Bonaventure, the German Dominicans and the new translationsJohn MarenbonAs the previous chapter has illustrated, even in the first half of thethirteenth century the outlook of thinkers was much affected by thenewly available translations of Aristotle and of Arabic commentariesand treatises.
1 By the mid-1250s, the arts course in Paris included almostthe whole body of Aristotle’s works and, within a couple of decades,nearly all the translations from the Greek and Arabic which would beused in the medieval universities were already available. The threeleading theologians of this generation are the Dominicans, ThomasAquinas and his teacher, Albert the Great, and the Franciscan,Bonaventure.
2 As philosophers, it may be argued, they form an unequaltriumvirate. Aquinas is, by almost any account, among the greatestphilosophers of his, or any, period; the next chapter will be devoted tohim. Neither Bonaventure nor Albert came near to his ability at devisingand interlinking, on a wide variety of philosophical questions, clearand powerful arguments which modern philosophers still find itworthwhile to scrutinize. Each, however, developed a range of distinctivepositions. They include striking views on the nature of philosophy andits relation to their Work as theologians; and, in Albert’s case at least,these were adapted (and ultimately transformed) by a school offollowers. It is these views on which the present, brief discussion willconcentrate. But first some further details about the new translationsare necessary, since they provide the background both to the thinkingof Bonaventure and Albert, and to the work which all the followingchapters will be examining.
THE TRANSLATIONSAristotle, the old textbooks used to say, reached the West through theArabs. Literally, this statement is false. For the most part, Aristotle reachedWestern scholars in direct translations from the Greek: Boethius’translations of nearly all the logic (which became available graduallyfrom the ninth to the twelfth centuries); James of Venice’s versions (
c.1130–50) of the
Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Soul, some shorterscientific works; other twelfth-century translations of
On Generationand Corruption and the
Physics.As for the
Ethics and the
Metaphysics,there was a twelfth-century version of
Nicomachean Ethics II and III(known as the ‘Old Ethics’); the whole work was translated early in thethirteenth century, though only Book I (known as the ‘New Ethics’)circulated; and then (
c. 1246–7) Robert Grosseteste and his assistantsmade a new translation of the whole work (they also translated part of
On the Heavens). James of Venice translated
Metaphysics I–III and partof IV; an early thirteenth-century revision of this translation, conflatedwith the unrevised text, formed the ‘Old Metaphysics’, whilst a twelfthcenturytranslation of the whole work except Book XI was known asthe ‘Middle Metaphysics’ (it seems not to have been used until the midthirteenthcentury). Finally, between 1260 and 1280 William of Moerbekerevised or retranslated almost all Aristotle’s works, as well as makingthe
Politics and
Poetics available for the first time. William’s translationsbecame standard, except for the logic, for which Boethius’ translations(and, for the
Posterior Analytics, James of Venice’s) were generally used.
3But there is, none the less, an important element of truth in the ideaof ‘Aristotle through the Arabs’. Some translations
were made fromthe Arabic: for example those of Gerard of Cremona, who worked inToledo, of the
Posterior Analytics, Physics and some of the scientificworks. A version of the
Metaphysics (the ‘New Metaphysics’; Book I,minus beginning, to X and most of XII) translated from the lemmataof Averroes’ commentary was used in the early to mid-thirteenthcentury.
4 More important, Aristotle’s non-logical works reached theWest along with (or preceded by) a corpus of commentary by Arabicphilosophers. In mid-twelfth-century Toledo, Dominic Gundissalinus,a canon of the cathedral there, helped by Arabic-speaking assistants,translated parts—including those corresponding to
On the Soul andthe
Metaphysics—of Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna’s) paraphrase-commentaryof Aristotle, the
Shifā’ (Book of Healing); further sections weretranslated late in the thirteenth century.
5 In the 1220s in Sicily, MichaelScotus translated a number of commentaries by Ibn Rushd (Averroes),including the ‘great’ commentaries (full-scale, detailed sentence bysentence discussions) on
On the Soul, the
Physics, Metaphysics and
On the Heavens. Averroes’ shorter ‘middle’ commentaries to a varietyof Aristotle’s works, including the logic,
On Generation and Corruptionand
Nicomachean Ethics, were translated either by Scotus, or a littlelater by others. All these commentaries profoundly affected the waysWestern thinkers read Aristotle. In addition, the Toledan translators ofthe twelfth century made Latin versions of various works by al-Kindīand al-Fārābī, more or less connected with Aristotle, as well as al-Ghazzālī’s
Intentions of the Philosophers.Plato did not benefit directly from this busy period of translation.Although Henry Aristippus made Latin versions of the
Meno and
Phaedo in Sicily shortly before 1150, they hardly circulated, so the
Timaeus in Calcidius’ incomplete translation remained the one text byPlato himself well known in the Middle Ages.
6 A good deal ofNeoplatonic material, however, became available, partly in thecommentaries and other works related to Aristotle, because the Arabphilosophical tradition before Averroes was heavily influenced byNeoplatonism in its approach to Aristotle, and also more directly: anArabic adaptation of some of Proclus’
Elements of Theology wastranslated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona as the
Book about Causes(Liber de causis) and adopted into the Aristotelian curriculum (seebelow, pp. 230–1); later, William of Moerbeke translated the whole ofthe
Elements of Theology directly from the Greek.Jewish philosophy was also translated. The Toledan translators putinto Latin Isaac Israeli’s
Book on Definitions and Solomon ibn Gabirol’s(‘Avicebron’ or ‘Avencebrol’)
Fountain of Life. Maimonides’ great
Guide of the Perplexed was put into Latin in the 1220s, from theHebrew translation of Judah al-Harisi (see [10.32]).
BONAVENTUREJohn of Fidanza, known as Bonaventure, was born
c. 1217. He studiedarts in Paris from 1234 or 1235 until 1243. He then joined theFranciscans and studied theology, also in Paris, where he was taughtby Alexander of Hales, the first of the Franciscan masters of theology.Bonaventure himself held the Franciscan chair from 1253 to 1255. In1257 he was elected Minister General of his Order, but he stillmaintained close contacts with the university and continued histheological writing up until nearly the time of his death in 1274. Amonghis most important works are his commentary on the
Sentences (1250–5), a systematic textbook of theology called the
Breviloquium, the brief
Journey of the Mind towards God (1259) which expresses in a concisepersonal style many of his central ideas, and the sets of universitysermons
(Collationes) he gave in his last years, especially those on theWork of the Six Days (Hexaemeron), from 1273.Bonaventure knew many of the newly translated texts andcommentaries well. Theology, as he and his contemporariesrecognized it, was a discipline which used arguments. Aristotelianlogic had long been regarded as one of the theologian’s essentialargumentative tools, and by the 1250s the terminology and conceptsof Aristotle’s metaphysics and natural science were alsoindispensable. Bonaventure used this intellectual equipment, but hiscommitment to argument and conceptual analysis was far weakerthan Aquinas’, nor did he share much of Aquinas’ belief that, onmany questions, a full and accurate grasp of Aristotle’s views was thebest way to the right answer. Not surprisingly, then, he tended toadapt Aristotelian positions and combine them with others in theways which best suited his overriding theological aims. For example,he accepted a roughly Aristotelian account of sense-cognition as thefirst stage of his theory of knowledge, but insisted that for knowledgeof the truth direct divine illumination was required. Aristotle’s theoryof matter and form became, for Bonaventure (perhaps influenced bySolomon ibn Gabirol, see p. 75), a doctrine of universalhylomorphism. Everything, with the sole exception of God, is acomposite of matter and form. Human body and human intellectivesoul are not, therefore, related—as in Aristotle, and Aquinas—asmatter to form, but as matter—form composite to matter—formcomposite; a position which may be less satisfying than Aristotle’sintellectually but fits well with Christian belief about individualimmortality. The difference between Bonaventure and Aquinas isparticularly pointed on the question of the eternity of the universe.This view, clearly contrary to Christian belief, was (rightly)recognized by many at the time to have been Aristotle’s—thoughthere were also doubts about the attribution. Aquinas insisted that,although ‘the universe is not eternal’ is a truth known by faith, itcannot be demonstrated; towards the end of his life, indeed, heargued that God could have created an eternal universe had he sochosen. By contrast, Bonaventure thought that he coulddemonstrate—using arguments based on Aristotle’s own views aboutthe infinite—that the universe is not and could not have been eternal.
7One of Aristotle’s special failings, in Bonaventure’s view, was hisrejection of Platonic Ideas. In using the Ideas—considered, in the usualway since patristic times, as being in the mind of God—as a way ofexplaining the relationship between the creator and the universe,Bonaventure was merely doing the same as almost every otherthirteenth-century theologian, Aquinas included. He was exceptional,however, in the weight he gave to explaining exemplarism which, alongwith the discussion of creation and divine illumination, he heldconstituted the whole of true metaphysics. This emphasis reveals theunderlying direction of his thought. We reach the divine exemplars,and through them, God, by seeking in all things that which theyexemplify. For Bonaventure, the main task of a Christian thinker isnot so much to argue or analyse (though sometimes this is necessary)as to learn how to read creation, finding in it the hidden patterns andresemblances which lead back to God. We have been provided, hesays, with a threefold aid for reaching ‘the exemplary reasons’ of things:sensibly-perceptible creation, where God has left his traces
(vestigia);man’s soul, which is made in the image of God; and Scripture, with itsriches of inner meaning.In
The Journey of the Mind, Bonaventure develops this way ofthinking in the most explicit way. The universe is ‘a ladder for climbingto God’: we must ascend through the traces of God, which we find inwhat is bodily, temporal and outside us, through the image of God,which we find within our immortal, spiritual selves, and finally raiseourselves to the eternal being. To these three stages correspond thethreefold existence of things: in matter, in understanding and in God’smind, and Christ’s threefold substance, bodily, spiritual and divine (I,2–3). Each stage, however, is itself divided in two, for in each we canfind God either
through his mirror or
in his mirror. The six steps yieldedby this multiplication correspond to six powers of our soul: sense,imagination, reason, intellect
(intellectus), intelligence
(intelligentia) andthe ‘summit of the mind’ or ‘spark of synderesis’. Bonaventure alsoprovides various scriptural parallels: the six days of creation, the sixsteps of Solomon’s throne, the six wings of the Seraphim seen by Isaiah,the six days after which God called Moses from the midst of darknessand the six days after which Christ summoned his disciples on themountain where he was transfigured (I, 5–6). This elaborate set ofparallels and analogies is itself merely the framework for the analogieswhich make up each of the individual steps. So, for example, the fourthstage of ascent—contemplating God in his image—involves consideringthe Trinity in the image of man reformed by grace, his soul purified,illumined and perfected by the three theological virtues of faith, hopeand charity. ‘Hierarchized’ in this way, the human spirit is comparedto the hierarchy of angels (three groups of three), and a parallel isdrawn between the three laws (of nature, of the Old Testament and ofgrace) and the three senses of Scripture, moral, allegorical andanagogical, which purify, illumine and perfect (IV, 1–6).All the great Franciscan theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies looked back to Bonaventure with respect, and often hispositions influenced their discussions of individual questions. But theydid not share his fondness for reading signs and elaborating patternsas opposed to constructing and criticizing arguments; and it is on thispoint of difference, rather than on any of the intellectual debts theyowed to the founder of their tradition, that depends their importanceas philosophers.
ALBERT THE GREATBorn in Swabia at the turn of the thirteenth century (1193,
c. 1200,1206–7 have been suggested), Albert died in extreme old age in 1280,outliving by six years his most famous pupil, Thomas Aquinas. Afterstudying in Italy and Germany, and joining the Dominicans, he was amaster of theology in Paris from 1245 to 1248 and then taught theologyat Cologne until he became provincial of the German Dominicans(1254–7). Although he had no fixed teaching position after this, Albertcontinued his work on natural science, philosophy and theology withgreat energy until after 1270. His writings are among the mostvoluminous of any medieval thinker. They include, among many others,two comprehensive theological textbooks, a commentary on the
Sentences completed in 1249, long paraphrase commentaries (in themanner of Avicenna) on many of Aristotle’s works, including
On theSoul (
c. 1254–7), the
Ethics (1252–3) and the
Metaphysics (1263–7),a work
On the Causes and Procession of the Universe based on the
Book about Causes and on al-Ghazzālī (after 1263) and commentarieson pseudo-Dionysius (some, at least, written between 1248 and 1250).As even this bare list indicates, Albert’s attitude to the translationsof Aristotle and of the related Arab material was, quite unlikeBonaventure’s, one of unrestrained enthusiasm. Historians have indeedbeen agreed in giving him a central role in making Aristotle the supremehuman authority for university theologians. Yet a glance at hisAristotelian commentaries shows that Albert’s Aristotelianism is mixedwith a host of characteristically Neoplatonic themes and views, andthis—combined with the variety of his interests and works—has led tothe impression that Albert was a muddled writer, overwhelmed by themass of new material and unable to resolve the incompatible positionsof his various sources or reach any coherent theories of his own. Thanksto Alain de Libera, however, it is now clear that, at least in one mainaspect of his work, Albert is putting forward a bold and clear view, notso much about any individual problem in philosophy as about thenature and aim of the very practice of philosophizing.
8For Albert, Aristotelian metaphysics, the study of being, needed tobe complemented and completed by an Aristotelian theology, the studyof God. Albert found his Aristotelian theology in the
Book about Causeswhich he took, along with his contemporaries, to be a work by Aristotlehimself. When, late in Albert’s life, Thomas Aquinas, using William ofMoerbeke’s translation of Proclus’
Elements of Theology, showed thatthe
Book about Causes was an adaptation of this Neoplatonic work,Albert took no notice. No wonder—for, had he done so, he wouldhave had to give up the claim which runs through his life’s work thathe is expounding what he calls the ‘peripatetic’ position. Albert’speripateticism, then, builds on Aristotle, on the
Book about Causesand on Avicenna’s interpretation of Aristotle, which posits a hierarchyof Intelligences, each lower Intelligence emanating from the higher.Albert adapts these models, however, striving to maintain an absolutedistinction between God, who is the being of all things only in so far ashe is the
cause of their being, and his creation, and to avoid anyimplication that the universe emanates eternally from God—a viewwhich could not fit the Christian doctrine, which Albert accepted, of acreated universe with a beginning.Through our intellects, Albert believed, even in the present life webelong to the hierarchy of Intelligences. Here Albert both used andbroke with his Arab mentors. Avicenna had identified the lowest ofthe Intelligences with the active intellect which Aristotle had mentionedbriefly in
On the Soul as being necessary if the potential intellect
(intellectus possibilis), in itself purely receptive, is to be able to think.Averroes, in the view of Albert and all his Latin interpreters from the1250s onwards, had gone even further and supposed that there wasonly one potential intellect for all men. Avicenna’s position could easilybe adapted to Christianity by taking the active intellect as God himself;Averroes’, which precluded individual immortality, could not. Albert,however, holds that each human has its own individual active andpotential intellect; like Bonaventure and Aquinas, he attacks theAverroist theory of a single intellect for all men; and yet he also proclaimshis closeness to Averroes’ theories about the intellect. These positionsare not, as they might seem, in conflict with one another. Albert, likeAverroes, held that human thought involves contact with an eternal,single intellect. But he considered that this came about through eachhuman’s individual agent intellect which was itself an emanation fromthe single, separate agent intellect. We engage in thought through thejoining of our individual agent intellects to our individual potentialintellects, which are predisposed to receive intelligible forms in thesame way as our senses are predisposed to receive sensory ones. Theconjunction is not a simple matter. Although the agent intellect is partof our soul, and in this sense is joined to it, the conjunction Albert hasin mind is of its ‘light, by which it activates the things understood’ tothe potential intellect.By describing how this conjunction takes place, Albert sketches aview of the highest human happiness, which it is for philosophers toachieve ([10.49] III: 221–3). He bases himself on Aristotle’s commentsin
Nicomachean Ethics X about theoretical contemplation as the bestlife for man. We can engage in intellectual speculation in two ways, heexplains: through thinking the self-evident truths which we knowsimply by thinking of them, and through what we choose to learn byinvestigating and by listening to those who are learned. In both routes,we grasp intelligibles only because our agent intellect makes themintelligible, and ‘in making them actually understood, the agentintellect is joined to us as an efficient cause’. What we arecontemplating in this process, Albert believes, are not—as thedescription so far might suggest—eternal truths, but separatesubstances. The more our potential intellect is filled with theseintelligibles, the more it comes to resemble the agent intellect, andwhen it has been filled with every intelligible thing, the light of theagent intellect has become the form to its matter, and the compositeof agent and potential intellect is called the ‘adopted’
(adeptus) ordivine intellect: ‘and then the man has been perfected to carry out thework which is his work in so far as he is man—to contemplateperfectly through himself and grasp in thought the separate substances’([10.49] III: 222:6–9). ‘This state of adopted intellect’, Albert adds, ‘iswonderful and best, for through it a man becomes in a certain waylike God, because in this way he can activate divine things and bestowon himself and others divine understandings and in a certain wayreceive everything that is understood’ ([10.49] III: 222:80–4).
ALBERT’S SCHOOL: THE GERMAN DOMINICANSAlbert’s influence worked on three different groups in three differentdirections. Most explicitly associated with him, though most distantin time, are the fifteenth-century thinkers who set up Albert as theirauthority and described themselves as ‘Albertists’; they are discussedbelow in Chapter 18. Albert was also an important figure for those inthe arts faculties who looked to Averroes as the most faithful interpreterof Aristotle and who, while respecting Christian doctrine, consideredtheir own role as arts masters was to reason without resort to revelation.Some of these thinkers from the thirteenth century are discussed belowin Chapter 12; the movement they began lasted through to the end ofthe Middle Ages. John of Jandun (1285/9–1328) was one of the mostoutspoken advocates of Averroes (and learned from Albert), andAverroism was then taken up in Bologna and Padua, in Erfurt in thelate fourteenth century and in Krakow in the mid-fifteenth.
9 But Albert’sclosest followers—those who carried on his tradition chronologicallyand developed what was most characteristic in his thought—were agroup of thinkers who were all, like him, German Dominicans.
10 Theyknew Albert’s work well, both directly and through Hugh Ripelin ofStrasbourg’s
Compendium of Theological Truth (
c. 1260–8) whichdrew up some of the main themes of his work in textbook fashion.The first important member of the group was Ulrich of Strasbourg(born
c. 1220–5), a student of Albert’s at Paris and then Cologne. Hereturned to Paris in 1272 to complete his studies in theology, but diedbefore he was finished. He had already written a large
summa, On theHighest Good, which uses, and develops even more explicitly thanAlbert himself, the idea of the divinization of the intellect.In the work of Dietrich of Freiberg, Albert’s thinking is given a newand highly original twist. Dietrich (
c. 1250–1318/20) belonged to ayounger generation. He was active in Germany (from 1293 to 1296 hewas provincial of the Dominican Province of Teutonia) but also in theUniversity of Paris, where he studied between 1272 and 1274 andsome time between 1281 and 1293, and where he was master oftheology in 1296–7. He is an important figure in the history of naturalscience (see [10.73]), but his most remarkable philosophical ideasconcern the human intellect. As mentioned above, medieval theologiansgenerally accepted the view that God knows (and produces) his creationthrough ideas in his intellect. Dietrich accepted this common view withregard to the relation between God and all things
except for intellects.The human intellect, he argues in
On the Intellect and the Intelligible,is related to God in a different, closer way, which it has in commononly with other intellects, such as (if they exist) the Intelligences positedby the philosophers. An intellect proceeds from God ‘in so far as it isan image of God’. Like God’s thinking, the object of the intellect’sthinking is God himself. It is just this knowing God which constitutesthe intellect; in the same act of knowing the intellect knows itself asthat which knows God, and through knowing its essence it also knowsall other things outside itself, since it is their exemplar: ‘in one look
(intuitus) knowing its origin and thus coming into being it knows theentirety of things.’
11 In this way, Dietrich argues that intellects exist ina special sort of way, which he describes as ‘conceptional being’: anintellect should not be considered as a something, which has a certainpower—that of intellectually thinking. Rather, the thinking by whichan intellect knows God is what the intellect is. Whereas Albert hadexplained how the human intellect could become God-like throughwhat it could contemplate (the separate substances), Dietrichemphasizes the God-likeness of the intellect in its very manner of being.In another work
(On the Origin of the Things which belong to theAristotelian Categories), Dietrich argues that, in an important sense,the objects which we encounter in experience, and which can bedescribed according to Aristotle’s ten categories, are made by ourintellects. Since the intellect knows these objects, it must bear a relationto them. The only three possible relations are that (1) it is identical tothem, (2) they cause it, or (3) it causes them. Dietrich dismisses (1) andrejects (2) because a cause must have a ‘greater power of forming’
(formalior virtus) than that which it causes, whereas the intellect is‘incomparably more form-like and simpler than these things’.
12Although Dietrich goes on to qualify his position, allowing that theintellect is not the only cause of these objects, he has given, to say theleast, a surprisingly large role to the human intellect in constituting theworld it grasps.
13The most celebrated of the German Dominicans is Eckhart (1260–1328). But Eckhart’s fame has been linked more to his reputation asa mystic and as the instigator of a popular mystical movement,especially among women, than to his philosophical arguments. Unlikeany other of the Western thinkers treated in this volume, Eckhartproduced a body of work in the vernacular (Middle High German);and it is in these sermons that he develops some of his most strikingideas. Yet, until shortly before his death, when the process beganwhich would lead to his posthumous condemnation in 1329, Eckharthad followed an outstanding career as a university theologian. Hewas a master of theology in Paris from 1302 to 1303 and, a rarehonour, master again
(magister actu regens) in 1311–13; from 1322to 1325 he was in charge of the Dominican
studium in Cologne.Recent scholars have emphasized the philosophical aspects ofEckhart’s work (found both in the Latin
Parisian Questions and
Three-part Work, and in the German sermons and treatises) and haveseen it as part of the tradition going back to Dietrich of Freiberg andAlbert. Here there is room to touch on just three of these aspects ofEckhart’s rich and many-faceted work.In the second of his
Parisian Questions (1302–3), Eckhart arguesthe position that in God, being
(esse) and thinking
(intelligere) are thesame. In itself, there is nothing unusual about this position; Aquinashad held it too, and Eckhart quotes Aquinas’ arguments for it. ButEckhart develops the idea in a particular direction, arguing—in a waywhich parallels what Dietrich of Freiberg says about the humanintellect—that God is intellect, and his being follows from this: it isnot ‘because he is, that God thinks but because he thinks that he is; sothat God is intellect and thinking and this thinking is the basis of hisbeing’. The Gospel of John does not begin, Eckhart goes on to remark,with the words ‘In the beginning was an existing thing
(ens) and theexisting thing was God’, but ‘In the beginning was the Word’; but theWord is ‘in itself entirely relative to the intellect’. ‘Neither being norbeing existent
(ens) is appropriate for God but something higher thanwhat is existing.’ Eckhart’s line of argument threatens to underminethe whole tradition of theology based on God as supreme
being;although it too is rooted in theological tradition, the tradition of negativetheology which goes back to pseudo-Dionysius.
14Eckhart’s idea of the ‘basis’
(grunt) or the ‘spark’
(vunke) of thesoul, developed especially in his German sermons, is even more daring,especially according to the interpretation recently advanced by BurkhardMojsisch who, more than previous writers, has explored thephilosophical, rather than the mystical, aspects of these writings.
15Dietrich of Freiberg had already described the active intellect as thebasis of the soul: the cause from which it springs. For Eckhart, however,the
grunt or
vunke does not belong to the soul, although it is in it.Eckhart must insist on this because he also claims that this ‘something’is ‘uncreated and uncreatable’ (see [10.69] 133–4). When, in order toleave behind the false I and discover the true one, our possible intellectturns away from forms—wishing nothing, knowing nothing, lettingnothing act upon it—it is to this ‘something in the soul’ which it mustturn. Eckhart is willing to identify the uncreated
grunt with God, butalso, it seems, to go even further: the idea of God, he argues, implies arelation to something else, to creation; the
grunt, or the ‘I as I’, bycontrast, bears no relation to anything but itself. It is its own cause andeven the cause of God (see [10.70] 27).Eckhart thus transforms the theme he inherited from the traditionof Albert, according to which the highest part of man’s soul, the intellect,is divinized through its ability to be filled with intelligible contentsderived from God’s thought itself. For Eckhart, the spark in the soul isitself divine or even more than divine, and only by turning away fromanything outside myself and from any content whatsoever, do I discovermyself as this ‘I as I’. He also makes a parallel transformation of themoral outlook linked to Albert’s theme. In place of the philosophicalideal of nobility, found in the contemplation enjoyed by the philosopher,Eckhart substitutes a nobility of renunciation which he expresses bythe word ‘detachment’
(abegescheidenheit), and an ideal of povertyand humility: ‘Were a man truly humble’, he writes, ‘God would haveeither to lose his own divinity and be entirely bereft of it, or else diffusehimself and flow entirely into this man. Yesterday evening I had thisthought: God’s greatness depends on my humility; the more humble Imake myself, the more God will be raised up.’
16The tradition of Albert takes a different twist in the writings ofBerthold of Moosburg (fl.
c. 1335–
c. 1361). His known work comprisesjust an incomplete, but none the less vast, commentary on Proclus’
Elements of Theology. This choice of a life’s work was no accident.Berthold believed that the ‘Platonic philosophers’, of whom heconsidered Proclus an outstanding example, had arrived at the truephilosophy, by contrast with Aristotle and his followers. For Berthold,the main distinction to be considered is no longer between the teachingsof the philosophers and those of Christian faith, but between the twomain schools of ancient philosophy: the Aristotelians, whosemetaphysics, the knowledge of being
qua being, is seen in oppositionto the theology developed by Christians and Neoplatonists alike (see[10.63] 317–442).
NOTES1 Readers of this chapter are requested to look at what I say in my Introduction(above, p. 9, n. 8) about its aims and, especially, its limitations.2 Aristotle was also studied intensively in Oxford: see above, Chapter 9, andMarenbon [10.34].3 It is not certain that William was responsible for the revision of Grosseteste’stranslation that became standard.4 For an authoritative summary of present knowledge about the translations ofAristotle, see Dod [10.30]. The preceding paragraph and a half is based especiallyon this study.5 On Latin versions of Avicenna, see d’Alverny [10.27].6 Part of the
Parmenides was to be found in the lemmata of William of Moerbeke’stranslation of Proclus’ commentary, but neither the commentary nor the text wasgenerally known: see Steel [10.35] 306.7 See Weber [10.47]. On the history of these arguments based on the idea of infinity,many of which appear to go back to the sixth-century Greek Christian thinkerJohn Philoponus, see R.Sorabji,
Time, Creation and the Continuum, London,1983, esp. pp. 210–31.8 See de Libera [10.64]. My comments on Albert draw especially from de Libera,but they offer only a crude reflection of de Libera’s subtle views. See also deLibera [10.63] for a development of his views about Albert within a wider context.9 See Schmugge [10.71] for John of Jandun and Kuksewicz [10.62] for laterAverroism.10 An excellent guide to this tradition, and argument for its unity, is provided in deLibera [10.63].11
De intellectu et intelligibili II, 36; for the whole discussion, see II, 34–6, and III,37; cf. Mojsisch [10.68].12
De origine rerum praedicamentalium V2.13 Flasch was the first scholar to bring out the nature and importance of Dietrich’sposition here: see [10.59].14 For a thorough study of the background to the Parisian questions 1 and 2, seeZum Brunn and others [10.74] and Imbach [10.60].15 See Mojsisch [10.69] and [10.70]. Not all Eckhart scholars accept Mojsisch’sviews: for a critique, see [10.72], esp. 307–12.16 Sermon 14 [10.53, Deutsch. Werke, I 237:1–5], quoted by de Libera [10.65] 325;on Eckhart’s transformation of the ideal of nobility, see de Libera [10.65] 299–347.
BIBLIOGRAPHYEditions of Latin Translations from Greek, Arabic and HebrewThis is a list of some of the most important translations of philosophical works: forfuller lists, see Marenbon [Intr. 10] 194–7, with additions noted in Marenbon [10.33]1009, n. 1.10.1 Al-Ghazzālī (Algazel)
Intentions of the Philosophers, sections on physicsand metaphysics, in J.Muckle (ed.)
Algazel’s Metaphysics, Toronto,1933.10.2 Al-Ghazzālī (Algazel)
Intentions of the Philosophers (complete text),Venice, 1506.10.3–10.8 Aristotle: Logic (translations by Boethius, William of Moerbeke andothers), ed. L.Minio-Paluello
et al. (AL 1–6) Bruges and Paris, 1961–75).10.9 ——
Metaphysics (translations by James of Venice,
translatio vetus,translatio media), ed. G.Vuillemin-Diem (AL 25), Bruges and Paris,1970, 1976.10.10 ——
Nicomachean Ethics (various translations), ed. R.Gauthier (AL 26),Bruges and Paris, 1972–4.Aristotle’s
On the Soul (Michael Scotus’s version) appears as lemmata in histranslation of Averroes’ Great commentary [10.14].10.11 ——
On the Soul (William of Moerbeke’s version), as lemmata inAquinas’s commentary, ed. R.Gauthier (Leonine edition 45), Romeand Paris, 1984.10.12 Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis,Venice, 1560. (A large collection of his commentaries, uncriticallyedited.)10.13 ——The 1562–74 edition of the above work, which contains fewercommentaries, has been reprinted in Frankfurt, 1962.10.14 ——Great commentary on Aristotle,
On the Soul, ed. F.Crawford,Cambridge, Mass., 1953.Averroes’ Great commentary on Aristotle,
Metaphysics is published as awhole in [10.13] vol. 8, and on individual books as follows:10.15 ——on Book II, ed. G.Darms, Freiburg, Switzerland, 1966.10.16 ——on Book V, ed. R.Ponzalli, Berne, 1971.10.17 ——on Book XI, ed. B.Burke, Berne, 1969.10.18 Ibn Sina (Avicenna): book on
On the Soul from the
Shifā’, in S.van Riet(ed.)
De anima, 2 vols, Bruges and Paris, 1968, 1972.10.19 ——book on the
Metaphysics from the
Shifā’, in S.van Riet (ed.)
Liberde philosophia prima sive scientia divina, 3 vols, Bruges and Paris,1977–83.10.20
Liber de causis (Book about Causes), ed. A.Pattin, Louvain, undated.10.21 Maimonides
Guide of the Perplexed, Latin translation of the Hebrewtranslation by al-Harisi,
Dux seu director dubitantium velperplexorum, Paris, 1520; repr. Frankfurt, 1964.10.22 Plato
Timaeus (Calcidius’ version, with his commentary), ed. J.Waszink,2nd edn, London, 1975.10.23 ——
Meno, translated by Henry Aristippus, ed. V.Kordeuter and C.Labowsky, London, 1940.10.24 ——
Phaedo, translated by Henry Aristippus, ed. L.Minio-Paluello,London, 1950.10.25 Porphyry
Isagoge, translations by Boethius and others, ed. L.Minio-Paluello, (AL 1, fasc. 5–6), Bruges and Paris, 1966.10.26 Proclus
Elements of Theology, translated by William of Moerbeke, ed.H. Boese, Leuven, 1987.Bibliographies and cataloguesVery full bibliographical information will be found in Daiber [10.29].10.27 d’Alverny, M.-T. ‘Avicenna Latinus’,
Archives de l’histoire doctrinale etlittéraire du moyen âge (1961–72): 28, 281–316; 29, 217–33; 30,221–72; 31, 271–86; 32, 259–302; 33, 305–27; 34, 315–3; 36, 243–80; 37, 327–61; 39, 321–41.Studies10.28 Brams, J. ‘Guillaume de Moerbeke et Aristote’, in Hamesse and Fattori[10.31] 315–36.10.29 Daiber, H. ‘Lateinische Übersetzungen arabischer Texte zur Philosophieund ihre Bedeutung für die Scholastik des Mittelalters’, in Hamesseand Fattori [10.31] 203–50.10.30 Dod, B.G. ‘Aristoteles Latinus’, in
CHLMP, 45–79.10.31 Hamesse, J. and Fattori, M. (eds)
Rencontres de cultures dans laphilosophie médiévale, Louvain and Cassino, 1990.10.32 Kluxen, W. ‘Literaturgeschichtliches zum lateinischen Moses Maimonides’,
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 2l (1954): 23–50.10.33 Marenbon, J. ‘Medieval Christian and Jewish Europe’, in S.H.Nasr andO.Leaman (eds)
History of Islamic Philosophy, vol. II, London, 1996.10.34 ——(ed.)
Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages, Turnhout, 1996.10.35 Steel, C. ‘Plato Latinus’, in Hamesse and Fattori [10.31] 300–16.
BonaventureOriginal language editions10.36
Opera omnia, ed. P.P.Collegii S.Bonaventurae, 10 vols, Quaracchi, 1882–1902.10.37
Collationes, ed. F.Delorme (Bibliotheca Franciscana medii aevi 8),Quaracchi, 1934.10.38
Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (text of
Opera omnia with French paralleltrans. and notes by H.Duméry), Paris, 1960.Translations10.39
Breviloquium, trans. J.de Vinck, Paterson, NJ, 1963.10.40
Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (The mind’s journey to God), trans.P.Boehner, St Bonaventure, NY, 1956. (Other translations are alsoavailable.)10.41
De reductione artium ad theologiam, trans. E.T.Healy, St Bonaventure,NY, 1955.10.42
Collationes on the Hexaemeron, trans. (into French) M.Ozilon, as
Lessix jours de la. création, Paris,
c. 1991.Studies10.43 Bougerol, J.
Introduction à l’étude de Saint Bonaventure, Tournai, 196l.10.44 Gilson, E.
La Philosophie de Saint Bonaventure, 3rd edn (Etudes dephilosophie médiévale 4) Paris, 1953. (There is an English translationof the first, 1924, edn of this book:
The Philosophy of St Bonaventure,trans I.Trethowan and F.J.Sheed, New York, 1938.)10.45 Quinn, J.
The Historical Constitution of St Bonaventure’s Philosophy,Toronto, 1973.10.46 Van Steenberghen, F.
La Philosophie au XIIIe siècle, Louvain, 1966.10.47 Weber, E.H.
Dialogue et dissensions entre Saint Bonaventure et Saint Thomasd’Aquin à Paris, 1252–73 (Bibliothèque thomiste 41), Paris, 1974.
Albert the Great and his InfluenceOriginal language editions10.48 Albert the Great
Opera omnia, ed. A. and E.Borgnet, Paris, 1890–9.10.49 ——
Opera omnia, chief ed. B.Geyer, Münster, 1951–.10.50 Berthold of Moosburg, Commentary on the
Elements of Theology, partialed. by L.Sturlese, Rome, 1974.10.51 Dietrich of Freiberg
Opera omnia, ed. K.Flasch
et al., Hamburg, 1977–83.10.52 ——
De origine rerum praedicamentalium, ed. F.Stegmüller, ‘MeisterDietrich von Freiburg über den Ursprung der Kategorien’,
Archivesd’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 24 (1957): 115–201.(This edition has been replaced by that in [10.51] but may be morereadily available.)10.53 Eckhart
Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, ed. J.Quint
et al.(Stuttgart, 1930–).Translations10.54 Eckhart, Sermons and treatises, trans. M.O’C.Walshe, London andDulverton, 1979.10.55
Meister Eckhart: the Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises andDefence, trans. E.Colledge and B.McGinn, London, 1981.10.56
Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, trans. B.McGinn, NJ, 1986.10.57 Eckhart
Parisian Questions and Prologues, trans. A.Maurer, Toronto,1974.Bibliographies and catalogues10.58 Larger, N.
Bibliographie zu Meister Eckhart (Dokimion 9), Freiburg,Switzerland, 1989.A wide bibliography to the whole area is given in de Libera [10.63].Studies10.59 Flasch, K. ‘Kennt die mittelalterliche Philosophie die konstitutive Funktiondes menschlichen Denkens? Eine Untersuchung zu Dietrich vonFreiberg’,
Kant-Studien 63 (1972): 182–206.10.60 Imbach, R.
Deus est intelligere, Freiburg, Switzerland, 1976.10.61 Krebs, E.
Meister Dietrich (Theodoricus Teutonicus de Vriberg): seinLeben, seine Werke, seine Wissenschaft (BGPT MA 5, 5–6), Münster,1906.10.62 Kuksewicz, Z. ‘L’influence d’Averroes sur les universités en Europecentrale: l’expansion de l’averroisme latin’, in J.Jolivet (ed.)
MultipleAverroes, Paris, 1978, pp. 275–86.10.63 Libera, A.de
Introduction à la mystique rhénane d’Albert le Grand à MaîtreEckhart, Paris, 1984. Repr. as
La mystique rhénane, Paris, 1994.10.64 ——
Albert le Grand et la philosophie, Paris, 1990.10.65 ——
Penser au moyen âge, Paris, 1991.10.66 Lossky, V.
Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Eckhart,Paris, 1960.10.67 Meyer, G. and Zimmermann, A.
Albertus Magnus: Doctor Universalis1280/1980 (Walberger Studien 6), Mainz, 1980.10.68 Mojsisch, B.
Die Theorie des Intellects bei Dietrich von Freiberg,Hamburg, 1977.10.69 ——
Meister Eckhart. Analogie, Univozität und Einheit, Hamburg, 1983.10.70 ——‘“Le moi”: la conception du moi de Maître Eckhart: une contributionaux “lumières” du Moyen-Age’,
Revue des sciences religieuses 70(1996): 18–30.10.71 Schmugge, L.
Johannes von Jandun (1285/9–1328), Stuttgart, 1966.10.72 Waldschütz, E.
Denken und Erfahren des Grundes. Zur philosophischeDeutung Meister Eckharts, Vienna, Freiburg and Basel, 1986.10.73 Wallace, W.A.
The Scientific Methodology of Theoderic of Freiberg (StudiaFriburgensia, NS 25), Freiburg, Switzerland, 1959.10.74 Zum Brunn, E., Kaluza, Z., Libera, A. de, Vignaux, P. and Wéber, E.
Maître Eckhart à Paris. Une critique médiévale de l’ontothéologie(Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études, sciences religieuses 86),Paris, 1984.