The Medieval Christian Philosophers

An Introduction

Richard Cross

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857735195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

The High Middle Ages were remarkable for their coherent sense of 'Christendom': of people who belonged to a homogeneous Christian society marked by uniform rituals of birth and death and worship. That uniformity, which came under increasing strain as national European characteristics became more pronounced, achieved perhaps its most perfect intellectual expression in the thought of the western Christian thinkers who are sometimes called 'scholastic theologians'. These philosophers produced (during roughly the period 1050-1350 CE) a cohesive body of work from their practice of theology as an academic discipline in the university faculties of their day. Richard Cross' elegant and stylish textbook - designed specifically for modern-day undergraduate use on medieval theology and philosophy courses - offers the first focused introduction to these thinkers based on the individuals themselves and their central preoccupations.
The book discusses influential figures like Abelard, Peter Lombard and Hugh of St Victor; the use made by Aquinas of Aristotle; the mystical theology of Bonaventure; Robert Grosseteste's and Roger Bacon's interest in optics; the complex metaphysics of Duns Scotus; and the political thought of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. Key themes of medieval theology, including famous axioms like 'Ockham's Razor', are here made fully intelligible and transparent.

Part I

CONSOLIDATION

CHAPTER 1

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)

The period from 1050 to 1200, the topic of my first two chapters, is best thought of as a period of consolidation: the sustained and systematic reflection on available material – much the same material as was in circulation 400 years earlier. As I outlined in the Introduction, the task of locating and translating new work began in the second part of the twelfth century, but its results did not really have an impact until the thirteenth. Even the logica modernorum sprang from material, both well-known and neglected, that was already available: the tremendously original contributions to logic made by the twelfth-century resulted fundamentally from consideration of Aristotelian and Porphyrian antecedents. But while it may be that the real philosophical genius of the twelfth century lies in logic, this was certainly not the only area to attract careful intellectual thought. And in any case, I avoid discussion of logic here, since it scarcely seems suitable for something intended as an introduction.

If we examine the intellectual achievements of the twelfth century in areas other than logic, we cannot fail but notice something immediately: that these achievements are really all theological, and philosophical only to the extent needed to make theological progress. This contrasts very strikingly with the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when strictly philosophical questions – questions discussed quite independently of their theological usefulness or relevance – begin to assume an importance all of their own.

Anselm of Canterbury is a stunning example of what a highly intelligent, innovative, and systematic philosopher might be able to make of a mixture of the dazzling but rather chaotic and uncontrolled heritage left by Augustine, the rather limited Aristotelian logica vetus inherited from Boethius, and the Latin Stoicism of Cicero and Seneca. Anselm himself was a Benedictine monk, belonging to the community at Bec, whose abbot he became in 1079. He was, for the last two decades of his life, from 1091, one of the first Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, a position that he did not much relish, and that required a degree of political compromise that he was unwilling and unable to manage. While we should not think of Anselm as springing up in some kind of intellectual vacuum – there was, after all, a tradition of monastic learning that was just beginning to take on a certain kind of philosophical discipline (e.g. in the work of Anselm’s teacher, Lanfranc of Bec (d. 1089), who himself became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070) – Anselm’s original philosophical achievements place him in the very first rank of Western philosophers.

The most famous, and perhaps the best, example of Anselm’s abilities can be found in his celebrated attempt to prove the existence of God, found in chapter 2 of the Proslogion. Anselm argues that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. And he reasons:

That than which a greater cannot be thought cannot be in the intellect alone. For if it is in the intellect alone, it can be understood to be in reality (in re) also, and this is greater. If therefore that than which a greater cannot be thought is in the intellect alone, that very thing than which a greater cannot be thought is that than which a greater can be thought. And this certainly cannot be. Therefore without doubt there exists, both in the intellect and in reality, something that which a greater cannot be thought. (Proslogion, c. 2 (I, 101–2))

There is an Augustinian precedent (laid out in book II of De libero arbitrio, particularly chapters 6, 12, and 15), but it has nothing like the prima facie power of Anselm’s argument.¹ The argument itself is an attempt to show that the denial of God’s existence leads to a contradiction. It is what logicians label a reductio ad absurdum: a variety of indirect proof that attempts to show that the position opposed is contradictory. The idea is that positing that that than which a greater cannot be thought exists merely in the mind generates a contradiction, since in that case there would be something greater than that than which a greater cannot be thought: namely, that than which a greater cannot be thought existing both in the mind and in reality. Since it is therefore contradictory to suppose that than which a greater cannot be thought to exist in the mind alone, it follows that it is false that it exists in the mind alone. But, Anselm claims, that than which a greater cannot be thought exists at least in the mind. So it exists at least, but not merely, in the mind. Thus it must exist in reality.

The rest of the work makes good on the identification of God with that than which nothing greater can be thought (an identification made merely on the basis of faith in chapter 2), showing that that than which nothing greater can be conceived has the kinds of perfections that Christians traditionally ascribe to God.

Of course, Anselm’s argument is the subject of much controversy. First, it seems to amount to a proof of God’s existence, and Anselm states as much:

I began to wonder whether perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really (vere) exists. (Proslogion, preface (trans. Davies and Evans, p. 83))

But the work is cast in the form of a prayer, and Anselm calls his book Faith Seeking Understanding (Proslogion, preface). And, secondly, it is generally accepted that something is wrong with the argument. But what might it be? One standard criticism of arguments of this kind of form (‘ontological’ arguments), current since Kant, is that ontological arguments presuppose that existence is a kind of perfection that can be added to a concept. Does Anselm’s argument presuppose this?

On the first of these issues, Anselm gives his own answer: he writes with the aim of raising his mind to God; but how he does that is to provide a proof that would be sufficient to convince the ‘fool’ – that is to say, someone denying God’s existence; an atheist, as we would say. To raise his mind to God, in this case, involves providing a good deductive proof that by itself proves that God really exists. (‘Really’ in the Prologue is ‘vere’: ‘truly’; in chapter 2, Anselm substitutes ‘in re’: in reality, as opposed to (merely) in the mind. The aim is to show that God exists not merely in the mind, but also truly (vere), and that is what it is for him to exist in reality (in re).)

On the second issue – what might be wrong with Anselm’s argument – there is a great deal that might be said. On the Kantian question, I think it is clear enough that Anselm is trying to establish the existence of something that (as he puts it in Proslogion, c. 3), ‘cannot be thought not to exist’: that is to say, a necessary existent, something that includes existence in its concept. If we do not think that existence could be built into a concept, then we are likely to be moved by Kant’s worry. But the real point in Kant is that, however much we build into a concept (perhaps even including existence in a concept), it is always a further question whether or not that concept is realized. It is a feature of Anselm’s argument that necessary existence is arrived at as a conclusion, not a premise. So, if effective, Anselm’s argument would indeed provide an answer to the further question of whether or not the concept of that than which nothing greater can be conceived is realized. I do not think, then, that Anselm is obviously open to Kant-style critique.

Anselm certainly needs to presuppose that it is possible that there exists that than which nothing greater can exist – something that he does not explicitly state in chapter 2. But this presupposition crops up in Anselm’s attempt to refute what looks like a specious objection to his argument raised by an otherwise unknown contemporary of his, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. Gaunilo objects that, if Anselm’s reasoning is correct, he should be able to construct a parallel argument in favour of the existence of a most-perfect island. If such an island lacked existence, its concept would not be a concept of the most perfect island (Gaunilo, Pro insipiente). The parallel argument clearly fails: there could not be any such thing as a most perfect island. But Anselm’s argument is burdened with no such difficulty: it is not at all clear that there could not be a being than which none greater could be thought.

But this is not to say that his argument is free of defect. Quite the contrary, it seems to me that, for all its tremendous power, there is a crucial problem at its heart. Anselm’s basic idea is that having a thought of an object involves that object’s somehow existing in the mind. Given this, we can talk somehow of the same object existing in two different ways: in reality, and in the mind. And, given this, Anselm supposes, we might simply treat either of these two ways of existing as increasing the perfection of the object: existing in the mind and in reality is greater than existing merely in the mind (and, I suppose, conversely, existing in reality and in the mind is greater than existing merely in reality, though Anselm’s argument does not require this). But this way of thinking of concepts confuses the object of a concept with its content. Cognitive acts have semantic or conceptual content, something that today we would naturally think of as propositional: that x is F, that (for example) centaurs have horns – irrespective of the thought’s having an object – irrespective of their being centaurs or not. (I take the example from Fine, 1993, p. 123.) The case that Anselm has in mind requires contents with simple (i.e. non-propositional) semantic values, simple intensions: centaur, for example, or God. But while cognitive acts have to have contents, they do not have to have objects, things that they are about, or are directed at: there are no centaurs, and my thought that centaurs have horns, or even my thought centaurs, lacks any object. Failing to make this distinction leads Anselm into trouble. The fact that he has a thought with the content that than which nothing greater can be thought has no bearing at all on the existence of any object of that thought, and it makes no sense to add together the content of a thought and its object to increase somehow the perfection of the object. And, of course, if God does not exist, we can have a thought with the content God, or a thought with the content necessary existent, even though that thought lacks an object.

Still, for all its defects, Anselm’s ontological argument remains a remarkable achievement, revealing an intellect of both astonishing power and great originality. But it is far from Anselm’s only philosophical accomplishment. He got involved, in the 1090s, in a debate about universals. His opponent was the nominalist Roscelin, and the context Trinitarian theology. As a nominalist, Roscelin denies that there are any shared or universal substances, and Anselm maintains that an acceptance of the existence of (at least one) shared substance is a necessary condition for accepting the doctrine of the Trinity. Roscelin’s theological view, as reported by Anselm, is that the three divine persons must count as ‘three things (res) […] intrinsically distinct like three angels or three souls’, but that these persons are ‘completely one and the same in will and power’ (De incarnatione verbi, cc. 1 and 2 (trans. Evans and Davies, pp. 233 and 238)). And Roscelin attempts to show that denying this claim amounts to Sabellianism, the view that ‘the Father and the Holy Spirit as well as the Son became flesh’ (De incarnatione verbi, c. 1 (trans. Evans and Davies, p. 233)). Roscelin is clear that there are no extra-mental or, rather, extra-linguistic universals: he considers

universal essences to be merely vocal emanations (flatus vocis), and […] can understand colours only as material substances, and human wisdom only as the soul. (De incarnatione verbi, c. 1 (trans. Evans and Davies, p. 237))

This is thorough-going nominalism; colours and dispositions, which might count as shared universals in a realist philosophy, are likewise reduced to particular substances. (There are no properties at all on this view: just particular substances.) So items that are ‘intrinsically distinct like three angels or three souls’ lack any common features. And the three divine persons likewise – their unity is extrinsic, unity of will and power.

Anselm is quick to diagnose Roscelin’s nominalism as the root of his theological error:

In what way can those who do not yet understand how several specifically human beings are one human being understand in the most hidden and highest nature how several persons, each of whom is a complete God, are one God? And in what way can those whose minds are darkened as to distinguishing their horse and its colour distinguish between one God and his several relations? (De incarnatione verbi, c. 1 (trans. Evans and Davies, p. 237))

Roscelin’s metaphysics, according to Anselm, leads him into two distinct Trinitarian errors. The denial of universals forces him into tritheism (De incarnatione verbi, c. 4); and the denial of properties tout court allows him no account of the way in which the persons are distinguished from each other by distinct particular properties or relations (De incarnatione verbi, c. 2).

The first of these issues is, as Anselm acknowledges, a bit more complex than it seems. After all, the ways in which several human beings are ‘one human being’ and the several divine persons ‘one God’ cannot be just the same, otherwise orthodox Christians would (as Roscelin charges) have to affirm that there is just one human substance, just as there is just one divine substance. Anselm does not say much by way of clarification here, but he seems to fall into the Aphrodisian or Boethian tradition when he states that

we surely do not predicate two angels or two souls of anything numerically one and the same, nor do we predicate anything numerically one of two angels or two souls, as we predicate Father and Son of numerically one God, and numerically one God of the Father and the Son. (De incarnatione verbi, c. 2 (trans. Evans and Davies, p. 240))

Here we seem to have, in the human and angelic cases, one universal or shared nature, but one such that it is somehow more than one distinct substance (it is not ‘numerically one’) – whereas in the divine case the one shared nature is just one substance. Elsewhere, again contrasting creaturely and divine cases, Anselm talks about divisibility (in the creaturely case) versus...

Table of contents

• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Institutions and Sources
• Part I: Consolidation
• Part II: Revolution
• Part III: Innovation
• Part IV: Simplification
• Epilogue. Retrospection: John Wyclif (c. 1330–84)
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Notes