ‘Experientia’ bei Thomas von Aquin,” in A. Fidora and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 153–62. McInerny, Ralph. A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). McKian, John. “What Man May Know of the Angels: Some Suggestions of the Angelic Doctor,” New Scholasticism 29 (1955), 259–77, 441–60; 30 (1956), 49–63. Mercier, Désiré. Psychologie, 8th edn., vol. 2 (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1908). Pasnau, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Pasnau, Robert and Christopher Shields. The Philosophy of Aquinas (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2004). Peillaube, Émile. “Avons-nous l’expérience du spirituel,” Revue de philosophie 36 (1929), 245–67, 660–86. Pickavé, Martin. “Human Knowledge,” in B. Davies and E. Stump (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 311–26. Putallaz, François-Xavier. La connaissance de soi au XIIIe siècle: De Matthieu d’Aquasparta à Thierry de Freiberg (Paris: Vrin, 1991). Roland-Gosselin, Marie-Dominique. Review of Blaise Romeyer’s “Notre science de l’esprit humain d’après S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Bulletin thomiste 1/4 (1924), 113–15. Roland-Gosselin, Marie-Dominique. Review of Blaise Romeyer’s “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Bulletin thomiste 6/2 (1929), 469–74. Romeyer, Blaise. “Notre science de l’esprit humain, d’après saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Archives de philosophie 1/1 (1923), 32–55.

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Romeyer, Blaise. “La doctrine de Saint Thomas sur la vérité,” Archives de philosophie 3/2 (1925), 1–54. Romeyer, Blaise. “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Archives de philosophie 6/2 (1928), 137–250. Romeyer, Blaise. “À propos de S. Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Revue de philosophie 36 (1929), 551–73. Schmidt, Robert. “The Evidence Grounding Judgments of Existence,” in C. O’Neill (ed.), An Etienne Gilson Tribute (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959), 228–55. Sertillanges, A.-D. S. Thomas d’Aquin, 4th edn., vol. 2 (Paris: Alcan, 1925). Steel, Carlos. “Siger of Brabant versus Thomas Aquinas on the Possibility of Knowing the Separate Substances,” in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, and A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 211–31. Wippel, John. “Quidditative Knowledge of God,” in Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 215–41. Wippel, John The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite to Infinite Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000). Wirmer, David. “Avempace—ratio de quiditate: Thomas Aquinas’s Critique of an Argument for the Natural Knowability of Separate Substances,” in A. Speer and L. Wegener (eds.), Wissen über Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 569–90.

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Merciful Demand Fraternal Correction as a Form of Blame Jeffrey Hause 1. INTRODUCTION Medieval theories of moral responsibility generally contain two key elements. First is an account of the objective standards of morality, which determine our moral obligations. These standards, given in the moral law and in those further precepts of morality derived from the moral law, dictate which types of acts are good or bad. However, agents who perform bad acts are not automatically blameworthy. If we lack the relevant control over our acts of choice or consent, then the badness of those acts is not attributable or imputable to us and we are not blameworthy for them. Therefore, in developing theories of responsibility, medieval thinkers also articulate attributability conditions to distinguish cases in which the badness of an act is, from those in which it is not, attributable to an agent. These conditions typically include factors such as passion and ignorance, which can sometimes take away or lessen the control we normally exercise over our acts of choice or consent.¹ Medieval philosophers and theologians develop detailed accounts not just of the conditions under which agents are blameworthy. They also take pains to explain exactly how blameworthy agents are for performing sinful acts. This task requires them to discuss the seriousness of each type of sin, since, other things being equal, graver sins are more blameworthy. To complete the task, medieval thinkers also have to articulate aggravating or mitigating factors, such as the level of zest agents take in the sinful activity or the degree to which passion interferes with agents’ deliberation and rational control.

¹ For a contemporary account of this sort, see Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

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This emphasis on determining just how blameworthy one’s sinful choices are might suggest that medieval thinkers subscribe to what are sometimes called “ledger” views, so called because one’s various moral credits and debits are registered so as to provide a record of one’s moral activities, tendencies, and final moral balance. However, the ledger metaphor does not quite capture the use to which medieval thinkers put determinations of blameworthiness. We find a more accurate metaphor in the Neoplatonic heritage of medieval philosophy, one captured by the structure of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. In creation, all things proceed from God as their efficient cause. Each thing then seeks its completion or perfection and so, in keeping with its own nature, makes a return to God, the perfect good, as its final cause. Alone among material beings, humans are able to govern how well they take this return path to the true final good. If we recognize that our good lies in the knowledge and love of God and if our actions direct us to that goal, then we lead worthy lives. If we stray from the path by acting in ways that direct us away from that goal, we are blameworthy, and blameworthy to the degree that we wander from the path by acting in ways incompatible with the love of God. We risk incurring even more blame if we are on the wrong path entirely, that is, if we have determined that our final good consists in something that cannot in fact fulfill our nature. Some thinkers, such as Aquinas, hold that we can also establish our final good in the genuine but imperfect goods of this life, such as the natural good of living virtuously. Although incomparably less good than God, such a final goal is still Godlike and can therefore be used to establish a path we should keep to in order to avoid blameworthiness.² The reason the path metaphor is more apt than the ledger metaphor is that the medievals do not use determinations of blameworthiness to gauge their moral balance sheets, to see whether they fall in the red or in the black. Rather, they use determinations of blameworthiness to afford themselves the requisite moral self-knowledge to regulate and improve their lives. This is clearly Abelard’s goal in his Ethics, otherwise titled Know Thyself. If we are to avoid sin, we need to know what ends we are pursuing, know how to plot the right course, understand the temptations we are subject to so as to be prepared to meet them, and be aware of how serious our offenses are so that we can seek correction and return to the right path. Likewise, pastoral and confessional guides, such as the early thirteenth-century Raymond of ² On this imperfect, natural happiness, see Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II 3.2 ad 4, 3.3, 3.6. For a compelling argument that, on Aquinas’s view, the virtues whose operation constitutes natural happiness can be directed to supernatural happiness, see David Decosimo, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).

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Peñafort’s Summa de paenetentia and William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, as well as certain theological compendia and syntheses, such as Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, provide confessors and spiritual directors with the theological background needed to help restore wayfarers to the right path. Determinations of blameworthiness in these contexts are not simply informational ascriptions of badness to particular choices. These judgments are instead diagnostic, preparation for therapy. A determination of blameworthiness helps us to see where we have gone wrong, to exercise our conscience, and so prepares us for sorrow and reform. Of course, making a judgment of blameworthiness is not necessarily the same as blaming. We could very well make such judgments in amazement or even admiration, as when we say to someone “You naughty rascal! I didn’t think you had it in you!” And a mere report of someone’s failings would fall short of blaming, serving only as an instance of “telling people what people are like.”³ Such a report would have the right content for blame since it would explain how an agent falls short of moral standards, but it would not have the requisite force. Nor is it clear that mere judgments of blameworthiness have the requisite force to constitute blaming. Medieval philosophers and theologians raise such judgments under two sorts of circumstances. The first is the one already mentioned: the examination of one’s own conscience as a prelude to repentance and reform. The second is the practice of using notorious sinners, such as those mentioned in the Bible, as examples. However, the purpose of this practice was not to blame the sinners over and over again, but rather to use their stories for pedagogical purposes. By avoiding their errors, we can better direct our own lives. In both cases, we make judgments of blameworthiness for therapeutic and pedagogical purposes, not so as to direct blame at others. Nevertheless, medieval theorists did acknowledge the need for blaming practices. These include interpersonal practices in which an individual—not an authority figure such as a judge or a prelate, but an ordinary citizen or subject—issues a moral protest or holds another accountable for a blameworthy act. One such practice is that of registering anger or indignation at injustices committed by another. These responses are meant to halt further harm and to restore honor to the victim after the offender’s demeaning treatment.⁴ Another such practice—the one I will focus on in this paper— eschews all angry or indignant reactions. In this practice, if we discover that our neighbor has committed a moral offense, we have the obligation, if

³ J. J. C. Smart, “Free-Will, Praise and Blame,” Mind 70 (1961), 303–4. ⁴ See, for instance, the discussion of anger in Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II 158.

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certain conditions obtain, to rebuke our neighbor and hold him or her accountable. They call this activity ‘fraternal correction.’⁵ The practice of fraternal correction has a great deal in common with the practice of blaming as it is characterized in much of the contemporary literature. In fraternal correction, if we should discover our neighbor’s offense, we then address counsel, admonition, or reprimand as criticism of our neighbor. Fraternal correction therefore has the quality of opprobrium characteristic of blaming.⁶ This criticism is not simply informative, but involves the exertion of social pressures that make a demand on our neighbor to cease the immoral activity and to reform.⁷ The corrector holds the offender accountable, and the offender must respond by reforming. Finally, the object of blame is not the bad action or choice, but the offender. These characteristics—a judgment of blameworthiness and opprobrium for the bad choice that affects the way we see the offender, moral address directed to the offender, the demand for a response, holding the offender accountable—these are hallmarks of blaming as it is conceived in contemporary literature. When we find ourselves in a position where some sort of blaming activity is called for, the medievals maintain that in some circumstances this activity should express righteous indignation that serves justice by defending one’s own or another’s safety or honor in response to an offender’s harmful action. Whenever possible, however, it should take the form of fraternal correction. Although both forms share many of the same features, as I have ⁵ Despite the gendered language, medieval thinkers did not consider this an exclusively male activity but one in which men and women, equally neighbors, could participate equally. Medieval texts on fraternal correction therefore offer biblical examples of women who engaged in correction, in some cases well (such as Abigail’s, mentioned in Hugh of Saint-Cher’s Postilla on Luke), and in some improperly (such as when Miriam rebuked Moses, as Albert notes in his Commentary on Luke). Edwin Craun’s exploration of medieval pastoral texts confirms that women were not excluded from participation in fraternal correction. Craun also notes Margery Kempe’s practice of fraternal correction on the clergy of York in the early fifteenth century. See his Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). ⁶ On opprobrium in blaming, see R. Jay Wallace, “Dispassionate Opprobrium: On Blame and the Reactive Sentiments,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 348–72. On blaming as moral address, see Gary Watson, “The Trouble with Psychopaths,” in the same volume, 307–31, and his “Two Faces of Responsibility,” Philosophical Topics 24 (1996), 227–48. ⁷ On blaming as making a demand, see T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 268; R. Jay Wallace, “Scanlon’s Contractualism,” Ethics 112 (2002), 429–70; Pamela Hieronymi, “The Force and Fairness of Blame,” Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004), 115–48; Angela Smith, “Control, Responsibility, and Moral Assessment,” Philosophical Studies 138 (2008), 367–92. See also Gary Watson’s discussion of holding accountable as involving the imposition of demands in “Two Faces of Responsibility.”

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noted, their differences are striking, and much in medieval accounts of fraternal correction is foreign to contemporary discussions of blaming. According to these contemporary discussions, although blame is directed toward the offending agent, its value consists largely in its function as a defense of those who are harmed. The offender’s actions demonstrate injustice or disrespect toward a victim, and blame is a way of protesting on behalf of the victim.⁸ Fraternal correction differs from other sorts of blame—both that captured in contemporary accounts and by medieval accounts of anger and indignation—in focusing on the offender’s good. Fraternal correction must be motivated by the love of charity for one’s offending neighbor. Rather than serving as a defense of an offended party’s dignity, it is a recognition of the offender’s dignity and a service to the offender. Because they conceive of fraternal correction as an act of love and mercy—in fact, a sort of spiritual almsgiving—medieval thinkers also insist that when it is called for, it is an obligation and not supererogatory.⁹ It is in fact considerations of charity that determine when we are obligated to engage in fraternal correction: if we can, without violating the norms of the virtues, contribute to the loving reform of the offender, then we should do so. When that is impossible, we may consider the alternative blaming practices, which stem from anger and indignation rather than charity. As we might expect from the charitable motive of the practice, the effect of fraternal correction should not be recognition of any damage to the relationship between corrector and offender, but rather greater love and solidarity.¹⁰ Whether we find these features of fraternal correction attractive or worrisome (or both), the practice is an important element in medieval ethical thought, and we cannot fully understand the medieval ethics of charity and mercy, or medieval thought about moral responsibility, without understanding fraternal correction. We might also find that the practice is worth discussing as an addition to the blaming practices expounded in the contemporary philosophical literature.

⁸ On blame as protest, see Angela Smith, “Moral Blame and Moral Protest,” in D. J. Coates and N. A. Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27–48. ⁹ On the connection between fraternal correction and almsgiving, see Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 327–37. ¹⁰ See T. M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 131; also Pamela Hieronymi, “The Force and Fairness of Blame,” 124 for discussions of blame as responses to impairment to relationships. For an opposing view, see Susan Wolf, “Blame, Italian Style,” in which she argues that blame need not involve impairment to relationships at all. The essay is found in Wallace et al., Reasons and Recognition, 332–47.

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In what follows, I will explore key medieval accounts of fraternal correction that contribute to our understanding the practice as a sort of blame. Section 2 will explain fraternal correction’s goals, the manner in which it must be conducted and the conditions under which it should be omitted. These discussions in turn help us to see why the medievals understand fraternal correction to be an obligation stemming from charity. In the course of this discussion, we will also see why fraternal correction is in fact a form of blame: it begins with a judgment of the offender’s blameworthiness followed by the decision that admonition is called for. The corrector then applies social force to demand that the offender cease the sinful behavior and repent. Section 3 will explore one final reason for thinking that fraternal correction is a sort of blame: correctors hold offenders accountable for their misdeeds by demanding reform. However, since scholastic thinkers do not offer explicit justification of this accountability relation, much of Section 3 is devoted to discovering a justification consistent with medieval accounts of moral responsibility. In the course of this discussion, we will see why scholastic thinkers find this sort of blaming practice the preeminent expression of charity toward neighbor.

2. THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNTS OF FRATERNAL CORRECTION

a. From the Bible to the Thirteenth Century Because the precept of fraternal correction originates in the Bible, most medieval treatments of the topic come in the form of biblical commentaries or texts that retain much of the biblical language and presentation. There are multiple biblical texts that medieval philosophers and theologians use as a starting point for developing accounts of fraternal correction. One, however, stands out from the others as particularly influential: If your brother offends against you [si autem peccaverit in te frater tuus], go, and rebuke him between the two of you alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16. And if he will not hear you, take with you one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. 17. And if he will not hear them, tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as the heathen and the publican. (Matthew 18:15–17, Douay version)

Patristic and medieval thinkers take this text to establish the object, motive, and right process for carrying out fraternal correction: we are to correct our brothers and sisters, do so out of charity, and proceed from a private to an increasingly public rebuke if we do not meet with success.

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Naturally, as a biblically enjoined practice, fraternal correction had been discussed since the patristic period by such authors as Origen and Chrysostom. However, the understanding of fraternal correction as a sort of blame found its best and richest expression in thirteenth-century writers drawing not on the Greek patristic tradition but on Augustine, who addresses fraternal correction in multiple texts.¹¹ Augustine’s treatments supply many of the issues that would frame later discussions, such as identifying the charitable motive of fraternal correction, its obligatory character, bases for omitting correction, and the dangers of practicing it badly. Nevertheless, Augustine differs from later writers in holding that we can correct via correspondence, public debate, sermons, or polemical writings and not exclusively in face-to-face address.¹² Moreover, Augustine leaves open questions about the nature of charity and leaves murky the distinction between correction by a superior and correction by one’s equal. The thirteenthcentury discussion begins with Augustine’s insights and seeks to develop them by integrating them into the increasingly sophisticated ethics of virtue under development. There had of course been treatments of fraternal correction in between late antiquity and the thirteenth century. The twelfth century in particular provided many fruitful and philosophically rich discussions, but discussions more important for social and political philosophy than for developing interpersonal ethics and an account of moral responsibility. The rising interest in political populism in the twelfth century, leading thinkers to seek ways of investing power in the people and giving them a voice in government, drew attention to fraternal correction as a means of promoting social power in the people, who would in theory be able to voice criticism to those in the ruling class.¹³ After all, even the lowliest human being is, as human, neighbor to king and pope and may therefore, in a spirit of charity, correct the faults of those in the highest of offices. Accordingly, in the twelfth century, thinkers seized on fraternal correction as an avenue for a certain political egalitarianism. However, a growing suspicion of political populism, combined with an increased attention on pastoral theology, inspired philosophers and theologians in the thirteenth century to refocus attention on fraternal correction as

¹¹ For instance, De correptio et gratia, Sermon 82, Sermon 164, and Praeceptum 4.6–4.9 (the treatment in Letter 211 derives from that in the Praeceptum). ¹² Jennifer V. Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), notes the multiple modes of correction mentioned or used by Augustine. ¹³ Philippe Buc, L’Ambiguïté du Livre: prince, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1994), 379–80.

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a way of bringing all Christians—not just the clergy—into the pastoral habit of stimulating moral reform among the individuals in their communities.¹⁴ The fact is that in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, more sophisticated ethical thought made its way out of the theology texts and into pastoral guides and sermons, making it possible for a greater number of ethically informed lay people to share pastoral responsibility for correction.¹⁵ Sermons on temptation, vice, sin, and degrees of sin gave the layperson greater knowledge of how far they and their neighbors had strayed from the right path and when it was appropriate or necessary for them to offer correction. Although thirteenth-century thinkers continued to ask whether subordinates may correct their superiors (and generally answered yes), that question became just one of many whose investigation helped philosophers and theologians to discover the theoretical principles justifying the practice of fraternal correction and the right ways of carrying it out. This change in emphasis was made possible for medieval Christians by the fact that, although the Bible enjoins the practice of fraternal correction on them, it does not offer any full and explicit account of how this practice fits into the Christian moral life. That task was therefore left up to interpreters, whose philosophical and theological interests were largely governed by the debates and movements of their own times.

b. The Augustinian Inheritance Important contributors to the thirteenth-century discussion draw not only on biblical texts, but also on Augustine’s interpretation of them for the framework in which to explore fraternal correction. Before addressing these later views, then, it is helpful to set out the Augustinian inheritance that forms their starting point. Augustine himself is interested in correction of multiple sorts, and it is not always important for his purposes to make clean distinctions between them.¹⁶ However, scholastic thinkers generally accept several Augustinian principles as the starting points of their own discussions. First, Augustine argues that correcting our sinning brothers and sisters is obligatory and not supererogatory. In fact, in Sermon 82, Augustine speaks to those who do not want to correct their neighbors because of fear or ¹⁴ For these hesitations in endorsing populism, see Buc, L’Ambiguïté, in particular 379–80. For the new focus on pastoral theology, see chapter 1 of Craun, Ethics and Power, in particular the section “Sharing in Pastoral Reform: Fraternal Correction as a Moral Practice” (23–7). ¹⁵ Craun, Ethics and Power, chapter 1. ¹⁶ Hence he draws on biblical texts regarding fraternal public corrections (such as Leviticus 19:17–18 and 1 Timothy 5:20), not just private corrections, to develop his thought.

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covetousness. Correction runs the risk of angering its target and disrupting social harmony, and that could hurt business ties. It could make everyday life more unpleasant, or it could even result in the loss of one’s reputation or safety. In that case, one loves these temporal goods more than the good of one’s neighbor, and so one’s motive is covetousness. Even those at a relatively high level of moral and religious development, who care little for material goods and have a generally accurate estimation of the relative value of their own reputation, find this particular situation a challenge. Presumably, that is because what is at stake is honor and personal safety; and even those who have attained a high level of moral development find these particular goods hard to value less than the good of one’s neighbor’s soul. But surely the good of one’s neighbor’s soul is more valuable than any temporal good, and so one must engage in correction if one really is to live up to the precept to love one’s neighbor as oneself. In fact, Augustine contends, if we disregard others’ offenses and do not rebuke them, we are worse than they are (Sermon 82.4.7). Presumably, that is because in our failure to rebuke we not only condone the sin, but in addition we show disregard for our neighbor’s eternal happiness. Second, the motive of the rebuke must be charity. In Confessions 9.8.18, Augustine recounts the story of a servant who rebukes his mother Monnica not charitably but with “bitter insolence.” The example is striking because the rebuke is effective despite its uncharitable character, showing that God can turn disordered behavior to the good, as Augustine explains.¹⁷ We must instead proceed from a reasonable desire to improve the person we are rebuking. So, if the rebuke, done here and now and by us, is likely to elicit anger, or make the sinner more obstinate, we must not do it. Presumably, proceeding under those conditions would be a sign that our interest is in being moralistic, or superior, or that we are acting out of an overweening anger or resentment. Third, the same ends of charity that establish fraternal correction as an obligation also dictate the conditions under which we may omit correction. The goal of correction is our neighbors’ improvement and the salvation of their souls. Sometimes an attempt at correction will entrench the offender in sin and make the offender worse, and in that case we must hold our tongues. We must also consider whether someone else is better suited to make the correction, or whether patiently waiting for an opportune time would afford greater chance of success. If we genuinely love our neighbor, we will take the course of action best suited for the reform of our neighbor’s soul.

¹⁷ Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians, 40–1.

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Finally, when the gospel explains that correction is occasioned by your brother sinning in te, that expression does not signify only offenses against you personally. This might come as a surprise, since the biblical command to rebuke is followed shortly by a second command to forgive, which is possible only for sins committed against you personally. However, Augustine explains that someone sins in te on the condition that you have knowledge of this sin, that the sin comes under your purview (Sermon 82.7.10). Therefore, the rebuke we offer in response to the sin is not an expression of resentment in the face of personal offense, but rather an expression of concern and love for our faltering brother or sister.

c. Thirteenth-Century Innovations In the remainder of this unit, I will offer a thematic sketch of the innovations developed by the thirteenth-century philosopher-theologians Alexander of Hales, Hugh of Saint-Cher, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas.¹⁸ Their work builds on Augustine’s by more clearly defining the practice of fraternal ¹⁸ I use the following abbreviations in this study: Albertus Magnus, Enarrationes in Secundam Partem Evangelii Lucae: LukeComm Albertus Magnus, Super Matthaeum: MattComm Alexander de Hales, Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’: QD Hugo de Sancto Charo, In Evangelia secundum Matthaeum, Lucam, Marcum, & Joannem: PM (= Postilla or Commentary on Matthew) and PL (= Postilla on Luke) Thomas Aquinas Quaestio disputata de correctione fraterna: DQFC Thomas Aquinas, Super evangelium S. Matthaei lectura: SEM. All references to the various commentaries on Matthew will be to their explication of Matthew 18:15–17, and all references to the various commentaries on Luke will be to their explications of Luke 17:3. Medieval scholars have too often assumed that Aquinas had the last word, or the last acceptable word, on a topic. While Aquinas did not have the last word on fraternal correction—William Ockham took the discussion in an innovative direction in the fourteenth century—Aquinas’s treatment was astoundingly influential on those later medieval writers who treat fraternal correction not as an engine of social and political egalitarianism but as an interpersonal practice of blaming grounded in charity. Craun, Ethics and Power, notes the exceptional continuity in treatments of fraternal correction into the fifteenth century thanks to Aquinas’s influence (see Craun, Ethics and Power, 19). This influence extends even beyond the Middle Ages: the eighteenth-century thinker St. Alphonsus Liguori explains fraternal correction largely as Aquinas does. This influence is due in part to the fact that Aquinas’s account presents a conceptually coherent practice, tied to a widely accepted theoretical framework, responsive to the concerns of his period, and shorn of the distractions and irrelevancies in works by his predecessors. Other thinkers did of course introduce innovations. Walter of Bruges, for instance, increases the number of, and devotes more attention to articulating, the conditions under which it is permissible to undertake fraternal correction. See Gregory Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 288.

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correction, spelling out further implications, and integrating it more explicitly into the larger ethics of charity. All four of these scholastic writers agree with Augustine about the most fundamental feature of fraternal correction: it must be motivated directly by a loving desire to help our offending brothers and sisters. It is not a defense of our own dignity or that of another offended party in which one registers an objection or protest through anger or indignation. If it works, it will of course lead the offender to seek forgiveness from the victim. However, its focus is chiefly on the offender, inducing him or her to reform so as to be worthy of forgiveness. To underscore this aspect of fraternal correction, Hugh of Saint-Cher draws on patristic discussions to explain that when the gospel calls for correction after “your brother has sinned in te,” this in te does not require that the sin be against you (reading te as accusative), but only that it occur in your purview (reading te as ablative).¹⁹ Likewise, in the Summa theologiae and the Disputed Question on Fraternal Correction, Aquinas drops discussion of in te except to contrast those sins “against you” with sins “against everyone,” and in his Commentary on Matthew he raises the expression only as a way of distinguishing sins open to humans to forgive (those directly against humans) and those open only to God to forgive (sins directly against God). In his Commentary on Luke, Albert takes sins in te to be offenses against you, but only those that harm you, your possessions, or your honor are “truly” sins against you, that is, sins that give you a just basis for complaint against the offender. Other sins are sins against you “spiritually” by being occasions of scandal. That is because any offense potentially loosens standards of morality and therefore serves as a temptation for a person who knows about it. This sort of sin is “against you” only incidentally.²⁰ That fraternal correction’s motive must be love helps to distinguish it from other sorts of correction, in particular that by one’s prelate. Alexander of Hales is the first to offer a clear account of the differences between the practice of fraternal and that of prelatical correction. Alexander explains: Keep in mind that there are two sorts of rebuke. The first is fraternal, and it originates in charity and brotherly love. All people are obligated to practice this sort of correction when the place and time call for it. There is a second sort, and only prelates are bound to practice it due to the solemn promise they made and the nature of their office . . . Therefore, the sort of rebuke that is mentioned in the passage “If your brother sins against you” etc. applies to all people, for it consists in a discreet

¹⁹ PM 61v has te sciente, while PL 234v has ex te sciente. ²⁰ “However, he offends ‘against you’ in two ways: [First], by perpetrating some evil, such as harm to your honor or to your possessions, or even by inflicting pain. And this is called ‘sinning against you’ properly speaking, because you have a just complaint against him . . . Next, he sins against you spiritually who scandalizes you with his sin” (LukeComm 460).

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word. The second sort, which consists in inflicting punishments, is the province of prelates.²¹ (QD Q.28, D.1, Part 1)

The chief difference lies in the motive and end of correction. We are to love all human beings as our brothers and sisters. Just as we will our own good for ourselves, we must will the good for those who are equally human and equally God’s children. A prelate, by contrast, must fulfill the duties of his office. Aquinas sharpens Alexander’s distinction by explaining that, just as fraternal correction is motivated by charity, prelatical correction is motivated by justice: As noted, there are two sorts of correction. There is one sort that is an act of charity. It in particular aims at the reform of a wayward brother by means of simple admonition. This sort of correction pertains to anyone who has charity, whether a prelate or a subordinate. There is a second sort of correction that is an act of justice, through which one aims at the common good, which is reached not only through the admonition of our brother, but sometimes through punishment as well so as to deter others from sin by frightening them. This latter sort pertains only to prelates, whose role is not only to admonish, but also to correct through punishment. (ST II-II 33.3c)

Because prelatical correction aims at the common good, it must wield coercive power; and because it establishes justice, it must punish offenders out of retribution even if they have reformed. By contrast, fraternal correction wields only those social pressures that are available to private citizens. Scholastic writers, following Augustine, stress the importance of fraternal correction and emphasize its obligatory nature by focusing on the value of the good our neighbor risks losing: eternal happiness. However, it is Aquinas who provides the fullest theoretical framework for fraternal correction by explaining it as a spiritual work of mercy. The psychological foundation of mercy is love of neighbor. Through this love, we are friends with our neighbors and think of each neighbor as another self. For this reason, the evil that our neighbor endures matters to us in the same way our own does (ST II-II 30.2). When we find our neighbor in need of something important for human flourishing, we therefore experience sorrow, which motivates us to remedy our neighbor’s need. After all, we do not really love our neighbor if we do not act but merely wish her to flourish when we are in a position to help. However, if we do perform acts of mercy, those are the greatest acts of virtue we can show our neighbor, the overflowing of our love to meet our neighbor’s needs. Since the good at risk when someone commits a serious

²¹ Cf. Albert the Great: “But there are two sorts of rebuke: one belongs to authority, the other to charity. That which belongs to authority, that sort is with solemnity and severity of judgment; and this belongs only to a prelate, nor is another bound to it. But that which belongs to fraternal charity is based on what is said in Exodus 23: 4 and 5: if thou meet thy enemy’s ox or ass going astray, bring it back to him” (LukeComm 460).

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sin is the greatest of all goods—the happiness of eternal life—fraternal correction occupies an especially high position among all the works of mercy. The motive and goals of fraternal correction issue in further considerations about how we must engage in the practice. Because fraternal correction is an expression of charity, we must undertake it lovingly. This means in effect that we must not correct others mockingly, maliciously, scornfully, or so as to aggrandize ourselves.²² This manner of correction does not conduce to reforming offenders, but rather demeans them. However, we must also keep in mind the effectiveness of correction and apply only the degree of social force necessary for success. It is reflection on this last consideration that informs scholastic treatments of the various stages of correction.

d. The Stages of Correction Thirteenth-century thinkers attempt to justify the various stages of correction as the application of increasingly great social pressures designed to induce the offender to reform. The initial rebuke consists in a “discreet word” (Alexander, QD Q.28, D.1, Part 1). In some cases, the correction consists simply in calling the offender’s attention to the fact that she has committed a sin, which she may be unaware of. Both Hugh and Albert cite Ecclesiasticus 19:13 to illustrate such cases: “Reprove a friend, lest he may not have understood, and say: I did it not: or if he did it, that he may do it no more” (Hugh, PM 61v, PL 234v; Albert, LukeComm 461). Rebuke at this stage should be done gently and in a friendly manner (leniter, amicabiliter, PM 62r; amore, PL 234v) and sweetly (dulciter, PL 234v). Of course, the offender might feel shame even on being corrected “sweetly.” The point is rather that the corrector will not employ shame as a tool at this stage of correction, which is why the correction should be done privately, between only the corrector and offender (Aquinas, DQFC 2). If the initial correction does not succeed, but the corrector believes there is hope for success and little risk of making the sinner worse, correction can proceed to a second stage. Hugh (PM 62r) and Albert (LukeComm 461) both report that the social force exerted at the second stage is that of fear: the corrector should take one or two others, preferably those who also know about the sin so as not to harm the sinner’s reputation further, and offer fraternal correction in their presence. The fear, Albert explains, is fear of conviction. In other words, as Alexander likewise notes, the correctors make clear that they will make the offense public and that the offender will

²² Deriforie or malitiose (Hugh, PM 62r), ex derisione or cum indignatione (Albert, LukeComm 462).

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suffer the shame that comes from the lowered esteem in which she will be held. Aquinas, by contrast, maintains that the function of this second stage of correction is (a) to establish that the corrector has followed the correct procedures before making the sin public and (b) to corroborate (by bringing in further witnesses as “moral experts”) that the offender’s deed really does constitute a sin. In the third stage of correction, the corrector “tells the Church.” The ambiguity in this command led to multiple interpretations: address the sinner with witnesses in the presence of a prelate (Hugh, PM 62r), or tell a prelate or the multitude (Hugh, PL 234v), or tell a prelate and accuse the offender in a synod (Albert, MattComm). However we interpret the exact procedure, there is general agreement that at this stage correctors should employ shame.²³ The shame should be rehabilitative and not punitive; and so if shaming the offender will not lead to reform or will cause undue harm, one should not do it. This means, in practice, that correctors must discern whether the offenders still have enough love of what is good to respond positively to shaming but will not suffer unduly or become worse because of the disgrace they are likely to endure.²⁴ In short, if the shame helps offenders to realize the seriousness of their offense and thereby to repent, then and only then does it function as an instrument of love for neighbor. We should think likewise about any subsequent “excommunication,” that is, a cessation of social interaction with the offender.²⁵

e. Omission of Correction Scholastic authors, following Augustine, are well aware that any number of factors may render fraternal correction morally unacceptable. In fact, as their treatment of the practice becomes more detailed and sophisticated, it also becomes more cautionary.²⁶ In some cases, prohibitions stem from the ²³ Hugh, PM 62r; Albert, LukeComm 461; Aquinas, SEM 18 lect. 2. ²⁴ See Aquinas, ST II-II 144 for a discussion of who is a good candidate for the pedagogy of shame. For an analysis of Aquinas’s views on shame, see Thomas Ryan, “Aquinas on Shame: A Contemporary Interchange,” in T. B. Mooney and M. Nowacki (eds.), Aquinas, Education and the East (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 73–100. ²⁵ Hugh’s Postilla on Matthew and Albert’s Commentary on Matthew treat this excommunication as a fourth stage, a socially-imposed ostracism that must be meant as the ultimate social pressure for reform. Other texts, such as Albert’s Commentary on Luke, speak of three stages of correction. It is unclear whether they take this excommunication as a part of the correction or whether this practice constitutes giving up on correction. ²⁶ In his Guide de la conscience (Paris: Paul Mellier, 1845), Prosper-Honoré Corbière offers this assessment: “Comme il est assez rare que toutes les conditions dont nous venons de faire l’énumeration se trouvent réunies, il est également rare que les particuliers

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standing of the potential corrector. If the potential corrector is guilty of the same sort of sin, correction would be scandalous and perhaps ineffective because the corrector would be subject to charges of hypocrisy. (Even so, in such a case, it is always open to sinners concerned about their neighbors to work together to overcome their mutual temptations and reform, but that is importantly different from correction.) Moreover, those who have discovered their neighbors’ sins by being spies or busybodies may not offer correction, presumably because such a procedure is destructive of community trust and harmony. Of course, the corrector must always be motivated by charity. Anyone motivated by pride, hatred, or envy, or who cannot avoid disdain or mockery, may not engage in correction. In other cases, one should omit correction because it will be, or is likely to be, ineffective. If the offender is demonstrably unreceptive to correction, or to correction from a particular corrector, that corrector may not engage in the practice.

3 . M O R A L AD D R E S S , A C C O U N T A B I L I T Y , A N D BL A M E We see in this thirteenth-century discussion an attempt to explain what fraternal correction is and to integrate it into the larger theoretical picture of Christian moral life. However, these scholastic discussions of fraternal correction are brief and they focus on a limited range of issues. Their interest is in seeing Whether fraternal correction is an obligation or a counsel. Whether anyone, or only prelates may practice fraternal correction. Whom does it bind? What is the range of people subject to our correction? Under what conditions is correction to be undertaken or omitted? How is it to be undertaken (at each stage)? What virtue or virtues does fraternal correction express? These are just the questions one would expect to find in the thirteenthcentury context, when clergy are encouraging laity to share in the project of

pèchent, du moins mortellement, lorsque’ils négligent le devoir de la correction fraternelle” (89). In the remainder of this paragraph, I am relying on the conditions for omitting fraternal correction in Aquinas’s DQFC 1, which offers the most thorough and most coherent set of cautions among the texts in my survey. For a discussion of Aquinas’s views, see my philosophical commentary on his Disputed Question on Fraternal Correction in Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. J. Hause and C. Eisen Murphy (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010).

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correction but without overstepping the bounds of clerical or judicial authority. The answers to these questions serve as a practical guide to determining when and how we should correct our neighbor. At the same time, the theoretical justification for the practice emerges and fraternal correction finds its place as not just an act of mercy, but as the premier act of mercy. It is the highest expression of love of neighbor. However, this way of framing the discussion of fraternal correction leaves the reader without explicit answers to other important questions about the nature and justification of fraternal correction. According to thirteenthcentury discussions, once the corrector has embarked on the process of rebuke, the offender stands accountable to the corrector. After all, the goal of the correction is not primarily the restoration of social harmony but the reform of the offender, and so the offender must make clear that she has “heard” the corrector and responded appropriately. Otherwise, the corrector will proceed to the next stage of correction. However, medieval writers do not explain what justifies holding offenders accountable in this multi-stage practice of correction. Focus on this issue is nevertheless helpful for at least two reasons. First, it will enable us to see more clearly how fraternal correction is a work of mercy. Second, because holding others accountable is a hallmark of blame, exploring this element of fraternal correction will help us to see how its practice is itself a form of blame. While ‘accountable’ is not a word the medievals themselves used, this perspective is not anachronistic because they employ the concept of accountability in their discussions of fraternal correction. The offender must literally give an ‘account,’ a sign that he or she is receptive of the correction, or else the corrector may be bound to increase social pressures on the offender. Ockham’s later treatment in fact addresses the issue of the conditions under which a person addressed by a corrector is not bound to give an account.²⁷ Focus on the offender’s accountability will illuminate elements of fraternal correction present in scholastic discussions but not singled out by the key questions the scholastics themselves ask, and it has the advantage for contemporary readers of helping us to see how to place fraternal correction in a taxonomy of accountability practices. As a result, not only will we have a better grasp of what fraternal correction is and what justifies the practice, but we will also be better able to judge what interest the practice, or features of the practice, may still hold for contemporary philosophy. There are many ways of establishing accountability relations, but fraternal correction does so through a particular sort of moral discourse. Moral discourse itself, even that meant to change people’s minds and attitudes,

²⁷ William Ockham, 1 Dialogus Book 4.

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can take a multitude of forms. Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, for instance, can be read as a pedagogical text that not only informs but inspires its readers to greater moral sophistication and encourages more virtuous living. The distinctive sort of moral discourse employed in fraternal correction is moral address: fraternal correction is directed to someone. In particular, it conveys information to its intended target about one or more of the following: moral obligations, happiness and its loss, community wellbeing. It conveys both the significance of these matters and stresses the value of the human being who is being addressed. Although the scholastics are not very clear about this issue, the mandate of face-to-face communication, explicit in the Postilla on Matthew but clearly implied in other texts where we are to “go to” our brother, is not made simply because of the increased effectiveness of in-person social pressures. Rather, face-to-face correction will impress the value of moral reform on the offender more effectively because the corrector can adjust tone, body language, and persuasive strategy as needed. It is not the sort of correction that can be done by conveying a policy statement; it is deeply interpersonal address. The Postilla on Matthew notes that this personal address lets the offender know that you care about him and are acting on his behalf. Fraternal correction is therefore a form of moral address that is highly particular, meant to convey a specific constellation of messages to the offender.²⁸ The address of fraternal correction is not, however, just informative. Fraternal correction takes the forms of exhortation, rebuke, and admonition. In all these cases, the address carries a demand that the offender recognize her offense, reform her life, and resolve not to commit that offense in future. This demand, or even the acknowledgment of the demand, is not the last stage in the practice, however. The offender must at least agree to abide by the demand and register that agreement with the corrector. If the offender fails to do so, the corrector applies increasingly powerful social pressures to secure the offender’s recognition and compliance. In short, the corrector holds the offender accountable, while the offender must recognize the corrector’s rebuke as making a claim on her and must respond to the demand made by that claim. While it is (relatively) easy to explain how those who violate the law are accountable to judicial authorities, it is less clear how one private person gains the normative authority to demand an account of another’s choices and agreement to reform. This is not a question about the conditions under which a private person should or shouldn’t exercise that authority by ²⁸ “ ‘Go,’ rebuke not just by writing. After all, as Jerome says, ‘The expression of live speech has a certain undefined hidden power . . . ’ Again, ‘Go,’ so that he knows that you have compassion for him and that you are concerned about him” (PM 61v).

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actually engaging in fraternal correction. That is a question scholastic writers treat explicitly and thoughtfully. In answering this question, they articulate many considerations to keep in mind when deliberating about whether correction is called for, such as the likelihood of success, the risk of entrenching the offender in sin, and the dangers of hypocrisy, moralism, and self-aggrandizement. If the ends of charity cannot be achieved, or correctors risk serious sin such as scandal or hypocrisy, then we may not engage in correction. However, the underlying assumption is that if none of these restrictions apply, and we can correct in the right manner and with the right motive, then we should proceed. What remains unclear, however, is this fundamental question: where do we get this normative authority to engage in fraternal correction, and in particular to hold others accountable, in the first place? We might well think that we have no such authority. Whether our neighbor acts well or badly, is leading a flourishing life or not, may well strike us as none of our business. If I learn that my neighbor has stolen from her employer, or that she spends every night after work drinking and gambling online, that might seem her concern and not mine. I am not a party to the offense as its victim, and my neighbor has not sought my counsel or asked me to help find a resolution to anything she sees as a problem. If her behavior is entirely her affair and not mine, then the concerns raised about fraternal correction by the medievals miss the mark entirely. Medieval thinkers want to ensure that correctors work to achieve their neighbors’ good, do so in ways that are consonant with that end, and do not scandalize any onlookers. Hence, they tell us that we may not correct if we risk entrenching the offender in her sins, or if the correction is selfaggrandizement. However, none of these restrictions will be relevant if I have no stake in the matter to begin with that could ground my authority to make a correction. In such a case, my correction no longer appears virtuous, but now seems to be the meddling act of a busybody. This worry is not a blanket skepticism about private individuals holding others accountable for their actions. In particular, as much contemporary discussion of blame makes clear, other sorts of blaming activity in which we hold our neighbors accountable are not subject to this objection.²⁹ Since scholars disagree about the source and nature of accountability exemplified ²⁹ See Gary Watson’s “Two Faces of Moral Responsibility” for a view in which we can legitimately hold others responsible for violations of interpersonal relations but not for just any failure in virtue. According to Watson, such failures are often none of our business and “independent of the practices of moral accountability” (231). In other cases, we do hold others accountable: we do not let offenders off the hook but express adverse treatment.

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in blaming, I will offer a sketch of one representative contemporary view. On this line of thought, when an agent violates a moral norm and thereby disturbs the operations of society that we depend on—when our brother or sister sins against us, so to speak—that agent incurs an obligation of restoration or restitution. The offended party, or in some cases a third party acting on behalf of the offended party or the larger society, may demand a justification, an apology, a promise not to engage in such activity, an act of restitution, or some token acknowledging the wrong and offering assurance of regret.³⁰ Because of the damage the agent has caused to the offended party, the offended party may hold the agent accountable. However, given the way that scholastic thinkers, following Augustine, interpret a sin in te, that sin may simply be an offense committed in your purview, or a sin against you only incidentally in that knowing about it could dispose you to lower your own moral standards. In such a case, it is hard to see how you are a stakeholder in this matter. You have not been harmed, demeaned, or disrespected in any way, and you are not acting on behalf of a third party who has been harmed, demeaned, or disrespected. You are simply a witness to somebody’s moral failing. Nothing in the concern I am sketching implies that the offender does not have an obligation to reform independent of her accountability to the injured party. On this view, obligations are not created by the making of moral demands on offenders. Those obligations arise independently of whatever demands are or are not actually made. How, then, does a fraternal corrector gain the authority to hold the offender morally accountable to her for fulfilling an obligation that she has done little more than walk in on? In response, scholastic thinkers would assert that correctors do in fact have a stake in correction, a stake afforded by the virtues of charity and mercy; they do not simply “walk in on” an obligation and take charge of it.³¹ Through charity, we do not simply love our neighbors, but love them as ourselves. Loving them “as ourselves” means that, just as we will the good for ourselves, we likewise will the good for our neighbors and want them to flourish. Of course, because we are finite beings with limited energy to devote to promoting people’s good, we must determine a way of allocating that limited energy. According to Aquinas, how invested we should be in

³⁰ See note 7 for contemporary discussions of the demand associated with blame. ³¹ In what follows, I will rely on Aquinas’s discussions, since they provide the fullest defense of the proposed line of thought. To some extent, the solutions I am proposing to the problems under discussion will be speculative constructions, but constructions based on principles and arguments in Aquinas that develop his explicitly stated views on moral responsibility. In short, I mean to show that such a development of his views can offer a plausible answer to the questions at issue here.

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any particular neighbor will depend on a variety of factors. Among these are the nature of other bonds we share with that neighbor (bonds of kinship, friendship, citizenship, etc.), that neighbor’s needs, and how essential it is for us in particular to meet those needs.³² That is why, if our neighbor needs material resources to survive and no one else is providing them, we are obligated to do so because our neighbor’s physical well-being is at stake. Likewise, if our neighbor’s moral and spiritual well-being are at stake, we must be equally ready to provide. If our neighbor has fallen into serious sin and she has not sought to remedy these failings herself, then her moral and spiritual well-being are at risk. If no one better suited to help steps up, then we have a stake in her spiritual well-being just as we would in her physical well-being if no one stepped up to provide material resources. We are not, therefore, busybodies simply in virtue of engaging in correction. We have a stake in the matter through the bond of love we share with our neighbor and our neighbor’s risk of losing eternal happiness. If this line of thought is plausible, it shows that we have the authority and obligation to issue correction if doing so best achieves the ends of charity. What is not yet clear, however, is whether we have the further authority to hold our neighbor accountable by demanding reform. Could we not forgo this further step and simply offer correction, leaving it up to the corrected person whether or not to respond? After all, when we give food to the hungry, we do not further dog them with questions about whether they have actually consumed it. We leave that matter up to them. However, the two cases— the corporal and the spiritual—are not quite parallel. Offering correction is importantly different from giving nourishment. Sometimes the offender is not in a position to appreciate or take to heart the correction offered, and that is why the practice prescribes multiple stages with varying sorts of social pressures. Taking a laissez-faire attitude toward correction is, for the scholastics, an inappropriate response to a problem where the stakes are one’s eternal happiness. We can easily see why the scholastics require multiple stages of correction and continued investigation into its efficacy. Still, what these considerations show is only that the corrector’s duty does not necessarily end with a single attempt at rebuke. Meeting the moral and spiritual needs of our neighbor could be a long and complicated process. What we have still not seen are reasons for thinking that the corrector may hold the offender accountable by demanding reform. One possible explanation is that the offender is accountable to the corrector out of a debt of gratitude. The corrector has, after all, performed an act of love and perhaps even self-sacrifice by making the correction. The

³² Disputed Question on Charity QQ. 8–9.

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form that a recipient’s gratitude should take depends on what sort of thing is given. According to this hypothesis, the right form of gratitude would be participation in the correction and the offering of an account—an explanation of moral reform—to the corrector. However, I find this explanation implausible because the offender can still register gratitude with an act of thanks followed by a refusal to comply. That refusal is not a failure in gratitude. The offender can refuse to comply and still very much appreciate the corrector’s efforts. The most likely basis for the offender’s accountability lies once again in mercy, but this time, in the social system created by the exercise of that virtue. Mercy is essential to the flourishing of the community. It goes beyond what justice requires and seeks to meet fundamental human needs. Among the various works of mercy, fraternal correction stands out as especially important because its practice removes obstacles to flourishing in this life and the next. But a condition of the possibility of fraternal correction is the accountability of the corrected person. This accountability could take various forms (e.g., having an independent third party to serve as verifier), but it makes most sense that the person already invested in the correction, and who already knows about the offense, serves as the responsible party. Because humanity is invested in the system of mercy—each person acknowledges its value, stands in need of it, and to some extent participates in it—each person needs to ensure its functioning. But the system of fraternal correction breaks down without accountability. Fraternal correction is a sort of demand, not simply advice or exhortation. It is therefore the offender’s obligation not to harm the system of mercy that is the source of the relationship of accountability. This obligation is part of a preexisting general obligation to cooperate in this system of mercy. However, this general obligation implies a more specific one to offer an account to the corrector.

4. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS This discussion of fraternal correction reveals several points at which one might question the defensibility of the practice. Some concerns are theoretical. One could deny that charity and mercy play so central a role in ethics and thereby question the basis on which one neighbor has a compelling reason to make demands on another or hold another accountable. Other concerns are practical. One could grant this role, but deny that the stakes are generally high enough to justify the practice. This might be the case if one thinks that it is only our neighbor’s this-worldly happiness that is at stake

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rather than our neighbor’s eternal happiness. In a different vein, one could argue that the chance of misstep is generally too great and that the risk of hypocrisy and moralism is not worth the risk. In addition, the application of social pressures such as shaming is often unpredictable and could have unexpected consequences in our neighbor’s moral life, such as confirming her in bad behavior or simply causing her to become adept at hiding her bad behavior. One might also argue that the paternalism involved in fraternal correction is unacceptable. Nevertheless, there is much to recommend fraternal correction as an alternative form of blaming, and even objectors may find admirable features in the practice. One striking feature of medieval accounts of fraternal correction is that they are decidedly therapeutic and grounded in charity: they encourage greater regard for others by focus on the good of the offender. They explain how offenses may be occasions for strengthening community bonds, since they illustrate ways in which we need not take offenses, even those aimed at us, as damaging to or calling for modification of our relationship. In other blaming practices, the offender is held in lower regard and suffers loss of esteem. In fraternal correction, the corrector’s focus is more on what the offender could be. This is not to say that the corrector condones the demeaning behavior. The correction is, after all, aimed at bringing an end to all such behavior; and if the process is successful, the offender will in fact seek the forgiveness of the offended. Fraternal correction thus satisfies many of the goods of those blaming practices that express indignation or protest on behalf of the victim, but in ways that express a greater generosity, as well as greater hope and trust in our neighbor.³³ Creighton University

BIBLIOGRAPHY Albertus Magnus. Enarrationes in Secundam Partem Evangelii Lucae, ed. S. Borgnet, Opera Omnia 23 (Paris: Vives, 1895). Albertus Magnus. Super Matthaeum, ed. B. Schmidt, Opera Omnia 21 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1987). Alexander de Hales. Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’ (Quaracchi: Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, 1960).

³³ I would like to thank audiences at the Cornell Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy and at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds as well as an anonymous reader for OSMP. I am especially grateful to Chris Pliatska for many hours of patient discussion about blame and for insightful comments on this paper.

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Buc, Philippe. L’Ambiguïté du Livre: prince, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1994). Corbière, Prosper-Honoré. Guide de la conscience (Paris: Paul Mellier, 1845). Craun, Edwin. Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Decosimo, David. Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). Ebbeler, Jennifer V. Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Hieronymi, Pamela. “The Force and Fairness of Blame,” Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004), 115–48. Hugo de Sancto Charo. In Evangelia secundum Matthaeum, Lucam, Marcum, & Joannem (Venetiis: Nicolò Pezzano, 1703). Moule, Gregory. Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Ryan, Thomas. “Aquinas on Shame: A Contemporary Interchange,” in T. B. Mooney and M. Nowacki (eds.), Aquinas, Education and the East (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 73–100. Scanlon, Thomas M. Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Scanlon, Thomas M. What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Smart, J. J. C. “Free-Will, Praise and Blame,” Mind 70 (1961), 291–306. Smith, Angela. “Control, Responsibility, and Moral Assessment,” Philosophical Studies 138 (2008), 367–92. Smith, Angela. “Moral Blame and Moral Protest,” in D. J. Coates and N. A. Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27–48. Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003). Thomas Aquinas. Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. J. Hause and C. Eisen Murphy (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010). Thomas Aquinas. Quaestio disputata de correctione fraterna, in P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, and P. M. Pession (eds.), Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 2 (Turin: Marietti, 1965). Thomas Aquinas. Secunda secundae summae theologiae a quaestione I ad quaestionem LVI, cura et studio fratrum eiusdem ordinis, Opera Omnia 8 (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1895). Thomas Aquinas. Super evangelium S. Matthaei lectura, ed. R. Cai (Turin: Marietti, 1951). Wallace, R. Jay. “Dispassionate Opprobrium: On Blame and the Reactive Sentiments,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 348–72.

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Wallace, R. Jay. “Scanlon’s Contractualism,” Ethics 112 (2002), 429–70. Watson, Gary. “The Trouble with Psychopaths,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 307–31. Watson, Gary. “Two Faces of Responsibility,” Philosophical Topics 24 (1996), 227–48. Wolf, Susan. “Blame, Italian Style,” in R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 332–47.

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Marguerite Porete and Godfrey of Fontaines Detachable Will, Discardable Virtue, Transformative Love Peter King 1 . H I S T O R I C A L B A C KG R O U N D On June 1, 1310, Marguerite Porete was burnt at the stake in the Place de Grève in Paris, the day after she had been convicted by the Inquisition of heresy—that is, of obstinate and perverse persistence in affirming some error(s) in doctrine. The offending claims were drawn from her work The Mirror of Simple Souls.¹ The facts in her case, most of which are known from the trial records, are as follows.² Porete was from the county of Hainault, very likely from the region of Valenciennes; her authorship of the Mirror around the start of the fourteenth century attests to her education, and her diction ¹ Marguerite Porete, Le mirouer des simples ames [Speculum simplicium animarum], ed. R. Guarnieri [P. Verdeyen], Corpus christianorum continuatio mediaeualis 69 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986). (All references to the Mirror will be to this edition.) Originally written around the start of the fourteenth century in Old French, it survives as well in medieval translations into Middle English, Latin, and Italian; Robert Lerner makes a compelling textual case in his “New Light on The Mirror of Simple Souls,” Speculum 85 (2010), 91–116, that the Middle English version is a direct descendant of the original Valenciennes archetype and should be given precedence, a conclusion I adopt in what follows. ² The historical record is meticulously reviewed by Sean Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). Field offers a lucid summary of his findings with cautionary remarks on how to read the surviving evidence in “Debating the Historical Marguerite Porete,” in W. R. Terry and R. Stauffer (eds.), A Companion to Marguerite Porete and “The Mirror of Simple Souls” (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 9–37. I leave out details irrelevant to the purposes of this paper (such as the actions of Guiard de

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strongly suggests that she was of the aristocracy. At some point between 1296 and January 1306, while Guido di Collemezzo was the bishop of Cambrai, some version of the Mirror came to his attention; he condemned her book and ordered that it be burnt in her presence in the public square in Valenciennes, declaring in an official letter that if she were to spread her erroneous doctrine “by speech or writing” again, she herself would be censured and handed over to the secular authorities. Nevertheless, she circulated the Mirror (or more likely a revised version of it) to “certain people” in a bid to have it endorsed by authority.³ It did not work. The last person she sent the (revised?) Mirror to was Jean de Châteauvillain, the bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, who passed it along to Philippe de Marigny, the new bishop of Cambrai, and to the (unnamed) Inquisitor for Lorraine. Marguerite was then arrested and by autumn of 1308 was handed over to inquisitorial custody in Paris, which was under the jurisdiction of the Dominican William of Paris. In March of 1310, after it became clear that Marguerite would not be cooperative, William of Paris summoned eleven Doctors of Theology and five Professors of Canon Law to advise him about her case; the first deliberations were held on April 3, 1310, at which the canonists judged her to be “contumacious, rebellious, and deserving to be judged a heretic” were she not to repent immediately upon sentencing. On April 11, William of Paris gathered twenty-one theologians to consider a list of fifteen articles extracted from the Mirror; they were all duly declared heretical. On May 9, the second deliberations about Marguerite were held, and the canonists declared that Marguerite could be considered not merely to have lapsed into heresy by her contumacy but to have relapsed into heresy in virtue of having circulated her book despite the prohibition against so doing by Guido di Collemezzo. Sentence was pronounced on May 31, at which point she was handed over to the secular authorities. The Provost of Paris had her burnt the next morning. Why the repeated deliberations, the large number of theologians and canon lawyers, the careful attention to protocol and detail? Because in an effort to forestall persecution, before Porete sent the Mirror to Jean de Cressonessart) and make several simplifying assumptions, most notably that the Mirror as we have it is substantially the same as the version that Porete showed to Godfrey of Fontaines. ³ While this is the most plausible reconstruction of events in light of the evidence, and the view most widely accepted by scholars, it is not certain, as Field points out in “Debating the Historical Marguerite Porete,” 26–8; Lerner, for one, does not accept it (“New Light,” 98–9). An alternative is that as soon as she wrote the Mirror Marguerite tried to establish its orthodoxy before circulating it, showing it to the “certain people” she mentions. Field’s reminder is salutary, but nothing in the argument presented here depends on the precise sequence in which the events unfolded.

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Châteauvillain she sent it to three other people whose public standing would grant them some authority in the matter of doctrine, and these people, she tells us, found no error of doctrine in it. She offers her “recorde of clerkis þat haue redde þis boke” as a short note added to the Middle English version as a preface and to the Latin version as an addendum (}140):⁴ The first was a Franciscan monk well-known for his upstanding life, namely Brother John of Queregnon. He said: “We commend you through these words of love; receive them in courtesy with love, for love bids you to the worship of God and His free servants and for the benefit of those who are not yet this but, God willing, yet shall be this.” He said truly that this book [the Mirror] was made by the Holy Spirit, and though all the clerics in the world might hear it, if they understood it—that is, if they have deep spiritual feelings and do the same work—still they would not know what it meant. He prayed for the love of God that it be wisely guarded and that few should see it. He further said that it was so deep that he himself might not understand it! Afterwards, a Cistercian monk called Dom Francis, precentor of the Abbey of Villiers, read it. He said that it tested well against Scripture, that what it says is all true. Afterwards, a master of theology called Godfrey of Fontaines read it. He found no more fault with it than did the others, but he said that he didn’t advise that many should see it because they might foresake their own work and follow this calling, to which they would never come, and so might fool themselves, for it is made by a spirit so strong and acute that there are but few such (or none!); still, the soul will never come to divine practices until it has this practice [described in the Mirror], for all other practices are human practices, whereas this (and this alone) is divine practice.

⁴ For the importance of the Middle English version of Porete’s note, see Lerner, “New Light” and Sean Field, “The Master and Marguerite: Godfrey of Fontaines’ Praise of The Mirror of Simple Souls,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 136–49. The note reads as follows: “The firste was a frère menour of greet name of liif of perfeccioun. Men clepide him frere Ion of Querayn, þat saide, we send ȝou þis bi þese lettres of loue, receyueþ it for curtesie, for loue preieþ it ȝou, to þe worschip of God of hem þat ben made free of God, and to þe profite of hem þat ne beþ, þat, & God wole, ȝit mowe be. He seide soþeli, þat þis booke is maad be þe Hooli Goost. And þouȝ alle þe clerkes of þe world herden it, but if þei vndirstoden it, þat is to seie, but if þei haue hiȝe goostli felynges and þis same werkynge, þei schulen not wite what it meneþ. And he preiede for þe loue of God þat it be wiseli kept, and þat but fewe schulden se it. And he seide þus, þat it was so hiȝe þat himsilf myȝte not vndirstande it. And aftir hym a monk of Cistyns redde it, þat hiȝte daun Frank, chantour of þe abbey of Viliers. And he siede þat it preuede wel bi þe scripture, þat it is al trouþe þat þis boke seiþt. And aftir him redde it a maister of diuinite þat hiȝte maister Godfrey of Fountaynes. And he blamede it not, no more þan dide þe oþire. But he seide þus, þat he counsailide not þat fele shulden se it, and for þis cause: for þei myȝten leue her owen werkynge and folewe þis clepynge, to þe whiche þei schulden neuere come; and so þei myȝten deceyue hemsilf, for it is ymaad of a spirit so strong and so kuttynge, þat þer ben but fewe suche or noone. And not for þanne þe soule comeþ neuere to diuine vsages tofore er sche haue þis usage, for alle oþir manli vsages ben vndir þese usages, þis is diuine usage, and noon oþir but þis.”

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We have no more information about John of Queregnon or Francis of Villiers, monks who seem to have been known, at least locally in Belgium, for their pious lives. But the third person on Porete’s list, the secular master Godfrey of Fontaines, was a well-respected and influential Doctor of Theology, whose reputation—he was known as the Doctor uenerandus—may itself have caused William of Paris to take such care to make sure that the Mirror was properly condemned in good order.⁵ There has been speculation recently that Marguerite’s trial was delayed until Godfrey died, which might explain the length of time between her arrest and the opening of formal procedures, in light of Godfrey’s endorsement of the Mirror cited by Marguerite—which might also explain why, even after Godfrey’s death, William of Paris would act so punctiliously, given the high esteem in which Godfrey continued to be held.⁶ If so, Marguerite’s bid to avoid persecution by enlisting Godfrey (among others) on her side was a clever move, even if in the end it did not allow her to escape the Inquisition. And clever or not, it is clear that Marguerite was hoping that Godfrey’s reputation would allow her to continue to circulate the Mirror despite Guido’s prohibition.

2 . M AR G UE R I T E’ S RE AS O N S The issue I want to address here is more fundamental. How did Godfrey get on Marguerite’s list in the first place? Unlike the other two, Godfrey was not ⁵ Godfrey of Fontaines was born to a noble family in or near Liège around 1250, being descended from a cadet line of the castellans of Hozémont. He was Regent Master of Theology at the University of Paris from 1285 until roughly 1303/1304, holding canonries in Liège and Tournai (where he was elected bishop in 1300 but recused himself on the grounds that the election was contested), and also served as provost of San Severin in Cologne (1287–95). The last testamentary evidence for his life dates from February 1304, and he likely died between 1306 and 1309. His work is mostly contained in fifteen massive and widely diverse quodlibetal disputations held during the period of his regency at Paris, which are edited in the series Les Philosophes Belges: Textes et études (Louvain, 1904–37); references to Godfrey’s works will be to these volumes, the details of which are given in the bibliography. For further biographical details see John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study in Late Thirteenth-Century Philosophy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), from whom I take the dating of the quodlibetal disputes given here. Wippel gives a lucid summary in his “Godfrey of Fontaines at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of the Thirteenth Century,” in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, and A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 359–89. ⁶ One of the theologians at Marguerite’s trial was Jean de Pouilly, who proclaimed himself a student of Godfrey of Fontaines: see Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 137–40; another was Henricus de Frimaria (Henry of Friemar the Elder), who likely attended Godfrey’s lectures at the University of Paris (Ibid., 140–1).

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a monk, and while he may have been pious, his reputation was based on his intellectual acumen rather than his personal sanctity. One suggestion is that Marguerite picked him for exactly that reason, no doubt knowing something of his renown as the greatest of the theologians from the francophone Low Countries of the day. Her knowledge might even have had a personal dimension. If Marguerite were herself of noble birth, as her evident education and financial resources attest—it would take a considerable sum to have copies of the Mirror made for circulation—she might have had a familial connection to Godfrey to draw upon; the aristocracy was a small social class, after all, and while Marguerite directly indicates that she is citing a letter from Brother John, she seems to have had direct personal interaction with Francis and Godfrey, reporting what they said to her about the Mirror. Their meeting might have taken place at any time, for there is reason to suppose that Godfrey was in the area on a regular basis while teaching at Paris.⁷ Godfrey’s international reputation as a “maister of diuinitie,” a learned man worthy of admiration (doctor uenerandus), might well have motivated Marguerite’s turn to Godfrey; if there were a familial connection, so much the better; and they had opportunities to meet face to face. The drawback to this suggestion is that it seems to be an exceptionally dangerous course of action. Why would Marguerite have reason to think the Mirror would not be judged harshly by a theologian? Being a famous Belgian need not ensure approval of a work that had already been censured and burnt once. Even class and familial solidarity extend only so far. Yet Marguerite was making a deliberate effort to gain approval for her views; she presumably revised and rewrote the Mirror after its condemnation, and, in light of Guido’s explicit order not to spread erroneous views “by speech or writing” again, would certainly have taken care to be certain that her book would be well received to whomever she sent it.⁸ For Marguerite to try to enlist Godfrey on her side without some reason to think he would at least be sympathetic to her views would needlessly place her in jeopardy. Such a reason has recently been proposed: Marguerite chose Godfrey, it is said, because of his views about authority and intellectual freedom,⁹ a sore point at Paris ever since Étienne Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, condemned ⁷ Field summarizes the evidence for Godfrey’s travels in the Low Countries in The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 280, n. 40. ⁸ Marguerite eventually sent the Mirror to Jean de Châteauvillain, a fatal error, but she seems to have done so only after securing the (qualified) approval of John, Francis, and Godfrey, at which point she mistakenly thought it safe to circulate it more widely—which only underlines the care she must have exercised with her initial choices. ⁹ This claim is presented and defended in Field, “The Master and Marguerite,” 143–8. On Godfrey’s general views on these subjects, see Marshall Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), Ch. 9.

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219 propositions in 1277. Three questions taken up in his quodlibetal disputes from several periods in his career are cited to support this suggestion. First, Godfrey asks whether a bishop or a prelate is entitled to condemn as heretical or erroneous an opinion that had been maintained previously.¹⁰ The argument given for their ability to do so is suspiciously weak, namely that it must be acceptable because they actually do so. The opposite argument, in contrast, articulates the view that matters of faith pertain to an entire religious community and hence require the community as a whole, or at least a council of prelates, or the pope alone, to condemn a previously held view. While we do not have Godfrey’s magisterial determination how the issue should be resolved, his sympathies are clearly with the latter argument. Second, Godfrey takes on the Condemnations of 1277 directly, asking how a master of theology should settle a question posed to him when on the one hand the master holds by reason and authority it should be answered in a given way, but on the other hand the answer he thinks he should give had been condemned as false by a bishop who proclaimed that anyone holding it would be excommunicated.¹¹ Godfrey reasons that if the matter is necessary for salvation and the theologian is certain that it is true, then, “since a sentence of excommunication containing a manifest error is not binding,” the theologian should say what he thinks must be held in line with evident authority or correct argumentation.¹² If it is not necessary for salvation, then the theologian should stay quiet and not resolve the question in public, to avoid embarrassing the bishop, but if he finds the condemned view to be certain or plausible—even if opposing views can also be held as plausible—then the condemnation and excommunication seem to be erroneous, because they interfere with the pursuit and attainment of the truth;¹³ he should then urge the bishop to lift his sentence, or at least open the matter to wider discussion among theologians. Third, Godfrey raises a more pointed version of the same question, asking whether Tempier’s successor commits a sin in failing to correct some of his predecessor’s condemnations.¹⁴ Godfrey reasons that when the matter is subject to reasonable debate and disagreement, to put restraints and limits on its investigation interferes with the attainment of the truth, which can best be found through a variety of debates in which learned and knowledgeable persons take different sides; this is the rationale for the method of disputation employed in the universities: right reason will find out the truth in the end.¹⁵ There are other considerations. Scandals may ensue when learned theologians analyze such ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹³ ¹⁵

Quodl. 3.9 from Christmas 1285 (217). Quodl. 7.18 from 1291 (402–3). ¹² Ibid. (404). Ibid. (403–4). ¹⁴ Quodl. 12.5 around 1296 (100). Ibid. (101).

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matters in ways at odds with their apparent meaning, and students or other inexperienced people might mistakenly denounce these serious and upright teachers; the new Bishop of Paris had not been a regent master of theology, in a break with past practice, and so was not personally competent to evaluate the condemned articles himself—for this purpose he would need the advice of those masters who are not in agreement with the condemnations.¹⁶ But the fundamental position Godfrey stakes out here, as in the preceding two questions, is that the requirements of seeking the truth prima facie militate against any prohibition or condemnation. Furthermore, bishops and prelates have no special standing in such matters, which should be adjudicated by competent experts, perhaps in consultation with a wider community of the faithful. The position seems tailor-made for Marguerite: Godfrey insists that each view needs to be examined on its merits with no presumptive authority (though with deference) given to episcopal condemnations, and he explicitly argues that free inquiry should rarely if ever be muzzled, individual bishops not being the proper judges of these extreme cases. What better person to give an impartial hearing to the Mirror? Her choice of Godfrey is readily explicable on these grounds. Granted, “this presupposes that a beguine of Hainault had learned details of Parisian theological debates, which seems improbable,” as one scholar has objected.¹⁷ Yet is it so improbable? Marguerite may have been no beguine, merely tarred with the brush; she was likely an aristocrat and may have had a familial connection to Godfrey beyond their membership in the same social class; her authorship of the Mirror attests to her inquisitive mind, and, for all we know, there may have been many chances to learn about the latest and hottest topics debated at Paris—in aristocratic parlors exchanging news; as a topic of conversation when Godfrey as canonist of Liège fell into controversy with the local bishop; as a piece of information imparted to Marguerite by a kinsman studying at Paris who knew she wanted to find authorities to endorse her work; from Godfrey himself when he was in the area . . . the possibilities are many and there is no reason to rule any of them out. Perhaps it is not so improbable after all: it is easier to swallow this camel than to think that Marguerite would select Godfrey without having reason to believe he would judge the Mirror on its merits. The suggestion that Marguerite chose Godfrey because of his views about authority and intellectual freedom is seductive, its virtues evident. Yet on reflection I think we should resist its appeal. It does not go far enough. If we take what Godfrey says in his quodlibetal questions seriously, then it is clear

¹⁶ Ibid. (103).

¹⁷ Lerner, “New Light,” 99.

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that he does not support “intellectual freedom” as a general ideal. On the contrary, he is careful to underline that bishops and prelates should defer to those best qualified to investigate matters, namely masters of theology, and that they should do so using the methods employed at the universities, which presuppose a fearsome degree of training. Marguerite was not one of those whom Godfrey would have regarded as having standing to be an unchained seeker of truth. What is more, in each question Godfrey is careful to indicate that he is talking about the condemnation of views that had been held by more than a few in the past, not about “new” views, as Marguerite’s opinions in the Mirror might well have appeared. Finally, while it is clear that Godfrey was not overly impressed by episcopal condemnation, he did emphasize that one should urge that the condemnation be revoked, not that it be ignored. In short, Godfrey’s position on authority and free inquiry does not provide a reason for Marguerite to think that Godfrey would find the Mirror to be worthy of defense. Being open in principle to consider views on their merits does not entail that he would find any particular view to have merit. For Marguerite to ask Godfrey to review the Mirror with no more assurance that he would be sympathetic to it still seems to be a dangerous action, one that should not be taken in the absence of good reasons to do so. Less dangerous than if Godfrey were a hidebound traditionalist about episcopal authority, but dangerous nonetheless. To recapitulate: We need to find a further reason, a reason Marguerite would think that Godfrey would be receptive to the views expressed in the Mirror, something above and beyond his reputation and possible social connections, something in addition to the appeal of his open-mindedness in the face of episcopal condemnation. This is no more than a consequence of the assumption we made earlier that she was acting in her own interest to avoid censure, an assumption grounded on the undeniable fact that she was taking precautions to forestall objections to her work. What was her reason for thinking Godfrey would not judge the Mirror as harshly as Guido?

3 . B E Y O N D P O LI T I C S Here we leave mere politics behind: I think Marguerite found in Godfrey someone whose philosophical positions were close and congenial to her own. Strange bedfellows, perhaps, since the one is a respectable academic and the other a (possibly renegade?) female mystic. But if we look beyond the labels, there is a remarkable confluence of doctrine. Since we have already swallowed the camel and accepted that Marguerite could have known the “details of Parisian theological debates,” why strain at the gnat of her

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knowing about some of the more philosophical of those debates? In particular, there are three positions that Godfrey defended, each connected with the will, that Marguerite would have found congenial. They are the detachability of the will, the discardability of virtue, and the transformative power of love. These doctrines are listed in descending order for their ability to single out Godfrey for Marguerite’s choice. Godfrey alone seems to have held the detachability of the will; he was part of a broader movement that came to regard virtue as discardable; he was one of many in a tradition that emphasized the transformative power of love. These doctrines, in combination with his position on episcopal authority and intellectual freedom, would certainly have led Marguerite to think that Godfrey would find the Mirror worthy of defense, thereby giving her sufficient reason to submit the Mirror for his consideration. Two remarks before we turn to these three doctrines. First, the proposal that Marguerite was motivated by Godfrey’s espousal of these three doctrines is purely speculative; as far as I know there is no historical evidence to that effect apart from what we find in their respective writings. (The same point can be made regarding Godfrey’s position on authority and intellectual freedom.) I find it plausible. Your mileage may vary. The proposal has the merit of giving Marguerite clear reasons to think that Godfrey would be sympathetic to the Mirror. Reject it if you will, but then you either have to provide Marguerite with some other reasons for choosing Godfrey or conclude that for all her apparent caution she made a dangerous choice without having adequate grounds. Second, the relevant intellectual background is as follows. Starting in the 1280s, and especially at the University of Paris, affective psychology— including love and will—was the focus of intense philosophical investigation. The bulk of philosophical effort for much of the century had gone into the project of assimilating Aristotle, on the one hand coming to grips with his views and arguments, on the other hand combining them with the native tradition in philosophy and with Christian doctrine. Thomas Aquinas, for example, was representative of the group of thinkers who were “sympathetic synthesizers” of Aristotle. (Nor were their efforts unaided: Greek and Arabic commentators were scoured in learning how to understand Aristotle.) The net result was broad consensus on what we may call ‘the neo-Aristotelian synthesis’ in which the works of Aristotle, suitably interpreted, were taken as a common philosophical framework in which to pursue philosophy, with wide agreement about where Aristotle went wrong (the eternality of the world for instance). This consensus was broad enough to allow disagreement over arguments and points of doctrine, providing the matrix for ‘normal science’ (as Kuhn called it). Yet one of the sore points of the neo-Aristotelian synthesis was that Aristotle had nothing systematic to say about affective psychology, and indeed almost nothing at all to say about it.

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Once the neo-Aristotelian synthesis had become the framework for philosophical investigation, philosophers turned their attention to accommodating the native medieval doctrine of the will within Aristotelian psychology. Debates over the details of this accommodation, especially the relative contribution of will and intellect to human free action, were the intellectual background to both Godfrey’s academic career and Marguerite’s Mirror.¹⁸

4 . D E T A C HA B L E W I L L Marguerite’s central contention in the Mirror is that the human soul cannot reach God through its intellect (a.k.a. reason), which is a finite and limited discursive capacity, but must do so instead by unconditional love of God via the will, a theme immediately apparent in her opening poem and Prologue (}1). To reach the state of unconditional love of God is not easy; it is the residual condition of a soul that has “annihilated” itself and become simple: intellect is set aside and all personal desire has been extinguished.¹⁹ Free souls “no longer possess any will, and if they were to desire anything they would set themselves apart from love, for the One Who possesses their will knows what their good is, and this is sufficient for them, without knowledge and without being assured of it.”²⁰ Personal desire interferes with unconditional love of God. Hence a key part of the seven-stage process of annihilating the soul (outlined most clearly in }61) is what Marguerite calls “the poverty of will,” the adaptive strategy of reducing and eliminating desires, the result of which is the will having nothing of its own, or, as she often puts it, to will nothing (i.e., to will nothing for one’s own sake), as she explains in }}46–51.²¹ ¹⁸ The integration of neo-Aristotelian cognitive psychology with the native medieval tradition of affective psychology (comprising the will and the emotions) is part of the history of philosophy yet to be told. ¹⁹ The full title of Marguerite’s work is Le mirouer des simples ames anienties et qui seulement demourent en vouloir et desir d’amour (the title is simplified in Latin but one manuscript gives it as Speculum animarum simplicium in uoluntate et desiderio morantium): “the mirror of those annihilated simple souls who remain only in will and desire that is love.” In what follows I will cite the Latin only when there is an interesting difference in the sense. ²⁰ Mirror }9: “Elles n’ont point de voulenté, et se elles vouloient aucune chose, elles se despartiroient d’Amour; car celluy qui a leur voulenté, sçait ce qui leur est bon, et ce leur souffist sans le sçavoir et sans estre asseurees.” See also her remark in }48 that no one is ever free who wants anything according to his own will, whatever it is he may want. ²¹ See Emilie Zum Brunn, “Non-Willing in Marguerite Porete’s ‘Mirror of Annihilated Souls,’ ” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 58 (1988), 11–22. Marguerite’s views are compared to those of Meister Eckhart by Edmund Colledge and Jack Marler, Poverty of the Will: Ruusbroec, Eckhart and the “Mirror of Simple Souls” (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1984); for a more recent treatment of the theme of annihilation

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Marguerite describes the result of this process at the very beginning of the Mirror as follows:²² It is not [the soul’s] own will that wills but instead the will of God that wills in one’s soul, for the soul does not remain in the love that prompts it to willing something through some desire; rather, a love that captivates the will remains in the soul, and so love works its will upon the soul and does the work of love in the soul without it, and accordingly nothing objectionable can remain in the soul. This soul no longer knows how to speak about God, for all its external desires and internal impulses have been annihilated . . .

Divine love “captivates” the will and works through it, without needing it. Marguerite effectively endorses a strong reading of the biblical phrase “not my will but Thine be done” (Lk 22:42; cf. Mt 26:39). While it had been a truism in medieval philosophy ever since Augustine (City of God 1.4–6) that when one agent X subordinates his will to that of another agent Y, then X becomes the actor who is merely a tool or instrument of Y, as in the case of soldiers and commanders, or slaves and their masters. But there are two ways to understand the case. On the weak reading, the soldier retains his own will and merely adopts the commander’s volition, discharging it through his own will. On the strong reading the subordinate will instead is the channel for the will to which it is subordinated: the higher will (love) “does the work of love in the soul without it,” that is, it acts through the subordinate will directly with its own efficacious force; it is “the will of God that wills in one’s soul,” not one’s own will (see also }131). The self, or at least the self-asagent, is set aside. In a word: annihilated. Marguerite does not detail the mechanics by which this process takes place—the nuts-and-bolts of metaphysics and philosophy of psychology that make her position possible. This is no surprise given her overriding concern with the soul’s progress toward its end. What is a surprise is that Godfrey’s views about the will give Marguerite exactly these details, especially in light of Godfrey’s notoriety as an ‘intellectualist.’ Let’s take a closer look.

see Juan Marin, “Annihilation and Deification in Beguine Theology and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls,” Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010), 89–109. ²² Mirror 7: “Ce n’est mie sa voulenté qui le vieult, mais ainçoys est la voulenté de Dieu, qui le vieult elle; car cste Ame ne demoure mie en Amour qui le luy face vouloir par desirer. Ainçoys demoure Amour en elle, qui a prinse sa voulenté, et pource fait Amour sa voulenté d’elle [Lat: et ideo de ea facit sicut uult et quod uult], et adonc ouevre Amour en elle sans elle, par quoy il n’est mesaise qui en elle puisse demourer . . . C’este Ame, dit Amour, ne sçait plus de Dieu parler, car elle est adnientie de tous ses desirs forains et de sentement de dedans . . . ” See also }45 and }91.

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One of the questions hotly disputed at Paris was the relation between the intellect and the will, in particular which faculty was more important in explaining human free action. Aquinas for one proposed that the will takes its guidance from the intellect, reasoning that, since the appetitive faculties are defined by their orientation to the good (as the intellective faculties by their orientation to the truth), the intellect has to recognize or perceive some object as good for the will to hew to it. Against this position that gave precedence to the intellect (the ‘intellectualist’ view), other philosophers argued for the alternative position in which the will had ever-increasing autonomy and precedence over the intellect (the ‘voluntarist’ view): Henry of Ghent and James of Viterbo, for example, and later John Duns Scotus. The advantages and drawbacks of each position were well known: the intellectualist position had an easy time explaining why an agent acted as she did, but, given the intellect’s orientation to the truth, had a hard time explaining the freedom of her action. Conversely the voluntarist position had an easy time explaining how a given action was free (it was the product of an otherwise undetermined act of the will), but a hard time explaining how a free action could be reasonable. While Aquinas himself had been coy about how the relation between intellect and will worked, Godfrey of Fontaines was not. He held that the will was no more than an executive faculty of the intellect, determined in its actions and operations by it. He begins by describing how the will is moved by its object:²³ Nor does [the will] ever engage in an act except in line with the mode and form of some guise. For it avoids only what it judges to be harmful, and pursues only what it judges to be appropriate, since it does not act except in the presence of an object. Now an object is avoided only when it is apprehended in the guise of something evil and harmful, whereas an object is pursued when it is apprehended in the guise of something good and appropriate. Thus there seems to be no argument through which it could be proved that one being is active in respect of another by which it could not also be proved for the case of the object in respect of the will. Thus is seems that it cannot be denied that the will is genuinely moved by the object as regards its act of volition.

According to this line of reasoning, the will is actuated by the presence of an object in some guise: pursuit when the object appears in the guise of a good, avoidance when the object appears in the guise of an evil. Godfrey throws down the gauntlet: any argument that establishes that x is active in respect of y will apply to the case of the will and its object (or more exactly its objectunder-a-guise). ²³ Quodl. 6.7 from 1289 (158–9).

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Furthermore, it is not possible for an object to appear under one guise to the intellect and another guise to the will:²⁴ It is impossible for the intellect to apprehend something under one guise and the will not will it under that guise but under some other, for if [the object] is not apprehended under that other guise the will cannot will it under that other one . . . namely because the order of these potencies to one another and in respect of their objects is such that the will cannot go forth into its act except by a mediating act of the intellect, and the object that moves the intellect and the will can only move the will if it were first to move the intellect regarding cognition.

In the natural and normal course of events, the will is ordered to the intellect in such a way that it receives its object, or strictly its object-under-a-guise, from the intellect. Godfrey explicitly draws this as a conclusion in the next question when he asks whether the will has mastery (dominium) over the intellect:²⁵ Therefore, it is necessary to postulate conformity between the act of the understanding and of the will, such that what the intellect judges should be pursued or avoided, the will selects or rejects [respectively]. Thus, since potency is determined to act by its object, we must postulate that the will is directly determined by the intellect in each of its acts, that is, by the object previously apprehended by the intellect . . .

The will “is directly determined” by the object presented to it by the intellect. Yet Godfrey is clear that there are two distinct claims involved here: (a) the will requires an object to be presented to it in order to act; (b) the intellect presents an object to the will. According to (a), the will is essentially executive in nature, whereas according to (b), the will is commanded by the intellect in the natural course of events. Yet Godfrey argues later that (b) is contingent. When he asks whether God could reduce the passive potencies of the soul to act in the absence of their objects (Quodl. 12.1), he argues that while God can be the complete and effective cause of absolute beings (entia absoluta) with nothing else present, this is not the case with relative beings, and the powers of the soul are “acts to which essentially and of themselves there is an annexed relation” and hence they “could not exist without their object also existing.”²⁶ Take the case of vision. There can be no act of vision unless something reduces the power of vision from potency to act, namely the object that is seen. In the natural case, the object seen is both the efficient cause of the act of seeing and also the terminus of that act. But Godfrey holds that God is able to cause vision in such a way that the object does not exercise any causal power (ad hoc nihil efficeret in causando), because God

²⁴ Quodl. 6.10 (202–3). The same point is repeated on 204. ²⁵ Quodl. 6.11 (220). ²⁶ Quodl. 12.1 (80).

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“has in himself every active power sufficiently” (80). The same considerations hold in the case of the will. Godfrey, unlike other philosophers, holds that the human will is, essentially, a passive power—one of his most distinctive views.²⁷ Hence as long as the will is provided with an objectunder-a-guise, God could supplant the human will, providing any and all of its causal power Himself. But that is to grant (b), that the connection between intellect and will is contingent, and so to detach the will from its natural companion power, the intellect, to allow God to bypass reason and directly affect our will. Godfrey’s detachable will suits Marguerite’s claims perfectly, and provides the metaphysical and psychological underpinnings for her claims about the soul’s progress toward annihilation, doing away with the self-as-agent entirely. Moreover, this view is distinctively Godfrey’s; in an ironic turn of events, it is precisely because Godfrey is such an extreme intellectualist that he treats the will as detachable, and hence as capable of channeling God directly with no intermediary. And like all medieval theologians, Godfrey held that human intellect is finite and limited, incapable of grasping God’s infinite and transcendent being—Marguerite’s starting point. Whatever we may think of Godfrey’s doctrine of the detachable will, Marguerite would have seen it as congenial to her own account of the soul’s progress, perhaps providing a foundation for it. As such, it would have given her ample reason to think that Godfrey would be receptive to the Mirror.

5 . D I S C A R D A B L E V I R T UE It is not easy to achieve the sort of thorough abnegation of self Marguerite demands in the Mirror. The traditional medieval view is that each person has to cultivate the virtues, in particular the virtues of charity and humility, so that one treats oneself no better or worse than anyone else. Yet right from the outset of the Mirror, Marguerite insists that to make spiritual progress the soul has to take its leave of the virtues (}6 and }8). More exactly, she regards the traditional virtues as transitional; they are necessary at the initial stages of the soul’s progress toward God (}61), but then in the fourth of the seven stages of the soul’s ascent they must be “cast aside” because they hold the soul back from the later stages of the ascent (}}55–6). If the soul does not succeed in transcending the virtues, then it becomes what she calls one of the “Sad Ones” who sense that there is something higher but out of their

²⁷ Other philosophers thought, not unreasonably, that the will by its nature has to be some kind of active power in order to ground freedom.

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reach (}57), to whom she in the end devotes the Appendix to the Mirror (}}123–39). Now Marguerite is not entirely clear why the moral virtues become fetters to spiritual progress, but in }69 she describes the practice of moral virtue as “labor full of care” (ung travail plein de soulcy). We know that she thinks that in the later stages of spiritual progress the soul continues to extinguish its personal desires in favor of having a simple will, one which will eventually channel the divine will. Marguerite’s objections to the moral virtues therefore appear to be twofold. On the one hand, the moral virtues are a kind of trap. Once one acquires them as character dispositions, their exercise does not lead to any further spiritual progress; they are not sufficient for that purpose. On the other hand, they get in the way of the will’s proper exercise and development, which is what matters for spiritual progress; hence the traditional moral virtues, understood as character traits, are not necessary and so ultimately should be discarded.²⁸ Marguerite seems once more to be tracking the philosophical topics disputed at Paris.²⁹ What was the relation of the will to the traditional moral virtues? The latter were understood to be acquired habits or dispositions in the agent. Where were these habits located? Were they in the will? What was the relation between such habits, which indicate an acquired tendency, and the will’s choice or decision to act in a particular case? If the virtues and the will together prompted a certain course of action, what was their relative contribution and merit? The answers to such questions were fiercely contested. Earlier philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas maintained the necessity of the moral virtues for salvation; with his intellectualist understanding of the will it was reasonably straightforward to adopt an Aristotelian virtue ethics. One might have thought that Godfrey would follow suit. He did not. Godfrey raises the question where the moral virtues, as habits, are located; he answers that they are to be found in the sensitive appetite:³⁰ Note that all the moral virtues are in the sensitive appetite, which of itself and directly is only an appetite for some particular goods; yet the object of these virtues of itself is not any particular good but rather some universal or general good through predication, whether this be genuinely univocal or analogical.

²⁸ Jack Marler, “The Mirror of Simple Souls: The Ethics of Margaret Porete,” in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart (Leiden: Brill, 2012), suggests that the soul has to cast off the moral virtues because they “are associated with the exercise of will” (having in particular a disciplinary function), “and thus with every such projection of self as must be an artefact of willing and as could hinder the operations of Love and perfect Humility, which are unconditionally better” (456). ²⁹ The standard survey is Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995). ³⁰ Quodl. 14.3 from 1298 (341). See Kent, Virtues of the Will, 236–7.

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The moral virtues are located in the sensitive appetite, the domain of the emotions (passiones animae), because it is precisely these that the moral virtues try to regulate. Even justice is designed to moderate our passionate impulses. Insofar as the virtues are habits or dispositions, they tend to good in general, not to the particular objects that may excite our passions. While the sensitive appetite is not of itself naturally inclined to follow reason, the moral virtues compensate for this lack. All well and good. Yet that means that the moral virtues are essentially distinct from the will, being found in a lower psychological department, namely the sensitive rather than the intellective appetite. Godfrey does not hesitate to draw the conclusion that the will can act independently of any habits:³¹ I say that as regards those things that possible and suitable to us from natural [attributes] of themselves and primarily and principally, it is not required that there be any habit which disposes or schools the will to what it is promptly and rightly inclined (as apprehended by right reason) . . .

More exactly, Godfrey held that the virtues, as mere habits, are not necessary for right action, which only requires a proper object. At least in principle they are discardable. Godfrey was one of the first to hold this position. His line of argument would eventually culminate in Duns Scotus’s view that the virtues are irrelevant to right action, since the will is always capable of acting freely no matter what habits an agent may have acquired.³² With hindsight we can see Godfrey’s position as part of the transition from character-based virtue ethics to an ethics based on the primacy of will.³³ Indeed, Godfrey emphasizes the primacy of will to such an extent that he comes close to Pelagianism, that is, the view that human beings can achieve salvation through their own efforts unaided by divine grace:³⁴ Human beings take delight more and more principally in God than in themselves. The upshot is that we take delight in God over ourselves and all else not only by delight that is informed by charity, but also by delight from the natural deliberative

³¹ Quodl. 14.3 from 1298 (343). Godfrey argued for this thesis explicitly in Quodl. 3.13 in 1286 but his response has been lost. ³² See Ian Drummond, “John Duns Scotus on the Role of the Moral Virtues” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016). ³³ Godfrey seems to have been uneasy about the radical implications of the primacy of will. In his Quaest. ord. 1 he asks whether complete moral virtue consists solely in inner choice or also in exterior action; he argues that moral goodness is formally in the inner act alone (in actu exteriori nullo modo consistit bonum uirtutis formaliter, sed solum in actu interiori), but that the goodness of the exterior act does add something to the goodness of the inner act, presumably as a supererogatory good (84). ³⁴ Quodl. 10.6 (310).

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[power], i.e., without charity, were we not weighed down by the burden of sin and twisted by carnal pleasure. Thus human beings, by the dictates of natural reason without grace, have the feature of judging that God should be taken delight in over all—otherwise grace and charity would destroy rather than complete our nature or natural inclination.

Godfrey’s aside about original sin and carnal pleasure is the briefest of nods to the orthodox position that our will is in our current state incapable of reaching its good on its own. He acknowledges the difficulty explicitly when he later raises the question whether charity is the formal aspect under which an act of taking delight is elicited; he replies that “the object of the will along with the will are of themselves the principles of the act of taking delight which they elicit; grace and charity are merely dispositions for eliciting [the act] more completely and quickly.”³⁵ Yet with this answer “we seem to run into the Pelagian error” (uideremur incidere in errorem Pelagii), which is the consequence of taking dispositions to be in principle discardable in favor of the activity of the will alone. His way out is to claim that grace, unlike the moral virtues, is a habit that while independent of will is necessary to raise the mind up to God. The moral virtues, then, are discardable, though grace is still required to lift the mind to God (mens elevetur ad quandam supernaturalem conformationem et assimilationem ad Deum per quam simus Deo grati et accepti). Marguerite holds that the moral virtues are a necessary stage in the soul’s spiritual progress, but they are to be discarded along the way to make room for the primacy of will. Marguerite, too, explicitly calls on divine grace to accept the soul in its ascent. When Godfrey formulated his doctrine of the discardability of virtue he was a philosophical outlier; others, notably Duns Scotus, followed in his wake, so this doctrine is less distinctive of Godfrey than the detachability of will. It nevertheless is a doctrine he held and if Marguerite were familiar with his position she would again find it some reason to think that Godfrey would be sympathetic to the Mirror.

6 . T R AN S F O R M A T I V E L O VE Marguerite’s Mirror is all about love. In the Prologue the Author (as a character) hands off the narrative duties to Love (}1), and Love plays the lead role in all that follows; it is love that propels us toward God through the seven stages of spiritual progress, love that binds us to God, love that allows us to annihilate our souls and channel God’s will directly. It is this last point ³⁵ Quodl. 11.4 (23).

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that interests us now, for Marguerite holds that love is ultimately responsible for our spiritual transformation, rendering our souls simple. The claim that love is a fundamental transformative force was also held by Godfrey of Fontaines. He argues against James of Viterbo that love is not only a unifying principle but also transforms the lover:³⁶ The act of loving unites through some sort of transformation . . . the lover wants to join himself completely to the beloved, and he wants to do what the beloved does and, insofar as he can, transform himself into the beloved.

Or again:³⁷ Love is also said to have a unitive and an almost efficacious transformative force insofar as it is a sort of inclination through which the lover tends toward union and transformation according to some acts in which union and transformation of this sort both formally and more principally consist.

To some extent this is a standard rhetorical and philosophical trope in the Middle Ages, hardly unique to Godfrey; we can find much the same language in others.³⁸ Yet Godfrey offers some personal touches to this common trope. For one thing, he applies the same language of transformation when speaking of the love of God:³⁹ On this score, we should note that x does not take delight in anything except insofar as it is one with it, since whatever x takes delight in it does so under the guise in which it is suitable to it, and hence one in some way. Therefore, since any given particular being is naturally part of some whole, and God is, so to speak, some kind of whole as regards power and perfection, containing and conserving all beings in Himself, anything whatsoever, then, more truly has union or unity appropriate to it in order to the whole of which it is a part or so-to-speak a part than it does as regards what it is in itself as something existing on its own; hence someone taking delight in the common good of a whole naturally takes delight in it in that it is appropriate to him and he is one with it.

Loving God transforms the individual because (among other things) it sets up something other than its own good as the good to pursue.⁴⁰ As Godfrey ³⁶ Quodl. 6.10 (185). See also Godfrey’s remarks at 191 and 211–13. ³⁷ Quodl. 11.5 (30). ³⁸ See for instance Thomas Aquinas, De malo 6 ad 13: “Love is said to transform the lover into the beloved, inasmuch as through love the lover is moved to the beloved object.” Aquinas even uses the same comparison as Godfrey does (omitted in the passage cited here), describing how the knower is united with and in a certain way “becomes” what is known. ³⁹ Quodl. 13.1 from 1297/8 (183). ⁴⁰ For Godfrey’s unique account of the common good, see Kempshall, The Common Good, Ch. 8, and Thomas Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), Ch. 4. Each points out

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tells us here, in loving God we are united to God and want the good of the whole of which we are a so-to-speak part, which is a good outside ourselves. Godfrey thus holds that selfless love is possible, and, furthermore, that when we selflessly love God we take delight in something greater than ourselves. If we put this together with his talk of transformation given above, then it seems that in selflessly loving God we are transformed into something transcending ourselves—not quite the “annihilation of the soul” but roughly along the same lines.⁴¹ It is easy to see how Marguerite would have found Godfrey’s doctrine of transformative love congenial to her own views.

7 . C O N C LU S I O N Marguerite sought out Godfrey of Fontaines as part of a plan to forestall questions about the orthodoxy and legitimacy of the Mirror. It stands to reason that she would try to pick reviewers of some reputation and substance, whose own authority lent weight to her case, and equally that she would take great care in selecting reviewers likely to be receptive to the content of the Mirror. The connections I have drawn above are purely speculative; there is, to the best of my knowledge, no hard evidence that Marguerite knew Godfrey’s doctrines. Yet if she had, she would then have had good reason to think he would be sympathetic to her case and provide her with an authoritative endorsement. After all, Marguerite’s views about detachable will, discardable virtue, and transformative love are remarkably close to Godfrey’s. If anything, she takes them further than he did, not having learnt academic caution. (Three of the fifteen articles for which Marguerite was condemned dealt with the discardability of the virtues, for example.) Despite usually being stigmatized as ‘mystical,’ Marguerite’s positions in the Mirror are closely related to doctrines that were part of the mainstream of medieval thought.⁴² Small wonder that when Godfrey

that Godfrey’s position is contrary to the general view among philosophers that no one can love another more than himself. ⁴¹ Godfrey notes, along with Aquinas and Giles of Rome, that the selfless love of God in fact guarantees one’s own individual good, but this is a side effect: quasi ex consequenti et implicite. ⁴² We know that Godfrey read the Mirror and gave it his qualified endorsement. We also know that Meister Eckhart had and made use of the Mirror. There are reasons to believe that Godfrey had met Eckhart in person as well. It is possible that Godfrey himself gave Eckhart a copy of the Mirror, or at least recommended it to him, in which case much of what Marguerite had to say lived on in the medieval intellectual bloodstream—but safely, that is, put forward by a man. For the relation of Eckhart and Godfrey, see Colledge and Marner, Poverty of the Will and Marler, “The Ethics.” The case that Godfrey

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and the other clerics read the Mirror they “blamede it not” but did not think “þat fele shulden se it,” since the undiluted truth would be easy to misinterpret or misunderstand, when written without the usual academic qualifications and delivered to a learned audience. Marguerite Porete sensibly tried to enlist authority to sanction her views, and, despite being a nonacademic woman writing in the vernacular, she succeeded in securing endorsement from one of the most well-respected theologians of the day. Her choice, as I have suggested here, was made for well-motivated reasons that had to do with the confluence of their views. Unfortunately, Godfrey’s endorsement could protect Marguerite only so far.⁴³ University of Toronto

BIBLIOGRAPHY Colledge, Edmund and J. C. Marler. Poverty of the Will: Ruusbroec, Eckhart and the “Mirror of Simple Souls” (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1984). Drummond, Ian. “John Duns Scotus on the Role of the Moral Virtues” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016). Field, Sean. “The Master and Marguerite: Godfrey of Fontaines’ Praise of The Mirror of Simple Souls,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 136–49. Field, Sean. The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). Field, Sean. “Debating the Historical Marguerite Porete,” in W. R. Terry and R. Stauffer (eds.), A Companion to Marguerite Porete and “The Mirror of Simple Souls” (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 9–37. Godfrey of Fontaines. Les quatres premiers Quodlibets de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. M. De Wulf and A. Pelzer, Les Philosophes Belges tom. II (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de l’Université, 1904). Godfrey of Fontaines. Les Quodlibet cinq, six et sept de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. M. De Wulf and A. Pelzer, Les Philosophes Belges tom. III (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de l’Université, 1914). Godfrey of Fontaines. Le huitième Quodlibet, Le neuvième Quodlibet, Le dixième Quodlibet, ed. J. Hoffmans, Les Philosophes Belges tom. IV (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de l’Université, 1924, 1928, 1931).

gave Eckhart a copy of the Mirror is put forward in Kurt Ruh, Meister Eckhart: Theologe, Prediger, Mystiker (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985). ⁴³ An earlier version of this paper was given at Columbia University in February 2017. Thanks to Christia Mercer for getting me interested in Marguerite Porete, to Michael Szlachta for research, and to Fabienne Michelet for help with Middle English.

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Godfrey of Fontaines. Les Quodlibets onze et douze, Les Quodlibets treize et quatorze, ed. J. Hoffmans, Les Philosophes Belges tom. V (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de l’Université, 1932, 1935). Godfrey of Fontaines. Le Quodlibet XV et trois Questions ordinaires de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. O. Lottin, Les Philosophes Belges tom. XIV (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de l’Université, 1937). Kempshall, Marshall. The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). Kent, Bonnie. Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995). Leicht, Irene. Marguerite Porete—eine fromme Intellektuelle und die Inquisition (Freiburg: Herder, 1999). Lerner, Robert. “New Light on The Mirror of Simple Souls,” Speculum 85 (2010), 91–116. Marguerite Porete. Le mirouer des simples ames [Speculum simplicium animarum], ed. R. Guarnieri [P. Verdeyen], Corpus christianorum continuatio mediaeualis 69 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986). Marin, Juan. “Annihilation and Deification in Beguine Theology and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls,” Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010), 89–109. Marler, Jack C. “The Mirror of Simple Souls: The Ethics of Margaret Porete,” in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 445–69. Osborne, Thomas. Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). Ruh, Kurt. Meister Eckhart: Theologe, Prediger, Mystiker (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985). Wippel, John F. The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study in Late Thirteenth-Century Philosophy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981). Wippel, John F. “Godfrey of Fontaines at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of the Thirteenth Century,” in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, and A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 359–89. Zum Brunn, Emilie. “Non-Willing in Marguerite Porete’s ‘Mirror of Annihilated Souls,’ ” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 58 (1988), 11–22.

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Aristotle and John Buridan on the Individuation of Causal Powers Can Laurens Löwe INTRODUCTION In recent years, analytic metaphysicians have taken a renewed interest in the study of powers or dispositions.¹ They think that powers are crucial to understanding the nature of causation.² Consider the following causal process. A sugar cube is submerged in water as a consequence of which it dissolves. Advocates of powers construe this not as a succession of two events—the submersion event and the event of dissolution—bound together by a relation of constant conjunction, such that when an event of one type occurs an event of the other type always occurs, as the Humean analysis would have it. Rather, they construe it as a mutual manifestation of causal powers in a single process of dissolution, the relevant powers being water’s power to act as a solvent, on the one hand, and the water-solubility of sugar, on the other hand. What are powers? Generally speaking, a power is, to use Sydney Shoemaker’s definition, a property of a thing that “make[s] any difference to the way the presence of that thing affects other things or to the way other things affect it.”³ Consider sugar’s water-solubility. The fact that it possesses this

¹ I use the terms ‘power’ and ‘disposition’ interchangeably. A helpful overview of some of the contemporary debates about powers can be found, e.g., in Anna Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010). All translations in this paper are mine except as noted. ² See, e.g., Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, Getting Causes from Powers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Alexander Bird, Nature’s Metaphysics: Laws and Properties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), ch. 3. ³ Sydney Shoemaker, “Causality and Properties,” in Shoemaker, Identity, Cause, and Mind: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 214–15.

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property makes a difference to how sugar is affected by other things. Given its water-solubility, it normally dissolves when submerged in water.⁴ One of the key questions investigated by contemporary metaphysicians is: how are powers to be individuated? That is, how do we determine what a given power is, and how do we specify the conditions under which two powers are identical or distinct? The generally accepted answer today is that we ought to individuate powers by appeal to what they are powers for, that is, by appeal to what they do. For instance, it is held, water-solubility is the power it is by virtue of being directed to the activity of dissolving in water. But questions abound with regard to the details of this answer. What exactly is a power’s directedness to its activity? Is this directedness amenable to reductive analysis or is it a primitive feature of powers? And is a power directed to merely one sort of activity or can it be directed to several kinds? Are powers, to use nowstandard terms, “single-track” or “multi-track”?⁵ Many of these questions, or at least relevantly similar ones, have already been discussed in great detail by scholastic philosophers. Remarkably, however, there have been as yet no detailed studies of power individuation in medieval philosophy.⁶ This is surprising because powers play a central role in medieval metaphysics, and getting clear on individuation is, arguably,

⁴ I say “normally” because the disposition could be prevented from manifesting. For instance, a sugar cube, though dropped in water, might not dissolve because it is, say, wrapped in cellophane paper. ⁵ This terminology is due to Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Penguin Books, 1949), 43–4. ⁶ As far as I know, there is only one recent study touching upon the issue of power individuation in medieval thought, namely, Peter King, “The Inner Cathedral: Mental Architecture in High Scholasticism,” Vivarium 46 (2008), 253–74. There are, however, several studies dealing with other aspects of medieval theories of causal powers, e.g., the ontological status of powers. See, e.g., Richard Cross, “Accidents, Substantial Forms, and Causal Powers in the Late Thirteenth Century: Some Reflections on the Axiom ‘actiones sunt suppositorum’,” in C. Erismann and A. Schniewind (eds.), Compléments de substance: Études sur les propriétés accidentelles offertes à Alain de Libera. Problèmes et controverses (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 133–46; Sander W. De Boer, The Science of the Soul: The Commentary Tradition on Aristotle’s De anima, c.1260–1360 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013), 227–52; Dominik Perler, “Faculties in Medieval Philosophy,” in D. Perler (ed.), Faculties: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 105–14. For a discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s ontology of the powers of the soul, see Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae 1a 75–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 152–60. For a discussion of William of Ockham’s view on powers of the soul, see Dominik Perler, “Ockham über die Seele und ihre Teile,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 77 (2010), 337–42. For a systematic study of accounts of powers of the soul from Augustine to Aquinas, see Pius Künzle, Das Verhältnis der Seele zu ihren Potenzen: Problemgeschichtliche Untersuchungen von Augustin bis und mit Thomas von Aquin (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, Schweiz, 1956).

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one of the core tasks of metaphysics. This paper is a first foray into the intricate web of medieval discussions about power individuation. It considers the account that dominated scholastic thought on powers, namely, Aristotle’s, as well as one of its most radical critics, John Buridan. In a nutshell, Aristotle’s account of power individuation is as follows. Like metaphysicians today, for instance, George Molnar, Jonathan Lowe, and Stephen Mumford, Aristotle holds that powers ought to be individuated by their characteristic activities (though, as we shall see, he thinks that we also need to appeal to what he calls the activity’s “object”). Moreover, Aristotle claims that each power is directed to only one type of activity. On his view, in other words, powers are single-track. A number of medieval thinkers, like Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Henry of Ghent, followed Aristotle’s account, but some, like Buridan, dissented.⁷ Buridan attacks Aristotle on two counts, as I intend to show. First, he argues that one cannot individuate powers by appeal to their activities and objects, and, second, he does not agree with Aristotle that a power is directed to only one type of activity. On Buridan’s view, a power may be directed to many different types of activities. Buridan, thus, favors a multi-track approach to powers. Buridan does not openly criticize Aristotle because he does not attribute to him what I have so far described as Aristotle’s account of power individuation.⁸ Nonetheless, it is quite clear that Buridan’s account of powers goes against Aristotle. Thus, I will speak of Buridan criticizing Aristotle, even though Buridan’s text does not give the impression that this is what he takes himself to be doing. Buridan’s critique of Aristotle’s theory of power individuation is of historical significance because it shows that scholastic metaphysicians broke with Aristotle on matters pertaining to power individuation. It shows that medieval power metaphysics is not a mere continuation of ancient (Aristotelian) power metaphysics. But Buridan’s critique is also of interest from a contemporary perspective. The most popular contemporary approach to power individuation is, as we will see, basically Aristotelian— not just in terms of its appeal to activity as the key power-individuating ⁷ Buridan’s critique has been briefly noted but not discussed in any detail by Jack Zupko in “How Are Souls Related to Bodies? A Study of John Buridan,” Review of Metaphysics 46 (1993), 583–4, and in John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 170–1. Buridan was not the only critic of Aristotle’s account. Another dissenter was William of Ockham. See Reportatio II, q. 20, OTh 5:434–5. For a discussion of Ockham’s critique, see King, “The Inner Cathedral,” 269–71. ⁸ See note 60 for the text and for my attempt to neutralize textual evidence to the contrary.

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feature, but also in terms of being a single-track approach. Buridan offers an alternative to this view, and it is nothing less than a medieval version of the contemporary multi-track account of powers, which, though currently only defended by a minority, is the main competitor to the prominent neoAristotelian account of power individuation. In the end, I do not find Buridan’s arguments against Aristotle’s single-track account convincing. Yet I think that Buridan’s multi-track view is a viable alternative to the Aristotelian single-track one. At any rate, I will try to show that the Aristotelian single-track view does not rest on firmer ground than does Buridan’s multi-track account. My paper is divided into two sections. In section 1, I will discuss Aristotle’s account of power individuation as proposed in De anima. In section 2, I will discuss Buridan’s critique of this account in his Quaestiones in De anima II, and present his alternative multi-track theory.⁹ At the end of section 2, I will highlight that this alternative is as defensible a view as the single-track view by engaging Buridan in a dialogue with Jonathan Lowe, a fervent contemporary advocate of the single-track account.

1 . A R I S T O T L E O N P O W E R I N D IV I D UA T I O N : THE ACTIVITY-OBJECT PRINCIPLE The stock location for Aristotle’s discussion of causal powers is Metaphysics IX. Unfortunately, Aristotle does not, in this book, discuss the topic of power individuation in any detail. However, a detailed account of this topic can be found in another work of his, namely in De anima II, 4, 415a16–22. There Aristotle examines the soul and its powers. Accordingly, it is on this latter work that I shall center my discussion of Aristotle. This will also be helpful for the section on Buridan, since Buridan directly reacts to the De anima account.¹⁰ ⁹ There are three versions of Buridan’s QDA. I will here only consider the ultimate (third) version, which contains Buridan’s final word on the topics discussed in QDA. ¹⁰ This is not to say that there is nothing of relevance to power individuation in Metaphysics IX. In fact, there are, in this book, four brief remarks bearing on this topic, three of which I will consider in the course of my examination of the De anima II, 4 account. The first is that there are active and passive powers (Met IX, 1, 1046a15–28)—a topic to which I shall return later in section 1. The second remark is that actuality is prior in definition to power (Met IX, 5, 1049b12)—a claim that I will also deal with in section 1. The third remark is that certain powers, namely, two-way powers are powers for opposites (Met IX, 2, 1046b5–6)—a remark that I consider in note 37. The fourth remark is that to be capable is to be capable “at some time and in some way” (Met IX, 5, 1048a1–2). Here Aristotle connects powers with conditions of activation, as Charlotte Witt has observed. See her Ways of Being: Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 64. However, as Stephen Makin has pointed out, it is

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In order to adequately understand the account of power individuation that Aristotle offers in De anima, it will be useful to first provide some general remarks about Aristotle’s theory of the soul. The soul is, Aristotle claims, an essential feature of a living being.¹¹ It explains why a given living being is alive.¹² More specifically, Aristotle believes, the soul is a “form” that configures a living being’s body in such a way as to make it an organism.¹³ By animating a living being, Aristotle thinks, the soul endows that being with certain causal powers, specifically, with powers to perform certain lifeoperations, such as metabolizing, seeing, or thinking. Indeed, Aristotle has been interpreted by a number of scholars as adopting the view that the soul just is the set of powers allowing a living being to perform its characteristic lifeoperations.¹⁴ For, in a number of places, Aristotle speaks of powers of the soul as “parts” of the soul;¹⁵ and scholars have taken this to mean that the soul is a whole or set composed of powers. I will here not take a stand on whether, for Aristotle, the soul is a set of powers or perhaps, as other scholars have maintained, an actuality that bears these powers.¹⁶ Suffice it to say that, thanks to the soul, a living being has certain causal powers, according to Aristotle. What powers a given living being has depends on that being’s level of complexity, Aristotle holds. Plants, for instance, have the power to metabolize; nonrational animals have the power to metabolize as well as the powers to sense, to desire, and (in some cases) to move in place. Human beings, finally, have the powers to metabolize, to sense, to desire, to move in place, but also to think. Thus, for Aristotle, various species of living beings differ from one another in terms of the complexity of their respective powers. The more sophisticated an organism is, the greater the number of powers of the soul it has. Aristotle takes it to be a crucial task of the study of the soul to provide an inventory of the powers that the various species of living beings possess. But before embarking on this task, he argues, we first need to get clear on what unclear whether Aristotle intends this as an account of the individuation of powers (that is, whether Aristotle takes powers to be defined as powers to do something-at-sometime-and-in-some-way), or whether he is interested in the conditions of possession of a power. See Stephen Makin, Aristotle: Metaphysics Book Θ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 103. Accordingly, I will not consider this claim here. This fourth claim also plays no role in Buridan’s critique of Aristotle. ¹¹ See DA II, 1, 412b11. ¹² See DA II, 2, 414a14. ¹³ See DA II, 1, 412a20. ¹⁴ See, e.g., J. L. Ackrill, “Aristotle’s Definitions of Psuche,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 73 (1972–3), 122; Richard Sorabji, “Body and Soul in Aristotle,” Philosophy 49 (1974), 163–4; Klaus Corcilius, “Faculties in Ancient Philosophy,” in D. Perler (ed.), Faculties: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 35. ¹⁵ See, e.g., DA II, 2, 413b7 & b27; DA III, 4, 429a10; NE VI, 1, 1139a9–11. ¹⁶ See Rebekah Johnston, “Aristotle’s De anima: On Why the Soul Is Not a Set of Capacities,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011), 185–200.

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powers are, generally speaking, and in this context he puts forth a principle of power individuation. He writes: But if we are to give an account of what each is, viz. what the thinking power is, or the perceptive or the nutritive, we must go farther back and first give an account of thinking or perceiving; for activities and actions are prior in account to powers. If so, and if, still prior to them, we should have reflected on their correlative objects, then for the same reason we must first define them, i.e., nutriment and the objects of perception and thought.¹⁷

In this text, Aristotle proposes what one could call an ‘Activity-Object Principle’ of power individuation. The principle can be put as follows. In order to understand what a given power is, we need to first understand what the activity is to which this power is directed, and in order to understand what this activity is, we need to first give an account of the object to which the activity is directed. For example, we can only understand what the nutritive power is by appeal to its characteristic activity, nutrition, and we can only understand what the activity of nutrition is by appeal to its object, nutriment. There are a number of things that could be said about this principle.¹⁸ I shall here restrict myself to four points, all of which will prove relevant for assessing Buridan’s critique of Aristotle in section 2. My first point attempts to clarify the nature of the priority relation to which Aristotle appeals in this principle. The remaining three points seek to shed light on the nature of the relata of this priority relation.

a. Definitional Dependence and Individuation First, what is the priority or dependence relation at work in Aristotle’s principle? In what way do powers depend on activities, and activities on objects? I understand Aristotle’s principle to be one of power individuation. By ‘individuation’ I understand a relation holding between the essence of a thing x and the essence of another thing y, such that the essence of x depends on the essence of y. The essence of y fixes or determines the essence of x and thereby functions as x’s “individuator,” to use a term due to Jonathan Lowe.¹⁹

¹⁷ DA II, 4, 415a16–22, trans. J. A. Smith, modified. ¹⁸ For a detailed discussion, see Thomas Kjeller Johansen, The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 93–115. ¹⁹ See E. J. Lowe, “Asymmetrical Dependence in Individuation,” in F. Correia and B. Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 214–15.

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Individuation is a metaphysical matter, one that concerns what things are. Accordingly, I take Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle to rely on a metaphysical dependence relation. Initially, it is perhaps not obvious that Aristotle is appealing to a metaphysical dependence relation in the above-quoted text containing his ActivityObject Principle. For, Aristotle does not say there that objects are, in reality, prior to activities, and that activities are, in reality, prior to powers. Rather he says that, if we want to “give an account” of what powers are, we need to first “give an account” of their activities and, even prior to this, we need to “have reflected” on the objects of these activities. This could give the impression that Aristotle is primarily concerned with how we come to cognize powers via their activities and objects, in which case activities and objects would not be prior to powers in a metaphysical but merely in an epistemological sense.²⁰ Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that, in the above text, Aristotle appeals to a metaphysical dependence relation, I contend. The reason is that Aristotle is there concerned with a very specific kind of “account” (λόγος), namely, “definition” (ὁρισμός/ὅρος).²¹ When Aristotle says that objects are prior in account to activities, and that activities are prior in account to powers, he means that objects are definitionally prior to activities, and that activities are definitionally prior to powers. Now, according to Aristotle, a definition is an account of a thing’s “essence,” and an essence is a property that makes a thing what it is.²² On Aristotle’s view, in other words, definitions are accounts that track real features of the world. Since they track real essences, a dependence relation between definitions will mirror a metaphysical dependence relation in the world between essences. For illustration, consider the dependence of accidents on substance, which Aristotle discusses, for instance, in Metaphysics VII, 3–6. Aristotle there argues that accidents definitionally depend on substances: giving an account of what an accident, such as whiteness, is requires reference to an account of a substance that can bear the accident, such as a body.²³ And this dependence relation, Aristotle thinks, does not merely reside in the way we speak. It obtains because, on the metaphysical

²⁰ This is how Buridan reads Aristotle, as we will see in section 2. ²¹ This is clear given the occurrence, toward the end of the passage, of ‘define’ (‘διορίσαι,’ the aorist active infinitive of ‘διορίζω’). ²² “A definition is a phrase signifying a thing’s essence” (Top I, 5, 101b37–102a1). See also APo II, 10, 93b29; Met VII, 5, 1031a12. A definition is one type of account, according to Aristotle the other type being an “account of what a name means,” which gives the meaning of a term rather than signifying the essence of a thing. See APo II, 6–10. For a recent discussion of both types of accounts, see David Charles, Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23–56. ²³ See, e.g., Met VII, 3, 1029b20–30.

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level, the essence of the accident depends on the essence of the substance. An individual bit of whiteness is what it is by virtue of being a modification of a body, and it is for this reason that the definition of whiteness refers to the definition of body. Let us now consider Aristotle’s discussion of the Activity-Object Principle in this light. Since there is a definitional priority of object over activity and of activity over power, there is also a parallel priority of the object’s essence over the essence of the activity, and of the essence of the activity over the essence of the power. The definitional priority signals, in other words, that what a power metaphysically speaking is depends on what its characteristic activity is, and that what its characteristic activity is, in turn, depends on what the activity’s characteristic object is. This dependence relation is one of individuation. For what a power is, its essence or identity, depends on what activities and objects are. The activity determines the essence of the power, and thus functions as the individuator of the power, and the object, in turn, determines the essence of the activity, and thus functions as the individuator of the activity.

b. The Objects of Activities My first point regarding Aristotle’s power individuation principle concerned the nature of the priority relation. I now turn to my second point, which (like the third and fourth point to follow) will concern the nature of the relata of this priority relation. What are the relata to which Aristotle appeals in his account of power individuation? What are powers, activities, and objects? In the Introduction, I have already indicated what a power and its activity are in contemporary thought. A power like water-solubility is a property for some behavior, say, dissolving in water, and this behavior is the power’s characteristic activity. This is, basically, also how Aristotle understands these terms. Thus, no further elucidation of them is required here. But Aristotle thinks that, in addition to power and activity, power individuation also involves appeal to what he calls the “object” of an activity. What does he understand by this term? ‘Object’ is the (somewhat misleading) English translation of the Greek ‘ἀντικείμενον,’ which, as scholars have observed, literally means ‘opposite.’²⁴ As these scholars have also noted, Aristotle distinguishes between various senses of ‘opposite’ in Categories 10, and one of these senses seems to be relevant for his discussion of power individuation. The relevant sense is that ²⁴ See Roland Polansky, Aristotle’s De anima (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 202; Johansen, The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul, 94. ‘Object’ is misleading because, in contemporary English, it means something like ‘thing.’ But this is not the meaning that Aristotle intends, since, as we will see, he also thinks that a property like color is an object.

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of an opposite understood as a “relative.” X and y are opposed as relatives, as Aristotle explains in Categories 10, just in case any characterization of x needs to make reference to y.²⁵ He gives the example of knowledge and the knowable. Knowledge necessarily makes reference to the knowable inasmuch as it is knowledge of the knowable. Now, there are two reasons to think that, in his discussion of power individuation, Aristotle intends by the ‘object’ of an activity precisely such an opposite understood as a relative. First, the relation between activity and object seems to be an instance of the relation between opposites as relatives. For, Aristotle holds that activities can only be characterized by appeal to their objects, just as one opposite as relative can only be characterized in terms of the other. For example, Aristotle thinks that we ought to characterize the activity of nutrition as the “use of nutriment,” where ‘nutriment’ denotes the object of nutrition.²⁶ Moreover, he thinks that we need to characterize the activity of seeing as the “discerning” of its characteristic object, which is color.²⁷ The second reason for thinking that objects are opposites understood as relatives vis-à-vis their corresponding activities is connected with Aristotle’s example of opposites as relatives in Categories 10, that is, knowledge and the knowable. The general type of relation that obtains in the case of knowledge and the knowable can be characterized as a relation between φ-ing (knowing) and what is φ-able (knowable). Now this type of relation also seems to be the sort of relation that obtains between activities and objects. For Aristotle says that the activity of seeing (φ-ing) takes the “visible” (ὁρατόν/ φ-able), that is, color, as its object.²⁸ Similarly, he says that the activity of touching takes the “tangible” (ἁπτόν) as its object.²⁹ I am here translating ‘ὁρατόν’ and ‘ἁπτόν’ as ‘visible’ and ‘tangible.’ That is, I take ‘ὁρατόν’ and ‘ἁπτόν’ to be dispositional terms, as the suffix ‘ible’ in both cases makes clear. It is true, it is also possible to translate ‘ὁρατόν’ and ‘ἁπτόν’ simply as ‘what is seen’ and ‘what is touched,’ and here no dispositional character is implied. However, it seems to me that Aristotle favors the dispositional reading because he identifies ὁρατόν with the quality of color and ἁπτόν with a set of qualities, such as the hot and the cold; and all of these qualities, he says in Categories 8, are “productive of an affection of the

²⁵ See Cat 10, 11b24–5. ²⁶ See DA II, 4, 415a26. ²⁷ See DA II, 7, 418a14–18. I leave aside a complication here. Aristotle thinks that our sight is not only directed to color but also to a kind of object that he says “has no simple common name” (DA II, 7, 419a4, trans. J. A. Smith). Under this rubric Aristotle classes visual appearances that are “fiery or shining” (DA II, 7, 419a3, trans. J. A. Smith) in the dark, such as those of fungi, horns, scales, and eyes of fish. ²⁸ See DA II, 7, 418a26. ²⁹ See DA II, 11, 422b17.

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senses.”³⁰ It seems to me that qualities productive of an affection of the senses are dispositional qualities: they are powers to elicit a change in our perceptual system. Hence, the objects of sight and touch are dispositional in nature, for Aristotle, and so the terms ‘ὁρατόν’ and ‘ἁπτόν’ may be translated as the ‘visible’ and ‘tangible.’ If the objects of sight and touch are dispositional in nature, then this means, to generalize, that the objects that individuate activities are themselves certain powers. These powers are correlated with the powers giving rise to the activities, and the correlation is, for Aristotle, one between active and passive power, that is, between a power to cause change and the power to undergo said change.³¹ Color, for instance, the object of sight, is the active power to produce the change or activity of seeing, and it is correlated with the passive power to undergo the change of seeing, that is, sight. Sight and color are correlated as what are today called “disposition partners,” which means that they can only be actualized in tandem.³² You cannot actualize your power of sight, say, by actually seeing the yellowness of a banana, unless the yellowness’s power to be seen—its power to affect your sight—is also actualized, that is, unless the yellowness is actually being seen. In sum, then, Aristotle’s account of power individuation is that a power to φ is individuated by the activity of φ-ing to which it gives rise, and that this activity is, in turn, individuated by an object, which is another power, the φ-able, correlated with the power to φ. Admittedly, this introduces a certain circularity into the individuation of powers. One power is ultimately individuated by appeal to another power, for instance, sight by color. Now we can ask: how do we individuate this other power, color? It seems plausible to appeal to the activity of seeing, which leads us back to the power of sight. Thus, we will have come around in a full circle. I confess that I do not know how to eliminate this circle in Aristotle because I do not see how the object of a power (color) could be individuated independently of the power whose object it is (sight). Perhaps Aristotle has a way out, but at this stage I do not see how.

c. Power Types, Not Power Tokens I have given an account of the relata involved in Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle, focusing in particular on the notion of object. I now turn to my third point, which concerns the ontological status of these relata, specifically whether Aristotle is concerned with the individuation of power types (universals) or power tokens (individuals). I claim that Aristotle is concerned ³⁰ Cat 8, 9b6–7, trans. Ackrill. ³¹ See Met IX, 1, 1046a10–12. ³² For this term, see C. B. Martin, “On the Need for Properties: The Road to Pythagoreanism and Back,” Synthese 112 (1997), 201.

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with power types. That is, I take him to provide a principle for identifying and differentiating between general sorts of powers, such as the nutritive power and the power of sight taken as such. I do not take him to provide a principle for identifying and differentiating between individual instances of a given power type, say, my sight and your sight. There are two considerations that seem to me to speak in favor of my interpretation. The first is that, for Aristotle, as we have seen, the relata of power, activity, and object are related by definitional dependence. Trivially, items standing in a relation of definitional dependence must be amenable to definition in the first place. Now, according to Aristotle, only universals are definable, whereas particulars are not.³³ Therefore, the individuation principle proposed in the above text must concern power, activity, and object types rather than their tokens. The second consideration is that, while Aristotle’s individuation principle allows us to elegantly differentiate between power types, it is not finegrained enough to allow for differentiation between power tokens. To see this, consider first two distinct power types, say, the nutritive power and the power of sight. These can be clearly differentiated by appeal to their respective types of activity, namely, nutrition and seeing, and their respective types of objects, namely, nutriment and color. The nutritive power differs from the power of sight because the former enables one to digest food, whereas the latter enables one to see color. But now consider two individual power tokens of the same type, say, my power of sight and your power of sight. Here appeal to activity and object will not be sufficient for power diversification. For, my sight and your sight do not differ in terms of their characteristic activity and object. They are both powers enabling us to see color. In order to differentiate them, we need to appeal to something else, namely, to the fact that my sight is possessed by me and yours by you. In other words, power tokens require for their differentiation not just appeal to activity and object; they also require appeal to their respective bearers. Hence, Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle is sufficient for the differentiation of power types but insufficient for the differentiation of power tokens. Thus, I take it to be an individuation principle of power types rather than power tokens.

d. A Single-Track Account of Powers Let me now make my fourth and final point regarding Aristotle’s ActivityObject Principle. I have just argued that, for Aristotle, we differentiate ³³ See Met VII, 11, 1036a29; Met VII, 15, 1039b27.

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power types by appeal to their respective activity and object types. What I intend to consider now is whether, for Aristotle, a power is directed to only one type of activity and object or to various types of activities and objects. In other words, I aim to examine whether Aristotle adopts a single-track or a multi-track account of power individuation. Aristotle clearly prefers the single-track account. This is clear in view of the following passage from Nicomachean Ethics VI, 1, in which Aristotle argues for a distinction between the powers of theoretical and practical reason: In reference to objects differing in kind, there is a part of the soul differing in kind disposed by nature to each object.³⁴

Recall here that parts of the soul are, for Aristotle, powers of the soul. Hence, what Aristotle says in this passage is that two objects differing in kind are correlated with two powers differing in kind. As an example, consider the object of necessary or unchangeable truth (roughly, the propositions of the sciences), on the one hand, and the object of contingent or changeable truth (roughly, the propositions about human action), on the other. Aristotle claims that these objects differ in kind, and that due to their difference in kind there are two distinct powers with two distinct types of activities correlated with these objects.³⁵ The power correlated with necessary truth is theoretical reason, and its characteristic activity is contemplation. In contrast, the power correlated with contingent truth is practical reason, and its characteristic activity is deliberation.³⁶ All in all, then, it seems that Aristotle adheres to the view that two distinct object types are correlated with two distinct activity types, which are, in turn, correlated with two distinct power types. This amounts to a rejection of multi-track powers. A multi-track power is a single power directed to many (at least two) distinct kinds of activities and objects. But Aristotle seems to think that whenever you have two distinct kinds of objects and activities, you have to posit two distinct kinds of powers. One power alone cannot do the job. A given power type, then, is, for Aristotle, directed to one, and only one, characteristic type of activity, and this characteristic activity type is, in turn, directed to one, and only one, type of object.³⁷ ³⁴ NE VI, 1, 1139a9–10. ³⁵ See NE VI, 1, 1139a7–8. ³⁶ See NE VI, 1, 1139a14–15. ³⁷ Objection: what about Aristotle’s two-way powers, e.g., medical skill, which enables a doctor to heal as well as harm a patient (Met IX, 2, 1046b5–6)? This power, it seems, is directed to two sorts of object, health and its contrary opposite, disease. Hence it seems to be a multi-track power. I reply: Aristotle’s two-way power is in fact a single-track power. The reason is that contraries fall under a common genus (Met X, 8, 1055a28–32), which means that they admit of a single unified description. What is the common genus uniting health and sickness—the object to which medical skill is directed? Following Aristotle’s Cat 8, 8b25–30, it seems that it is that of a condition of an organism that can be easily changed, where this condition concerns the organism’s well-being.

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e. Aristotle’s Account of Power Individuation and Its Influence Let me now briefly summarize the four points I have made as regards Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle. Firstly, I argued that this principle concerns a dependence relation among essences, which makes it a metaphysical principle of power individuation. Furthermore, I argued that the relata of this dependence relation are a power, its characteristic activity, and the power’s disposition partner, which Aristotle calls the power’s “object.” Thirdly, I made a case for the claim that the relata are universal types rather than particular tokens. Finally, I defended the view that the principle should be interpreted as a single-track account of powers. Putting all of this together, we can now state Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle as follows: (Activity-Object Principle) For any power type P, if P is a power to φ, then P ’s essence is determined by its characteristic activity type, φ-ing, and by no other activity type, and the essence of the activity type φ-ing is, in turn, determined by the relevant type of disposition partner (object) of P, that is, the φ-able, and by no other type of disposition partner. It is no gross exaggeration to say that Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle determined much of the theorizing about power individuation in Western thought, notably in Latin medieval philosophy. Many scholastic thinkers accepted varieties of Aristotle’s principle. Consider, for example, the following passage from Thomas Aquinas: In powers it is required to posit a multitude due to the diversity of activities and objects; for it is required to differentiate powers according to their activities, since a power is named with reference to an activity.³⁸

Henry of Ghent likewise adopted Aristotle’s account, claiming: Diverse powers are named with reference to diverse activities and diverse objects.³⁹

And a number of other notable medieval adherents, like Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus, could be listed.⁴⁰

³⁸ Thomas Aquinas, De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 11, c., ed. Leonina 24, 2:118, ll. 217–20. ³⁹ Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet III, q. 14, ed. Badius, 67S. ⁴⁰ “Powers are distinguished according to a distinction of objects” (Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet X, q. 11, ed. Hoffmans, 350); “When it is said that ‘powers are distinguished by acts’ . . . this is true as regards adequate acts” (John Duns Scotus, Lectura I, d. 6, ed. Vaticana 16:467, n. 27).

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Even among contemporary metaphysicians varieties of Aristotle’s power individuation principle are popular. Contemporary metaphysicians might not explicitly invoke Aristotle as their source of inspiration; yet it is clear that their accounts of power individuation bear many similarities to Aristotle’s. Thus, for example, Jonathan Lowe writes: [E]ach power has just one fundamental manifestation-type which is essential to it. . . . A type of power is, I think, completely individuated by its manifestation-type.⁴¹

Similarly, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum contend: [T]he type of manifestation is what determines a power’s identity. We cannot, therefore, have the same power with different manifestations in different contexts.⁴²

Although the terminology has changed, the overlap between the theories of power individuation put forth in these passages and Aristotle’s is remarkable. Like Aristotle, Lowe, Mumford, and Anjum seek to determine what is “essential” to a power, that is, its “identity.” Second, like Aristotle, they individuate powers by appeal to their activities or “manifestations,” as they prefer to call them (but, interestingly, leave aside appeal to what Aristotle calls the “objects” of these activities).⁴³ Third, all of the above authors take it that the individuation principle concerns power and manifestation types rather than their tokens. Finally, like Aristotle, they espouse a single-track account. They correlate one type of power with one definitive manifestation type. Aristotle’s theory of power individuation, then, dominated much of the later discourse about powers—medieval and contemporary. However, there ⁴¹ E. J. Lowe, “On the Individuation of Powers,” in Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers, 12. ⁴² Mumford and Anjum, Getting Causes from Powers, 224. ⁴³ Notice that there is also a difference between Aristotelian activities and the manifestations appealed to by Mumford and Anjum. For Aristotle, the activity of a power is the joint manifestation of an active and its correlated passive power, for instance, seeing, which is the joint actualization of the power to see and the power to be seen. For Mumford and Anjum, in contrast, manifestations are not these joint manifestations but rather individual contributions to these joint manifestations. The manifestation of the power to see is the contribution that power makes to the event of seeing. It is not the event of seeing itself, which results from the interaction of the power to see and the power to be seen. The difference, then, between Aristotle’s and Mumford’s and Anjum’s conception of power manifestations is that Mumford and Anjum isolate a power manifestation from the overall event it gives rise to, whereas Aristotle does not do that. For him, the power exercise just is the event. One consequence of this is that Aristotelian power manifestations, being ordinary events, are observable. In contrast, power manifestations, as Mumford and Anjum conceive of them, are not usually observable. Only the joint products of various power manifestations are observable. But note that Mumford claims that power manifestations may be observable in rare laboratory conditions. See Mumford and Anjum, Getting Causes from Powers, 30, and Stephen Mumford, “Passing Powers Around,” Monist 92 (2009), 104.

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were also some thinkers who disagreed with Aristotle. One such thinker was the fourteenth-century Arts Master John Buridan, who offered a detailed critique of the Activity-Object Principle. It is to his critique that I now turn.

2 . J O HN B U RID AN O N P O W ER IN D IV ID UA T I O N : INDEPENDENCE AND MULTI-TRACK POWERS Buridan presents his critique in his Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 6. With direct reference to Aristotle’s account of power individuation, he there discusses the following question: “Should the powers of the soul be distinguished by their activities and objects?”⁴⁴ His answer will be in the negative. In order to better understand Buridan’s critique, it is necessary to first provide some context. Here we need to turn to the preceding question, Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 5, in which Buridan presents his ontology of the soul. Buridan there discusses the question as to whether the powers of the soul are distinct from the soul, where ‘the soul’ is understood, as in Aristotle, as a life-giving form. This was a much-debated question in the Middle Ages.⁴⁵ On a view widely held by thinkers in the second half of the thirteenth century, for instance, by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Godfrey of Fontaines, the powers of the soul were really distinct from the soul.⁴⁶ The soul was viewed as a substantial form of a living being, and its powers were viewed as distinct necessary accidents caused by this form.⁴⁷ In the fourteenth century, however, this view came under attack. William of Ockham defended a dispositional theory of the soul, according to which the soul just was its powers; and a number of thinkers, including Buridan, followed suit.⁴⁸ ⁴⁴ QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 71. Citations from this work of Buridan’s are according to book, quaestio, and page number in the Sobol edition. Gyula Klima is currently preparing a critical edition of the Quaestiones in De anima with an English translation. ⁴⁵ For studies of the views held from Augustine to Ockham, see the references adduced in note 6. ⁴⁶ For this historical assessment, see De Boer, The Science of the Soul, 227. By ‘real distinction’ I here do not mean a distinction implying separability. Rather I mean a distinction that is stronger than a mere conceptual distinction. Neither Albert, nor Aquinas, nor Godfrey thought that all powers of the soul were really distinct from the soul in the sense of being separable from the soul. At least the intellect and the will, they held, could never be separated from the rational soul. ⁴⁷ See Albert the Great, De mirabili scientia I, t. 3, q. 15, cap. 2, C1, ed. Col. 34-1:71, ll. 80–90; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 77, a. 5, c., ed. Leonina 5:244–5; Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet VIII, q. 6, ed. Hoffmans, 65–6. ⁴⁸ “I say that the powers of the soul, about which we speak in the present context, that is, the intellect and the will—I am not speaking of the sensitive powers now—are really

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a. Buridan’s Dispositional Theory: The Soul as a Multi-Track Power Buridan’s dispositional theory is not the view that the soul is a set of powers, that is, the view that scholars today attribute to Aristotle (see section 1). Rather Buridan’s view is that the various terms designating powers of the soul like ‘intellect,’ ‘sensory power,’ or ‘nutritive power’ are, in fact, coreferential.⁴⁹ They pick out one and the same soul under diverse descriptions. As Buridan writes: We allow that there are many powers of the soul in a human being in the sense that the soul is able to perform many diverse operations, and that, according to diverse accounts representative of these operations, diverse names which we say differ according to account are imposed on the soul. Thus we say that ‘intellect,’ ‘sensitive part,’ and ‘vegetative part’ differ according to account because these names signify the same thing according to diverse accounts.⁵⁰

The soul can perform a variety of life-operations, according to Buridan, and we can designate the soul insofar as it elicits one specific type of lifeoperation, say, thinking, and then we call it ‘intellect.’ But we can also designate the soul insofar as it elicits a different type of life-operation, say, digesting, and then we call it ‘vegetative part’ or ‘nutritive power.’ Thus, for Buridan, power-designating terms like ‘intellect’ or ‘nutritive power’ pick out one and the same soul but according to different operational respects. the same between themselves and with the soul’s essence” (William of Ockham, Reportatio II, q. 20, OTh 5:435). Notice two things. First, the dispositional theory did not originate with Ockham. In fact, it is an older theory that was widely held by medieval thinkers in the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth century. See Künzle, Das Verhältnis der Seele zu ihren Potenzen, 96–144. Second, note that Ockham posits an identity between the rational soul and its powers, but accepts a real distinction between the rational soul and the sensory/vegetative soul. Buridan drops this distinction. There is, for him, but one soul in a human being. For a discussion of Buridan’s unitarianism, see Zupko, “How Are Souls Related to Bodies?,” 579–83. ⁴⁹ In describing Buridan’s view, I will use the human soul as my main example. The points I shall be making can, however, be applied mutatis mutandis to animal and plant souls. For a discussion of animal souls in Buridan, see Jack Zupko, “Horse Sense and Human Sense: The Heterogeneity of Sense Perception in Buridan’s Philosophical Psychology,” in S. Knuuttila and P. Kärkkäinen (eds.), Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 171–86; Henrik Lagerlund, “John Buridan and the Problems of Dualism in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004), 382–3. ⁵⁰ QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 63–4. See also: “Although the intellect and the will are the same soul, nonetheless the names differ according to account. For the soul is called ‘intellect’ on account of the fact that it thinks or can think . . . and the same soul is called ‘will’ on account of the fact that it wills or can will” (QNE X, q. 1, ed. Paris, 205ra).

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‘Intellect’ refers to the soul qua productive of thinking, and ‘nutritive power’ refers to the soul qua productive of digesting. As far as I can see, Buridan advances only one argument for his dispositional theory, that is, for the claim that the soul is the same as its powers, though he has two further arguments—to be considered below—in favor of a general multi-track theory of powers, which are intended to lend further support to his contention that the soul is its powers. Here are two passages in which the argument for the dispositional theory is presented. And then there is a doubt as to whether it is well said that in a human being there are several powers of the soul. And I think that this is not the case . . . speaking in the proper sense. For it is not required that there be many diversities.⁵¹ For no necessity seems to me to force us to posit these distinctions. Thus, they are not to be posited. For nature does not do by many means what she can do by few.⁵²

As these passages show, Buridan appeals to the principle of parsimony to defend his dispositional theory—a move that we can already find in Ockham’s defense of the same theory.⁵³ This is not a surprising move for Buridan to make because Buridan is a nominalist and thus endeavors to have a sparse ontology that posits the least amount of entities possible. (I will return to Buridan’s nominalism below.) As Buridan sees it, in order to account for diverse life-operations, it is unnecessary to posit, like Albert or Aquinas, a multitude of powers that are really distinct from one another as well as from the soul. This introduces unnecessary “diversities” into the soul, as Buridan puts it. For Buridan, it is possible to explain what Albert and Aquinas seek to explain by positing just one soul that is identical with its powers. Given that Buridan identifies the soul with its powers, he can say that the soul just is a power.⁵⁴ Since it is not a set of powers, as noted above, but rather a single entity, it is, for him, a single power picked out by the many power-designating terms like ‘intellect,’ ‘sensory power,’ or ‘nutritive power.’ Thus, for Buridan, the soul needs to be understood as a power for many diverse types of activities. It is a single power that can originate such diverse types of life-operations as digestion, sensing, or thinking. It should be noted here that immediately after espousing the view that the soul is identical to its powers, Buridan claims that, in some sense, a real distinction between the soul and its powers can be retained.⁵⁵ What he has

⁵¹ QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 63. ⁵² QNE VI, q. 4, ed. Paris, 120va. ⁵³ See William of Ockham, Reportatio II, q. 20, OTh 5:436. ⁵⁴ “It needs to be said, briefly, that every soul is a power because every active or passive principle of some . . . operation is an active or passive power. . . . But every soul is either an active or passive principle of its operation” (QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 61–2). ⁵⁵ See QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 64–5.

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in mind here is the following. He distinguishes between two kinds of powers: (i) primary or “principal powers” and (ii) “instrumental powers” or “dispositions,” as he calls them. According to Buridan, the soul is the only principal power eliciting life-operations, such as digesting, seeing, and thinking. Here Buridan accepts the identity of the soul and its powers. However, he points out that for some of these life-operations the principal power needs to use certain organs—e.g., for seeing the eye, and for hearing the ears—and these organs, he argues, can be viewed as instrumental powers of the soul. They do not originate life-operations, Buridan thinks; yet the principal power of the soul utilizes them in order to elicit life-operations. As Buridan sees it, these instrumental powers are really distinct from the soul, and he also emphasizes that they are really distinct from one another because they are, qua organs, located in distinct parts of the body. Thus, when considering instrumental powers, the real distinction of the soul and its powers can be upheld, on Buridan’s view. This real distinction of instrumental powers is, however, unimportant for my purposes here because I am only concerned with the soul as a principal power, which is a single power for diverse kinds of activities by means of the instrumental powers.⁵⁶ In contemporary philosophy, powers directed to diverse types of activities are called “multi-track powers,” as noted in the Introduction. One example of such a power, due to Gilbert Ryle, is elasticity. We commonly understand an object’s elasticity to be manifested when, as Ryle writes, “the object is contracting after being stretched, is just going to expand after being compressed, or recently bounced on sudden impact.”⁵⁷ Now I suggest that we picture the soul or principal power, on Buridan’s theory, as analogous to elasticity. Just as elasticity disposes an entity to diverse activities like contraction, expanding, and bouncing, so the soul, for Buridan, disposes a living being to diverse life-operations, from non-cognitive operations like nutrition to sensory operations like seeing, all the way up to complex intellectual operations like understanding a geometrical theorem. Key to Buridan’s ontology of the soul, then, is the view that the soul is a multi-track power. Buridan thus rejects the Aristotelian single-track account of powers; and he does so not just by adducing some marginal or contrived counterexample. Rather, he takes it that a power that lies at the heart of philosophical inquiry—the soul—is a multi-track power. This is a radical break with the Aristotelian tradition.

⁵⁶ For a discussion of Buridan’s distinction between principal and instrumental powers, see, e.g., Zupko, “How Are Souls Related to Bodies?,” 577–9; De Boer, The Science of the Soul, 243–50. ⁵⁷ Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 113.

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As Buridan observes in Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 5, a number of objections could be raised against this multi-track view of the soul. It is striking that the very first one Buridan considers relies on Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle.⁵⁸ It runs as follows. The powers of the soul need to be distinct from the soul because otherwise they would not be distinct from one another. But they are distinct from one another because they give rise to distinct types of activities, and, by Aristotle’s principle, distinct types of activities yield distinct types of powers. Buridan’s answer to this objection in Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 5 is brief. He reasserts his dispositional theory, but adds that “more will be said about this in another question.”⁵⁹ He here refers to the next question, that is, Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 6, in which he attacks Aristotle’s individuation principle head-on. In the Introduction, I mentioned that Buridan does not take himself to be criticizing Aristotle. In fact, he argues that Aristotle never intended the Activity-Object Principle as an individuation principle of powers but rather as an epistemological principle that advises us to first look at activities (and objects), which are more manifest to us, in order to determine the nature of powers, which are less manifest to us.⁶⁰ In view of what I said about Aristotle in section 1, however, I think that Buridan’s reading of Aristotle is mistaken. As I argued, Aristotle intends the Activity-Object Principle to be an individuation principle of powers. Thus, as I see it, when Buridan criticizes the view that powers are individuated by appeal to their activities and objects, he, in fact, does nothing less than criticize the Aristotelian view itself. It is to this critique that I now turn. ⁵⁸ “Are the powers of the soul distinct from the soul? It is argued that this is the case because otherwise they would not be distinct from one another . . . But this I prove in many ways, that is, that they are distinct from one another. First, because they have diverse acts, and powers are distinguished by their acts” (QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 58). ⁵⁹ “I say that the same soul has diverse objects and diverse acts, which it exercises by diverse organs, and then it [the soul] is given diverse names corresponding to the names of these acts. And more will be said about this in another question” (QDA II, q. 5, ed. Sobol, 66). ⁶⁰ “Although active and also passive powers indeed precede their acts . . . we do not know that these are active or passive powers until we perceive that their acts issue from them . . . For in this way it is understood that acts are better known than powers and prior according to account, as is said in the second book of De anima, that is, that reasoning from a distinction of acts we conclude to distinctions of powers” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 80). It is true, earlier in QDA II, q. 6, Buridan seems to attribute the metaphysical account of power individuation to Aristotle, arguing that the view that powers are distinguished by their acts “seems to be intended by Aristotle in this second book” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 73). However, I take this statement to have a dialectical function (indicated by the ‘seems’), and therefore not to reflect Buridan’s own view, and this because it is contradicted by the later QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 80 (quoted at the beginning of this note), where Buridan clearly favors an epistemological reading of the Activity-Object Principle.

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b. The Existence Objection Basically, Buridan presents two objections against the Activity-Object Principle in Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 6. These arguments do not directly conclude to the fact that the soul is a multi-track power, but they are intended to further support this contention, inasmuch as they are intended to show the implausibility of the Aristotelian single-track account and the merits of a general multi-track account of powers. First, Buridan attacks the general Aristotelian contention that powers are individuated by their activities and objects. For reasons that will emerge shortly, I will call this the ‘Existence Objection.’ Second, Buridan attacks Aristotle’s contention that powers are single-track. I will refer to this as the ‘Multi-Track Objection.’ I consider these two objections in turn. Buridan’s Existence Objection begins with the idea that it is possible for powers to exist while their activities and objects fail to ever exist. Buridan first devises a thought experiment to illustrate the idea that the activities of powers may fail to exist. Suppose God creates the intellects of Socrates and of Plato, and that neither of these intellects produces any thought acts. These intellects are, then, two existing powers, Buridan says, but their characteristic activities, namely, acts of thought, never exist.⁶¹ Buridan makes an analogous point with regard to the objects of powers. These may fail to exist, while their corresponding powers and activities do exist. Buridan says that we can think about roses, even though no roses exist.⁶² In this case, we have the power of thought eliciting a thought act, but no object. It is doubtful that roses are a good example of an Aristotelian object of a power because it seems that by the ‘object’ of a power Aristotle understands such general things as the visible, tangible, or thinkable, not particular items, such as roses. But Buridan’s thought experiment can easily be reformulated so as to fit ‘object’ in this general sense. Imagine God creates a world with an agent capable of hearing but with no sounds to actually activate the hearing.⁶³ In such a world, you have the power to hear, but its corresponding object, the audible, is lacking. In fact, in this example, it would also be the case that the activity of hearing would fail to exist, since this activity can only come about if something audible affects the perceiver’s aural sense. ⁶¹ “There are many powers that are not distinct according to their acts, as when it is posited that now the intellect of Socrates and the intellect of Plato were created but never have any acts; and these are distinct not according to their acts” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 76). ⁶² “Sometimes there is no object of a power that exists even in a state of being actually operative. For instance, when there are no roses, we can nonetheless think about roses” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 72–3). ⁶³ Thanks to an anonymous referee for this example.

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Buridan, then, argues that we may have non-existence at the level of objects of powers, as in the rose example, as well as at the level of activities, as in the example from Plato’s and Socrates’s intellect. We may even have it at the level of both activities and objects, as the example from hearing suggests. By drawing attention to the non-existence of the activities and objects of powers, Buridan emphasizes that powers display a feature today known as “Independence.”⁶⁴ Powers can exist independently of whether their characteristic activities or objects ever exist. But why does Buridan think that this entails that we cannot individuate powers by appeal to their activities and objects? Here the problem of existence, which motivates my label ‘Existence Objection,’ enters the picture. Buridan reasons: if we individuate powers by appeal to their activities and objects, but powers can exist without their activities and objects (possibly) ever existing, then we are individuating something that exists by appeal to something that (possibly) never exists. But “it is not at all evident that this is probable,” as Buridan writes.⁶⁵ How could the non-existent individuate the existent? We can understand Buridan as invoking here something like a general constraint on individuation, which we may call the ‘Existence Constraint’: (Existence Constraint) If x exists, then something non-existent cannot account for x’s individuation. Buridan’s point is that if we adopt the Activity-Object Principle and, moreover, assume that powers can exist independently of their activities and objects, then this constraint will be violated. We will end up individuating the existing, that is, powers, by appeal to the (possibly) never-existing, that is, activities and objects. Thus, we seem to have an inconsistent triad, on Buridan’s assessment. For Buridan, one cannot at once endorse (i) the Activity-Object Principle, (ii) the view that powers exist independently of their activities and objects (Independence), and (iii) the Existence Constraint. One element needs to be dismissed; and Buridan’s suggestion is that we get rid of the Activity-Object Principle, while retaining Independence and the Existence Constraint. How convincing is this objection of Buridan’s? I believe the objection faces two problems, and while Buridan can deal with one of them, the other is lethal to his argument. I begin with the problem that Buridan can deal with. ⁶⁴ For a discussion of Independence, see George Molnar, Powers: A Study in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 82–98. ⁶⁵ “How, then, should powers that exist be distinguished by such objects, which do not exist? It is not at all evident that this is probable” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 73).

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This problem is that Buridan’s Existence Objection seems to involve a type-token equivocation. When Buridan says that powers can exist independently of, and are therefore not individuated by, their activities and objects, he has in mind power tokens existing independently of their corresponding activity and object tokens. For, recall that Buridan has us imagine particular intellects, say, Socrates’s or Plato’s, existing without particular acts of thought and without particular objects of thought, such as roses. But when Aristotle says that powers are individuated by their activities and objects, he is not concerned with individual power tokens and their corresponding activity and object tokens. Rather, as I have argued, he is concerned with universal power types and their corresponding activity and object types. Aristotle’s point is not that a particular intellect depends for its being on particular acts of thinking or particular objects of thought; his point is that the essence instantiated by all particular intellects—the universal of intellect—depends on the universal of the activity of thinking, which in turn depends on the universal of the corresponding object, the thinkable. Such statements about universals or types are different from statements about individual tokens. In short, then, the first charge against Buridan is that he has, in his Existence Objection, illicitly switched from the level of types to the level of tokens.⁶⁶ Buridan can react to this objection, however. Being a nominalist, Buridan holds that there are in the extramental world no types or universals over and above individual tokens. Rather, a type or universal is just a sign (mental, spoken, or written) that “indifferently” refers to all individual tokens of which this sign can be truly predicated.⁶⁷ The universal human being, for instance, is, on this view, just the general concept or term ‘human being’ referring to all human beings without picking out one in particular. Given that, for Buridan, the referent of a general term is just the set of individuals of which the term can be truly predicated, he holds that statements about universals always make reference to individuals, even if covertly. There cannot, then, be true statements about universal types in the absence of individual tokens, on his view. Indeed, Buridan argues that statements about universals or kinds can be translated without loss of meaning into statements that exclusively appeal to individual instances of these kinds. In his Summulae, Buridan puts this in terms of an analysis of Aristotelian demonstrative propositions, which are kind statements such as ‘human beings are animals.’ Superficially, this statement looks like the ⁶⁶ Thanks to Brian Embry for drawing my attention to this problem. ⁶⁷ See In Met. I, q. 7, ed. Paris, 6vb. For further discussion of Buridan’s account of universals, see, e.g., Gyula Klima, John Buridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 89–103.

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tenseless categorical statement ‘the kind human being has the property of being an animal.’ But Buridan thinks that we should interpret it as a disguised conditional statement about individual human beings that either lived, live, or will live.⁶⁸ Thus, on his view, ‘human beings are animals’ should be read as: ‘whenever something was/is/will be a human being, it was/is/will be an animal.’ In sum, Buridan has a way to defend the Existence Objection against the charge of confusing types with tokens. He can appeal to his nominalist view that statements about types are reducible to statements about tokens. This view of his is no doubt controversial; and given the scope of this paper I cannot discuss it in further detail. However, it is clear that charging Buridan with a type-token confusion alone will not do. One would have to take on his entire nominalist program, thus shifting the battleground from a debate about powers to a debate about universals. But there is a second charge that can be leveled against Buridan’s Existence Objection, one that is independent of the nominalism/realism debate; and this second charge seems to me fatal to Buridan’s argument. The charge is: the Existence Constraint is false because it admits of a counterexample, namely, mental acts. Therefore, the Existence Objection as a whole fails. I take the counterexample from the contemporary metaphysician George Molnar. Molnar argues for the Aristotelian view that powers are individuated by their activities, and, in the course of doing so, he considers a worry remarkably similar to Buridan’s Existence Objection. He writes: If powers can exist when they are not being manifested, and powers are properties that owe their identity to their manifestation, then, it would seem, they are properties whose very nature depends on something that may not exist. This is a peculiar feature for properties to have.⁶⁹

Molnar counters the worry by drawing attention to intentionality, a mental act’s feature of being about something, namely, its object.⁷⁰ A mental act is directed to its object. Indeed, a mental act is individuated by its object. The thought about Cerberus, for instance, differs from the thought about Zeus because it is about Cerberus rather than about Zeus. Yet, as Molnar observes, ⁶⁸ “In unqualifiedly demonstrative propositions we do not restrict the use of tense cosignified by the verb to some determinate time; in fact, we use an indeterminate (infinito) time or every time as the present. But, according to this use, these propositions of the present tense . . . whenever they are asserted, are true, not unqualifiedly for every time, but for any time during which the subject supposits for something. . . . And this Aristotle seemed to indicate, in the Prior Analytics, saying by means of an example ‘for instance, suppose [we predicate] “animal” of every human being; if it is true to say “human being,” it is true to say “animal,” and if now one exists; the other does so too,’ that is, [Aristotle said] ‘whenever something is a human being, it is an animal’ ” (Summulae VIII, ch. 6, sect. 1, ed. de Rijk, 133). ⁶⁹ Molnar, Powers, 82–3. ⁷⁰ See Molnar, Powers, 63.

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the intentional object need not exist. In fact, the objects of the two thought acts just considered, namely, Cerberus and Zeus, do not exist. Accordingly, mental acts about something non-existent present us with a case in which, counter to the Existence Constraint, we must appeal to something nonexistent, the intentional object, in order to individuate something existent, the mental act. Molnar proposes that we transfer this feature of thought acts about nonbeings to powers. Just as we can individuate an intentional state by something that can fail to (ever) exist—the intentional object—so can we, on Molnar’s view, individuate a causal power by something that can fail to ever exist, namely, its characteristic activity. This is part of an extended argument Molnar makes for conceiving of a power’s directedness to its activity as something analogous to the intentional directedness of mental acts to their objects, namely, as what Molnar calls “physical intentionality.”⁷¹ There are several things that are problematic about Molnar’s reply to the Existence Objection. Molnar takes a feature of certain acts, specifically mental ones, and transfers it to powers, which are not acts.⁷² Second, he transfers a feature characteristic of the mental, being intentional, to the physical domain.⁷³ Nevertheless, I find one element in Molnar’s argument convincing, namely, that mental acts present us with a case in which the non-existent can function as the individuator of the existing; and this is a counterexample sufficient to reject Buridan’s general Existence Constraint, for this constraint states that, universally, non-existents cannot individuate existents. If mental acts do not abide by the Existence Constraint, why should powers? There is, as far as I can see, no principled reason for arguing ⁷¹ See Molnar, Powers, 60–81. He here follows C. B. Martin and Karl Pfeifer, “Intentionality and the Non-Psychological,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (1986), 531–54. ⁷² Here is where there seems to be a difference between mental acts and powers, as an anonymous referee observed. A mental act is an act of thinking about something, which is why we readily supply an object for it, even if said object fails to exist in reality. But now consider a power that remains unexercised, say, the aural sense in a world without sound. The power does nothing. Hence, why should we here supply an act or an object to which the power is intentionally directed, unless we are simply assuming that powers are individuated by activities and objects? There is, then, in the case of the unexercised power, nothing analogous to the something that the intentional act is about. This is one reason to be doubtful of Molnar’s physical intentionality approach to explaining the directedness of powers. I myself do not endorse this approach here. I only take from Molnar the negative claim that mental acts are a counterexample to the Existence Constraint. In my view, this suffices to reject the Existence Objection. ⁷³ But notice that physical intentionality is not the only way to conceive of a power’s directedness to its (possibly never-existing) manifestation. One could also view it as a primitive feature resisting further analysis, as Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum do in their Getting Causes from Powers, 175–94.

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that mental acts are not subject to this constraint, while powers are. This means that the Existence Objection as a whole, which is predicated on this constraint, fails. Here one might object that mental acts about fictional objects, such as Zeus or Cerberus, do not in fact present us with a case in which the nonexistent individuates the existent. For while the individuating fictional entities do not exist in material reality, they may have, one could argue, some kind of mental existence or “apparent being,” as the fourteenthcentury thinker Peter Auriol would have it. On this proposal, mental acts about fictional objects are individuated by something that has at least some kind of being that may perhaps be less than material existence but is certainly more than non-existence simpliciter. Accordingly, mental acts about fictional objects, one could conclude, are not cases in which what exists is individuated by what does not exist simpliciter, and so they are not a valid counterexample to the Existence Constraint. I concede that this appeal to a mental or apparent mode of being allows one to doubt intentionality as a counterexample to the Existence Constraint. Even so, I argue, this does not help save Buridan’s Existence Objection. The reason is that just as we can posit a special mental mode of being for fictional objects that is more than mere non-existence, so can we posit a special mode of being for the possibly never-existing activities and objects that is more than mere non-existence. John Duns Scotus, for instance, calls the mode of being that accrues to such unrealized possibilia “metaphysical potency,” and he says that it is “more of a being than a negation of being” because a possibilium is a specific essence capable of actual existence, while a non-being is not a specific entity at all.⁷⁴ One could also argue, like Alexander Bird today, that unrealized possibilia are actually existing abstract entities, like sets and numbers, which, however, have the feature that they can become concrete entities, which makes them unlike sets and numbers.⁷⁵ On this account, the manifestation of a glass’s fragility, that is, shattering, is an abstract object as long as the glass does not shatter but becomes a concrete event of shattering by instantiation when the glass actually shatters. On the basis of either Scotus’s or Bird’s account, it can then be argued that the possibly never-existing activities and objects have a mode of being qua possibilia that, while falling short of full-blown material existence, is more than non-being simpliciter. But then the Existence

⁷⁴ “And to that extent a being-in-potency seems to be more of a being than a negation of being” (John Duns Scotus, A Treatise on Potency and Act: Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Book IX, trans. Wolter, q. 2, 93, n. 35). ⁷⁵ See Bird, Nature’s Metaphysics, 113.

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Objection does not go through, since it supposes that the possibly never-existing activities and objects have non-being simpliciter. Appeal to modes of being, then, is of no help to Buridan’s objection. On the contrary, it furnishes the basis for a counter-argument to the objection. Accordingly, I conclude that Buridan’s Existence Objection is not successful.

c. The Multi-Track Objection: God, the Will, and Heat I have now discussed Buridan’s Existence Objection against Aristotle’s Activity-Object Principle, and I have argued that it failed. As noted above, Buridan also presents a second objection against the principle, which I have called the ‘Multi-Track Objection.’ It is to this objection that I turn now. This objection attacks the contention, essential to Aristotle’s account of power individuation, that powers are single-track, and it is designed to lend further support to Buridan’s claim that the soul is a multi-track power. On the single-track view of powers, as will be recalled, one type of power is directed to one type of activity, which is in turn directed to one type of object. In other words, there is, on the single-track view, a metaphysical oneto-one correlation between power, activity, and object type. Buridan is opposed to this view because he believes that it illicitly transfers structures of our language onto reality. He writes: It is not necessary that all powers be distinct in proportion to the distinctions among their activities and objects. . . . It is necessary that nouns signifying things by way of powers and their activities or also by way of powers and their objects be distinguished in proportion, as is evident . . . by induction. For instance, first, to ‘what can make’ correspond ‘the makeable’ and ‘making’ . . . to ‘what can move’ ‘the mobile’ and ‘moving’ . . . to ‘sight’ ‘the visible’ and ‘seeing,’ and so on in other cases.⁷⁶

As Buridan sees it, there is in our language a one-to-one correlation between power-signifying terms and corresponding activity-signifying and objectsignifying terms. We correlate, for instance, the power-signifying term ‘sight’ with one specific activity-signifying term, ‘seeing,’ which we in turn correlate with one specific object-signifying term, ‘the visible.’ But there are no grounds to suppose that we can project this one-to-one correlation onto reality, according to Buridan. It is possible that reality be carved up differently. There may in reality be a single power correlated not just with one type of activity and object but rather with many diverse types of activities and objects. That is, in reality, there may be multi-track powers. We have already seen that, for Buridan, the soul is precisely such a multi-track power, but in Quaestiones in De anima II, q. 6 Buridan also provides a number of ⁷⁶ QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 77–8.

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other (putative) examples of such powers to show that the Aristotelian assumption of a metaphysical one-to-one correlation is mistaken.⁷⁷ In my view, the examples, which I shall consider now, are either very controversial or unconvincing; but I will suggest at the end of this section that Buridan’s multi-track approach to powers is nonetheless interesting and defensible. The first example of a multi-track power that Buridan gives is God. According to Christian doctrine, God is omnipotent.⁷⁸ His power extends to anything that is logically possible. To use some biblical examples, He can turn people into pillars of salt, make infertile women fertile, and raise the dead. God’s omnipotence cannot be reduced to an infinite set of single-track powers. For, this would make God a compositionally complex entity, and, according to Christian doctrine, God lacks any composition whatsoever. He is utterly simple. He is thus identical to His power, and this power has to therefore be irreducibly multi-track or “omni-track,” if you like. I think that if theism and the doctrine of divine simplicity are true, then God is perhaps the best example of a multi-track power adduced by Buridan. But theism and divine simplicity are of course very controversial doctrines, and (at least contemporary) defenders of the single-track view will likely demand that Buridan adduce some more mundane examples of multitrack powers to make his case. Buridan provides two mundane examples. His first is a “rational power.”⁷⁹ According to Aristotle, a rational power is a power for contrary acts. On Aristotle’s view, the skill of medicine is such a power because it enables the doctor to heal as well as cause ailment.⁸⁰ For Buridan, and for many medieval thinkers, the prime example of a rational power is the will. Buridan describes the will as a free power that “in its order to the act of willing or nilling can opt for this as well as for the opposite, all other things being the same.”⁸¹ In other words, the will is, for Buridan, a power to choose otherwise under the exact same circumstances. It is a power that makes its ⁷⁷ NB: I am here referring to the examples Buridan gives in the objections section of QDA II, q. 6, i.e., prior to his actual respondeo. Usually Buridan does not endorse objections presented prior to the respondeo in his Quaestiones. However, QDA II, q. 6 is different. For Buridan there says at the end of the respondeo: “And it appears clearly that according to what was said all arguments that were made go through in their respective ways” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 80). ⁷⁸ “It is clear that there are completely diverse acts of the same power, for instance, all beings other than God, however diverse they may be, are acts and operations of God, who is one and unqualifiedly simple” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 71). ⁷⁹ “And a rational power is the same [power] for opposites” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 72). ⁸⁰ See Met IX, 2, 1046b5–6. See note 37 for a brief discussion. ⁸¹ In Met. IX, q. 4, ed. Paris, LVIIIrb. For a discussion of Buridan’s account of freedom, see Jack Zupko, “Freedom of Choice in Buridan’s Moral Psychology,” Medieval Studies 57 (1995), 75–99.

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bearer free in the alternate possibilities libertarian sense, where alternate possibilities libertarianism is precisely the claim that an agent is free in the sense that if she performs an action A she could have done non-A under the exact same circumstances.⁸² Now, is the will—even if it is free in the way Buridan thinks it is—really a multi-track power? It is not obvious that it is. For even if the will is free in the libertarian sense, its characteristic activity type will always be willing: either willing to do A, or willing not to do A, that is, nilling to do A. It is true, we can will or nill various things. I can will a glass of wine, a pay raise, or a holiday. But despite this object-related diversity, the will remains directed to a single activity type, willing, and this suffices to rule out that the will is a genuine multi-track power, since a multi-track power, in addition to being directed to various types of objects, needs to be directed to various types of activities. I turn to Buridan’s second mundane example of a multi-track power, which is taken from his natural philosophy: heat.⁸³ Heat, Buridan says, is a power with diverse manifestations. Sometimes it heats another object, for instance, straw. Sometimes it rarefies another object. For instance, Buridan says that heat can make a cloud less dense.⁸⁴ Finally, heat may also soften material, such as wax.⁸⁵ Unfortunately, this is not a convincing example of a multi-track power either. For, while it is true that heat contributes to many diverse effects, such as combustion, rarefaction, and the softening of wax, its activity is always the same: it heats. In the Aristotelian context in which Buridan operates, this means: heat transfers the quality of heat, which is an accidental form, to another entity. Sometimes heat’s heating activity contributes to an event of combustion, namely, when it acts upon a combustible object. Sometimes it contributes to rarefaction, namely, when it acts on an object that can be rarefied, and sometimes it softens material, namely, when it heats material that can be softened by heat. Thus, Buridan has established that the power of heat is involved in the production of multiple effects depending on the disposition partners it interacts with. What he has not shown, however, is that it is a power that can do other things besides heating, though this

⁸² See Robert Kane, “Introduction,” in R. Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4. ⁸³ “And the same heat heats, rarefies, and makes an object light in weight” (QDA II, q. 6, ed. Sobol, 72). ⁸⁴ “The same active power can bring about contrary effects . . . for instance, heat can heat a rain cloud as well as rarefy it” (In Met. IX, q. 3, ed. Paris, LVIIva). ⁸⁵ See In Met. IX, q. 3, ed. Paris, LVIIva.

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is what he should have shown. For, the nature of a multi-track power is precisely that it can bring about more than just one kind of activity.⁸⁶ All in all, then, Buridan has not managed to give any good uncontroversial examples of multi-track powers. Therefore, his critique of the Aristotelian single-track account of power individuation remains unconvincing, and so Buridan does not succeed in providing additional support for his contention that the soul is a multi-track power. All that remains is the argument from parsimony considered earlier. Now although Buridan’s case for the soul as a multi-track power is not very strong, his idea that there are multi-track powers is an interesting one, I think, and so is his appeal to parsimony. For one, it seems quite possible that such powers exist in nature, and some contemporary thinkers, like John Heil, have argued that they do.⁸⁷ Second, it is not clear that the alternative single-track view rests on firmer ground than the multi-track account, and perhaps parsimony is a consideration favoring the latter, as I shall now briefly show in closing by engaging Buridan in a dialogue with singletracker Jonathan Lowe.

d. Jonathan Lowe’s Dilemma and Buridan’s Appeal to Parsimony Jonathan Lowe is, as far as I can see, the only recent single-tracker who has offered an argument for the single-track view.⁸⁸ Often power metaphysicians today simply assume that the single-track view is correct. Yet, Lowe’s argument does not strike me as compelling, and I will indicate how multitracker John Buridan would react to it, and this will, I hope, highlight the attractiveness of Buridan’s view. Lowe’s argument has the form of a challenge against the multi-track view. Suppose there are multi-track powers, Lowe says. Then either their supposedly different activity types fall under a single unified description or they do not. If they do, then we do not have a multi-track power after all but ⁸⁶ Buridan, then, confuses the notion of a multi-track power with what Molnar calls the “pleiotropic” nature of powers (Powers, 194–6). To say that a power is multi-track is to make a statement about the relation between a power and its manifestation, which is its immediate effect. It is to say that the power can have diverse kinds of immediate effects. To say that a power is pleiotropic, in contrast, is to say that the power’s manifestation, which may always be the same (e.g., heating), contributes to many different remote effects in concert with other powers (e.g., fire’s heat can contribute to combustion, rarefaction, or the softening of wax, depending on what power(s) it interacts with). ⁸⁷ See John Heil, From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 198–9. ⁸⁸ See Lowe, “On the Individuation of Powers,” 11.

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rather a single-track power. If they do not, then why should we think that we are dealing with one multi-track power capable of many different activity types rather than with a conjunction of single-track powers? Lowe illustrates the dilemma by appeal to the example of magnetism. We might suppose, he says, that magnetism is a single power capable of attracting ferrous metals as well as inducing an electrical current in a coil. That is, we might suppose that magnetism is a multi-track power. But in fact it is not, Lowe argues. He first asks us to consider whether the two distinct activity types—attracting ferrous metals, and inducing a current— can be brought under one unified description. He does not think that this is possible. But there still remains the second option, which is to treat the putative multi-track power of magnetism as being in fact a conjunction of two distinct single-track powers, the single-track power to attract ferrous metals and the single-track power to induce an electrical current. And this is the option that Lowe advocates. I believe that Buridan would be unimpressed by Lowe’s dilemma. He would take the second horn, and ask: if faced with a situation in which we cannot subsume diverse types of activities under one unified description, why should we not think that we are dealing with a multi-track power giving rise to these diverse types of activities? What forces us to assume that there is instead a conjunction of various single-track powers at work? Lowe seems to dismiss the possibility that we are dealing with a multi-track power by sheer fiat.⁸⁹ Furthermore, Buridan might urge that ontological parsimony is a good reason to posit one multi-track power rather than many single-track powers—if one power can do the same explanatory work. Consider here again the powers of the human soul in Buridan’s psychology. We might ask: what explains that all of these powers are compresent in human beings?⁹⁰ What explains that all human beings have the powers for self-maintenance and sensation, as well as thought? We could say: there are many different singletrack powers in a human being taking care of these operations. But a more parsimonious explanation would be that all of these powers are in fact just one multi-track power, the soul, which is the approach Buridan favors. None of this of course demonstrates that there are multi-track powers in nature; but it does show, I believe, that the possibility of multi-track powers

⁸⁹ As has been pointed out by Neil Williams, “Putting Powers Back on Multi-Track,” Philosophia 39 (2011), 587, who offers a detailed critique of Lowe’s view. Thanks to Markus Eronen for drawing my attention to Williams’s article. ⁹⁰ I take the idea of compresence from Williams, “Putting Powers Back,” 591, who uses the term “clustering.”

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cannot be ruled out, and that, due to its parsimony, a multi-track approach to powers has some attractiveness. Thus, even though Buridan’s case against single-track powers is weak—his central arguments against Aristotle fail— his idea that there are multi-track powers remains a viable alternative to the (neo-)Aristotelian single-track account.

3 . C O N C LU S I O N In this paper I contrasted two accounts of the nature and individuation of causal powers: the widely influential Aristotelian theory, defended by many medieval and contemporary metaphysicians alike, and the less well-known fourteenth-century account of John Buridan. Aristotle’s account is encapsulated in the Activity-Object Principle, which, as I have shown, is a single-track principle for individuating power types by appeal to activity and object types. Buridan disagrees with this account for two reasons. First, he thinks it clashes with the constraint that we cannot individuate what exists (powers) by appeal to what possibly never exists (activities and objects). Second, Buridan holds that the world is not only populated by single-track powers, but that there may also be multi-track powers, the best example being, on his view, the soul. While Buridan himself may not acknowledge this, his account of power individuation is thoroughly anti-Aristotelian. He is not just an antiAristotelian by allowing, in general, for the reality of multi-track powers; he is also an anti-Aristotelian by making a power that is at the center of philosophical inquiry—the soul—a multi-track power. What Buridan’s case demonstrates is that medieval metaphysicians did not merely continue Aristotelian power metaphysics, but rather developed sophisticated theories of their own. In addition, Buridan’s case shows that medieval theories of powers prove interesting by contemporary lights. Future research will, I hope, reveal other points of contact between the rich medieval debate about powers and contemporary metaphysics.⁹¹ Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

⁹¹ I would like to thank Markus Eronen and an anonymous referee for OSMP for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I have also benefited from presenting this paper at the 2016 DWMC-CLAW Symposium at KU Leuven and the 2016 workshop Grounding in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Geneva. I am grateful to the audiences present at both workshops, notably Brian Embry (present in Geneva), for valuable discussion and feedback. Research on this paper was supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO), Flanders.

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Briefly Noted John Duns Scotus, Selected Writings on Ethics, translated by Thomas Williams (Oxford University Press, 2017), 357 pp. Inglorious as a translation may be, this volume may prove the most important publication in medieval philosophy of the decade. Here, for the first time, some of the very greatest philosophical achievements of the period have been brought together in lucid and precise English. Not that this is the first time most of this material has been translated. Indeed, of Williams’s fortytwo selections, all but fourteen have already appeared in Allan Wolter’s familiar collection on will and morality in Scotus. (And of Wolter’s thirty-four selections, all but four appear in Williams, either in this volume or in his online collection of supplementary translations at ethicascoti.com.) If you like, then, this volume is simply a second edition of Wolter. But what a difference. For all of Wolter’s contributions to the field, his ideas about how to translate Scotus were eccentric at best. He seems to have had in mind a reader who could constantly compare his translation to the original Latin supplied on the facing page, thus modulating his impressionistic English against the verbatim text. Williams does not provide the Latin, but there is not so much need for it, because his translations are consistently faithful and reliable. Moreover, Williams is now able to draw on the completed critical edition of the Ordinatio, the work from which almost all of his selections spring. Yet it should also be noted—this is, in a way, the most important news about this book—that Williams makes very grave charges against the Vatican edition, remarking that “one sometimes cannot help but draw the conclusion that they do not understand the argument at hand” (xv). Matters become particularly dire, Williams argues, for the text beyond Ordinatio III.7, when the manuscript tradition becomes markedly less reliable, and yet the editors persist in privileging a manuscript that no longer deserves to be privileged. The longer discussion of this issue at ethicascoti.com concludes that this part of the edition is “so frequently bad that no responsible scholar can rely on it.” Accordingly, Williams effectively reedits the text from this point forward, noting massive disparities between the critical edition and the manuscript readings he judges best. Inasmuch as we have been waiting for over half a century for this critical edition of the Ordinatio to be completed, it is depressing to learn that the job was bungled. Yet at least we can celebrate the very substantial achievement that this volume represents, and we should start—immediately—to incorporate this material into the classroom. Many of these selections deserve to be canonical readings in the history of philosophy. John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt, Robert Holcot (Oxford University Press, 2016), 359 pp. This is the latest high-quality entry into OUP’s “Great Medieval Thinkers” series, though after fifteen of these volumes one might wish that the series editor, Brian Davies, would stop beginning each volume by proclaiming how surprising it is to many that “there were any great medieval thinkers.” Readers of these notes, at any rate, will not be surprised to find Robert Holcot inducted into this

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club. Indeed, Holcot has long deserved more attention than he has gotten from modern scholars, and this study makes for an excellent start. The authors cannot remedy the general neglect of Holcot’s texts, few of which are available in modern editions, but they do provide a great deal of useful historical information about the corpus, as well as a very broad survey of Holcot’s thought, extending well beyond the narrowly “philosophical” material to cover his theology, biblical commentaries, and sermons. Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance (Harvard University Press, 2016), 660 pp. This is a brilliant and serious scholarly treatment of a topic that, particularly in Europe, has become intensely polemical: what influence did Arabic thought have on “Western” civilization? Hasse’s focus is on 1400–1600, and he singles out three topics for special attention: medicine, astrology, and philosophy. From the start, he registers the ideological debate that swirls around this topic today, but pledges to operate on a higher plane: “reaction to ideological accounts of the past can only come from the careful historical and philological scrutiny of sources” (xiii). What follows is intellectual history at the highest level, which carefully marshals its evidence to reach the conclusion that no one reading these notes is likely to find surprising: “the Renaissance reception of Arabic authors was not a decrepit leftover from the Middle Ages, but a very active and intellectually challenging endeavor of its own kind” (299). To be sure, some of Hasse’s conclusions are surprising. He finds that in contrast to the massive and continuing influence of Averroes’s commentaries, for instance, Avicenna’s Shifaˉ ʾ comes to have little direct influence in the Renaissance (even while his medical Canon remains massively influential). And though he finds plenty of hostile rhetoric, particularly from the humanists, toward Arabic thought, he finds that very little of it takes the form of polemic against Islam or assumes an Orientalizing tone. A finegrained study of the reception of Averroes’s commentaries shows that the reasons why their influence declined in the later sixteenth century are far more complex than simply a categorical rejection of Arabic thought in favor of Greek thought. Hasse’s scholarship is painstaking, but not as dauntingly long as the book’s heft might suggest. A full half of the book is devoted to supplementary notes, including a comprehensive catalog of Renaissance editions of Arabic authors in Latin (complementing Burnett’s inventory of medieval translations in the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy). Monika Michałowska, Richard Kilvington’s Quaestiones super libros Ethicorum: A Critical Edition with an Introduction (Brill, 2016), 352 pp. Perhaps modern times have never seen a book treated with such loving scholarly care, and yet read by so few, as the Sophismata of Richard Kilvington, as edited, translated, and commented on by Norman Kretzmann in 1990. Now we have a second work of Kilvington’s to read—or not to read, as the case may be. The edition (and, sensibly enough, it is just an edition of the Latin) is done to the highest professional standards, and anyone interested in the Oxford Calculator movement will find much of interest here. Each of the ten questions begins with a long series of sophisms, then a perfunctory main reply, followed by a lengthy response to each of the sophisms. But do not be fooled by this work’s title. The puzzles Kilvington considers by and large have no more to do with ethics than the sophism ‘Socrates is whiter than Plato begins to be white’ has to do with the philosophy of race.

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Notes for Contributors OSMP welcomes submissions in all areas of medieval philosophy. Papers received will be evaluated in a timely manner, and an effort to provide significant feedback will be made in every case. To the fullest extent possible, all papers will be refereed according to a triple-blind process, so that neither editor nor referee will know the identity of the author, nor will the author know the identity of the referee. In addition to articles, we welcome editions of texts and brief critical discussions of recently published articles (both in OSMP and elsewhere). Book reviews, however, will be published only when solicited. Submissions should be in English, without author’s name or any other information that would impede blind refereeing. Papers may be of any length, and in particular we welcome the submission of longer works that fall outside the parameters of most journals. Contributors should bear in mind, however, that the lengthier the work, the higher the standard for acceptance. Papers should be submitted as either .pdf or Word-compatible files. The formatting of the initial submission is immaterial, but accepted papers will ultimately need to adhere to OSMP style, as on display in this present volume. All submissions, as well as queries, should be addressed to [email protected]. Please do not send queries directly to the editor, since this compromises the process of blind review.

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Index al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn 49 Albert the Great 72 n19, 153–7, 205 Alexander of Aphrodisias 31 Alexander of Hales 153–6 al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn 47, 53 Anjum, Rani Lill 202 Anselm of Canterbury 72 n19 Aristotle 31, 44–5, 54, 66 n8, 67 n10, 74, 78, 86–7, 176–7, 182, 189, 191–204, 206–8, 210–11, 214–17, 219 Augustine 1–18, 20–5, 27, 63, 70–1, 74, 75 n25, 77 n28, 78–9, 89, 94, 124, 150–5, 157, 162, 178 Averroes 129 n92, 130 n97 Avicenna 32–5, 38–45, 48–50, 54–8, 84, 86, 90

Ibn Baˉjjah (Avempace) 129 n92 Ibn al-Malaˉhimī 35–6, 38, 41–3, 46–7, 54 James of Viterbo 179, 185 Jean de Châteauvillain 169–70 John Buridan 189, 191–2, 203–19 John Chrysostom 150 John Duns Scotus 179, 183–4, 201, 213 Kane, Robert 26 al-Kaˉtibī, Najm al-Dīn 53 Liguori, Alphonsus 153 n18 Lowe, Jonathan 191–2, 202, 217–18 Lössl, Josef 5

von Balthasar, Hans Urs 14 al-Bas.rī, Abū l-Ḥusayn 41, 57 Berengar of Tours 70 Bird, Alexander 213 Boedder, Bernard 116 Boethius 77–9, 81 Boethius of Dacia 93 Bonaventure 72, 92

Meinong, Alexius 31, 36 Mercier, Désiré 101 Molnar, George 191, 209, 211–12 Mumford, Stephen 191, 202

Cicero 12–13

Pasnau, Robert 102 Peillaube, Émile 118 Pereboom, Derk 24–6 Peter Abelard 145 Peter Auriol 213 Peter John Olivi 73, 82 Peter Lombard 70, 73, 89, 145 Pickavé, Martin 102 Plato 31, 42, 44–6, 50–1, 53, 57 Porete, Marguerite 168–9, 171–2, 174–8, 181–2, 184–7

Drecoll, Volker Henning 5 Frank, Richard 47 Frankfurt, Harry 2, 19 Führer, Markus 101 Gardeil, Ambroise 117 Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald 101 al-Ghazaˉlī 84, 86 Gilson, Étienne 101 Godfrey of Fontaines 170–87, 191, 201, 203 Grabmann, Martin 101 Guido di Collemezzo 169, 171–2, 175 Heil, John 217 Henry of Ghent 179, 191, 201 Hugh of Saint-Cher 153–4, 156–7

Nelkin, Dana 24 Origen 150

Raymond of Peñafort 145 al-Raˉzī, Fakhr al-Dīn 32–3, 35–8, 40, 42–54, 56–8 Richard Fishacre 71, 75 n25, 94 Robert Kilwardby 89 Roger Bacon 62–94, 116 Romeyer, Blaise 117

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228 Russell, Bertrand 32 Ryle, Gilbert 206 Sertillanges, A.-D. 101 al-Shahrastaˉnī, Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm 43 Shields, Christopher 102 Shihaˉb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī 44 Shoemaker, Sydney 189 Siger of Brabant 93 Sinai, Nikolai 44

Index Tempier, Étienne 172–3 Thomas Aquinas 100–11, 113–31, 133–40, 145–6, 153–7, 160, 162, 176, 179, 182 al-T. ūsī, Nas.īr al-Dīn 40, 49, 53, 57 Walter of Bruges 153 n18 William of Ockham 153 n18, 159, 203, 205 William of Paris 169, 171 William Peraldus 146