Heroism

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter of this blog, coming merely from my extra-curricular reading, but it's so badass I have to point it out:

At one point General Weygand mentioned that the French might have to ask for an armistice. Reynaud at once snapped at him: "That is a political affair." According to Ismay I said: "If it is thought best for France in her agony that her Army should capitulate, let there be no hesitation on our account, because whatever you may do we shall fight on forever and ever and ever." When I said that the French Army, fighting on, wherever it might be, could hold or wear out a hundred German divisions, General Weygand replied: "Even if that were so, they would still hav another hundred to invade and conquer you. What would you do then?" On this I said that I was not a military expert, but that my technical advisers were of opinion that the best method of dealing with German invasion of the island of Britain was to drown as many as possible on the way over and knock the others on the head as they crawled ashore.

--Churchill, The Second World War, vol. II, 155.

Bonaventure the Feminist

From In Sententiarum Lib. IV Dist. VII Art. III. Quaest. I:

Et primo, quod debeant excludi [usui sacramenti Confirmationis] mulieres, quia hoc sacramentum ordinat ad pugnam; sed mulieres excluduntur a bello: ergo debent excludi ab hoc sacramento. . . . [sed] quod conveniat omni sexui , videtur, et maxime muliebri, quia "omnes qui pie volunt vivere in Christo persecutionem patitur," ergo et sexus infirmus; sed infirmo, qui persecutionem patitur, sunt maxime necessaria arma fortitudinis: ergo, cum haec dentur in Confirmatione, videtur quod mulieres maxime indigeant hoc sacramento . . . Ad illud ergo quod obicitur de mulieribus, patet, quia, licet non competat bellum materiale, competit tamen spirituale. Multae enim in hoc bello strenues fuerunt, ut patet de sacris Virginibus quae martyrizatae sunt pro confessione et nomine Christi.

Now that's hardcore feminism.

Plantinga's "Does God Have a Nature?"

Well, dear readers, I just finished reading the book in the title line. I read it as part of my preliminary dissertation research as it deals with similar issues. I must say, I was a bit disappointed. He is a big name and all that. But it was a little book. Basically, I think the book suffered from two deficiencies. First, that he did not give his own determinatio but instead rejected the views of "classical theism" (simplicity...I bet our energetic easterners are right on board with him here, and perhaps through much of this little volume), nominalism, and the views of Descartes. Now, it was one of the Marquette Aquinas lectures so perhaps he had no space, and was contenting himself with an apophatic method. He said in the beginning that his view was that God had a nature, but was not identical to it.

My second complaint, and I think an actually philosophical one, is that he did not distinguish between divine simplicity and divine unity. Catholics are bound to hold divine simplicity by conciliar decree (i'm assuming this one...I can't name the council off hand); But Christians, Jews, and Muslims all are bound by the Shema, "Hear o Israel, the Lord your God is One". So God is one, but not simple. So what then is the distinction between simplicity and unity. Are God and his nature distinguised as res and res, as the scholastics would say? He rejected divine simplicity by giving a heavy-handed description of Aquinas' views on the subject from the Summa, that God isn't composed of substance and accident or potency and act, etc., and analyzed the view that God and his essence, properties and whatnot are all one without mentioning at all the famous (and confusing) dicta of St. Thomas that they are one but with some distinction founded in reality. Fine. But if we grant his refutation of Thomas, the question still remains: If God is not identical to his nature, how are they distinguished?

A further, minor complaint: In his description of Aquinas' views, he gave only a few brief quotes of his arguments. But Descartes got page and after page of quotation, and to top it off, they weren't arguments at all, only assertions Descartes made while writing letters that the truth of eternal truths is contingent on an act of divine will. Furthermore, he assumed that Descartes also rejected divine simplicity, and without any quotation to back it up. Yet Descartes was Catholic, and probably bound by the same councils as the rest of us Catholics who care about such things. I don't recall ever seeing Descartes talk about divine simplicity, but I have seen him go out of his way to detail how his philosophy can be applied to the Eucharistic mystery without heresy, so he clearly was concerned with keeping his views within Catholic orthodoxy. But perhaps someone will just say that was because he feared persecution; I suppose the only way to disprove that is ask Descartes himself in the beatific vision. No good.

All in all, an interesting and stimulating read. I'll probably read it again in the near future, just to make sure I followed all of it.

Philosophy at Night

I've always resented my body's need for sleep. What a waste of precious hours when all is quiet and still!

What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove

These days I feel it even more keenly, now that I have children to care for throughout the day. Night is when they sleep, and so I would rather be awake during it! Reading is difficult when there are diapers to change, baths to give, meals to make, attention and affection to bestow; thinking almost impossible. Serious thinking requires either the collaboration of a likeminded Intelligence, or else silence and solitude. For me, then, philosophy can only happen late at night.

. . . Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retirèd solitude,
Where with her best nurse Contemplation
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all to-ruffled and sometimes impaired.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

--Milton, Comus

Since the light of Philosophy turns the night into a mental day, how could I want to squander it in sleep?

*Update*

Let no one, especially my collaborator Faber, be surprised or offended at all the non-Scotistic poetry posts from me lately. Variety is a good thing. Besides, it's also good to remember--with one more extract from Comus--

How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbèd as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit regns.

With the scholastics, unlike the moderns, it's the thought rather than the words that is musical as Apollo's lute. That's as it should be.

Word of the Day

Today's Word of the Day is..."nihilitates", (assuming I resolved the abbreviation properly) a gem of a term used, if not coined, by Petrus Thomae in his Quaestiones de modis distinctionum q.7 (Utrum ponentes attributa divina distingui sicut aliqua positiva vel sicut diverse formalitates habent ponere necessario quod ipsi distinguuntur sicut res et res). One can see why the humanists hated the scholastics, and perhaps also why Petrus Thomae does not seem to have been read after the 15th century. Here it is, in all its glory in its original context; note that it is one of the principal arguments at the beginning, and not necessarily one he endorses.

Praeterea tertio arguitur sic: realitas unicumque est simpliciter sua formalitas; et idem est res et sua formalitas, ergo impossibile est ponere plures formalitates quin ponatur plures realitates; ista enim attributa sive formalitates ut distinctae vel sunt aliquid et res vel nihil. Si sunt aliquid et res, propositum. Si nihil, ergo formalitates sunt nihilitates.

Shakespeare the Thomist

Or at least the "intellectualist". From A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act II scene ii:

Content with Hermia! No: I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia, but Helena I love:
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
The will of man is by his reason sway'd,
And reason says you are the worthier maid.
Things growing are not ripe until their season;
So I, being young, till now not ripe to reason;
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshall to my will,
And leads me to your eyes; where I o'erlook
Love's stories written in love's richest book.

The irony here, of course, is that Lysander's will is not being led by reason at all but, unbeknownst to him, by Oberon's love potion. So perhaps it's Lysander that's the mistaken intellectualist and not Shakespeare. Of course the love potion violates the freedom and self-determination of the will, and so Shakespeare is not a voluntarist either.

Later in the scene Shakespeare shows why the Smithy has a tendency to rag on Thomists and Protestants:

. . . the heresies that men do leave
Are hated most of those they did deceive

Not, of course, that I consider Thomism a heresy.

Scotistic Abstractions

Here's a quote I've been meaning to post for a while, on different kinds of abstractions. The most interesting bit here is probably that of "ultimate abstraction," which we encountered a year or so ago when I posted that bit on Petrus Thomae from his Quaestio de distinctione praedicamentorum. So here it is: Reportatio IA d.5 pt. I q.1 n.16-20 [ed. and tran. Wolter 264]

"I say that abstractions are multiple; for one is the abstraction of an accident from its subject, another is the abstraction of the quiddit from a supposit.

Also, abstraction is from every thing of another kind[generis].

Also in relatives there is a double abstraction, that of an accident from its subject, and secondly of a relation from its foundation.

But then the ultimate abstraction is when a formal reason is considered precisely according to itself without anything else which is not included per se in its formal notion, as humanity is only humanity itself.

Proof: an adjective is never predicated as identical[with its subject], or never can it be predicated by an identical predication, because the way an adjective signifies is as 'informing', 'added to', and 'denominating' a nature or noun. Therefore if a predicate is predicated identically and not formally, it is predicated in a manner opposed to the very way it conceptualizes, and therefore it follows that such a proposition is false, because subject and predicate are taken under opposed conceptions. But that is not the case here when it is said: 'God is generating,' because 'God' is not taken in the sense of its ultimate abstraction, and therefore something is predicated of it that is not included in its per se formal notion."

On a related note, in his quodlibetal discussion in which he attacks Scotus' formal distinction, Hervaeus Natalis takes this notion of ultimate abstraction to be purely mind dependent. I think he misses the point, which is not spelled out here in this passage, that this ultimate abstraction is singling out a common nature; while the act of singling out is indeed an act of reason, the nature itself exists as such with less than numerical unity independent of the mind.

Members of P.A.A.L. Take Note

Vergil's second Eclogue is the lament of a shepherd who has a crush on another shepherd:

Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin,

and so forth. Spenser's "The Shepeardes Calender" is a series of Eclogues modelled to some extent on Vergil, one for each month of the year. "Ianuarie" has Colin Clout, Spenser's Arcandian name for himself, mentioning that another shepherd "Hobbinol" seeks his love as well. Fear not, however. This isn't what it sounds like. Spenser provides his own glosses to the "Calender," and the "glosse" to this stanza, after mentioning Vergil's second Eclogue, goes on:

In thys place seemeth to be some sauour of disorderly loue, which the learned call paederastice: but it is gathered beside his meaning. For who that hath red Plato his dialogue called Alcybiades, Xenophon and Maximus Tyrius of Socrates opinions, may easily perceiue, that such loue is muche to be alowed and liked of, specially so meant, as Socrates vsed it: who sayth, that in deede he loued Alcybiades extremely, yet not Alcybiades person, but hys soule, which is Alcybiades owne selfe. And so is paederastice much to be preferred before gynerastice, that is the loue whiche enflameth men with lust toward woman kind. But yet let no man thinke, that herein I stand with Lucian or hys deuelish disciple Vnico Arentino, in defense of execrable and horrible sinnes of forbidden and vnlawful fleshlinesse. Whose abominable errour is fully confuted of Perionius, and others.

P.A.A.L. also recommends the avoidance of Aspartame.

Odd bits and pieces

An anglo-saxon hagiographer weighs in on some philosophical controversies, miraculously decided:

Iterum ipsa mater quadam die stans in aecclesia stipata civibus, causa sanctam missam audiendi, sensit uenisse animam pueri, quem gestabat in utero, et intrasse in eum, sicut postea ipse sanctus, qui nasciturus erat, iam episcopus, gaudendo nobis narravit. Ex quo ostenditur eum electum Deo extitisse etiam antequam nasceretur, et animam hominis non a patre vel a matre uenire sed a solo cratore unicuique dari.

--Aelfric, Life of St. Ethelwold, in "Three Lives of English Saints," ed. Michael Winterbottom, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 1, 1972.

"Again, one day his mother standing in the crowded church for the sake of hearing Holy Mass, felt the soul of the child she carried in her womb to have come and entered, as afterwards the saint himself who was to be born, now a bishop, related to us with rejoicing. From which it is shown that he was elect of God even before he was born, and [that] the soul of man comes not from the father or the mother but is given to anyone by the creator alone."

This short saint's-life, which I looked in to on a lark from Livy burnout last night, is full of awesome/funny stuff. For instance, this story of the bottomless cup of mead:

Venit ergo rex quadam die ad monasterium, ut edicifiorum structuram per se ipsum ordinaret; mensusque est omnia fundamenta monasterii propria manu, quemadmodum moruos erigere decreuerat; rogauitque eum abbas in hosptio cum suis prandere. Annuit rex ilico; et contigit adesse sibi non paucos uenientes ex gente Northanhymbrorum, qui omnes cum rege adierunt conuiuium. Letatusque est rex, et iussit abunde propinare hospitibus medonem, clausis foribus, ne quis fugiendo potationem regalis conuiuii deserere uideretur. Quid multa? Hauserunt ministri liquorem tota die ad omnem sufficientiam conuiuantibus; sed nequiuit ille liquor exhauriri de uase, nisi ad mensuram palmi, inebriatis Northanhymbris suatim ac uesperi recedentibus.

I'll leave that one for the real enthusiasts.

Finally, a health regimen from Chaucer, which, unattractive as it is to my own taste, we would all be wise to follow. From The Nonnes Preestes Tale:

"No deyntee morsel passed thurgh hir throte;
Nir diete was accordant to hir cote.
Repleccioun ne made hire nevere sik;
Attempre diete was al hir phisik,
And exercise, and hertes suffisaunce."

I suppose I can without "repleccioun" of "deyntee morsels" if I can have "hertes suffisaunce," which, as Chaucer recognizes, comes from books rather than food. But quotes demonstrating Chaucer's book-lust will have to come some other time.

H.A. Wolfson on the History of the Platonic Ideas

I just finished reading some background material for the dissertation, an essay by Harry Wolfson on the interpretation of the Platonic ideas from Philo to Christianity and Islam. He concluded with an amusing (or so I thought) summary modelled on the Biblical geneologies which he said had the best manner of showing historical processes. This is from "Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas", reprinted in Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays by Harry Austryn Wolfson, 67.

"Now these are the generations of the Platonic ideas.
And Plato lived forty years and begat the ideas.
And the ideas of Plato lived three hundred years and begat the Logos of Philo.
And the Logos of Philo lived seventy years and begat the Logos of John.
And the Logos of John lived six hundred years and begat the attributes of Islam.
And the attributes of Islam lived five hundred and fifty years and begat the attributes of the Schoolmen.
And the attributes of the Schoolmen lived four hundred years and begat the attributes of Descartes and Spinoza.
And the attributes of Spinoza lived two hundred years and begat among their interpreters sons and daughters who knew not their father.

The Remnant Church

Here's a bit that might please Protestants in some ways if not in others:

Nihilominus tamen verum est quod sacramentum Baptismi prodest parvulis merito fidei Ecclesiae militantis, quae, quamvis possit deficere in aliquibus personis specialiter, generaliter tamen nunquam deficit nec deficiet, iuxta illus Matthaei ultimo, 20, "Ecce ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem saeculi." Unde sicut species semper salvatur in aliquo individuorum, sic fides in aliquo fidelium, et hoc, divina providentia faciente. Nec unquam fuit, postquam incepit Ecclesia, quin semper esset aliquid qui Deo placeret; sic nec unquam erit.

"Nevertheless it is true that in the sacrament of Baptism the merit of the faith of the Church Militant profits the children [i.e. the ones baptised], which [faith], although it can fail in some persons specially [as individuals], nevertheless never generally fails nor will fail, as that statement in the last chapter of Matthew says, verse 20, "Behold I am with you even until the consummation of the age." Whence just as the species in always preserved in any one of [its] individuals, so is the faith [preserved] in any one of the faithful, and this by the working of divine providence. Nor ever, since the Church began, has there failed to be someone who pleased God, as also there never will be."

--St Bonaventure, IV Sent., dist. 4 pars 1 dub.2.

Protestants love the idea of a remnant Church holding out against the tide of the unfaithful. Of course they also like to imagine that they themselves are the remnant Church, and that the remnant of the faithful across the ages were just like them, rather than being faithful Catholics. They certainly do not like the idea of the merits of the faithful remnant helping to remit the sins of others, nor of their faith serving for infants in making their baptism valid, if their parents are faithless. All in all an interesting passage.

Gonsalvus Redivivus!

In the fourteenth century, at least. This is for Michael, a quote from Petrus Thomae's Quodlibet q.3 from a question about whether items such as truth, good, etc. as they are attributes of being are absolute or relative. It is on p.54 of the edition of Peter Thomae. I don't think he goes back to this later or comments much on it. But it shows Gonsalvus Hispanus had some influence in the 1320's.

"Ad hoc idem arguit frater Gonsalvus. Cuius fundamentum cui innititur est quia istae duae potentiae, videlicet intellectus et voluntas, sunt aequalis ambitus, quia quidquid potest attingi ab una, potest similiter ab alia; nec aliqua ratio potest ab una attingi quod non possit attingi ab alia. Ergo videtur quod earum non possint poni diversae rationes formales obiectivae"

Brother Gonsalvus argues to the same, the foundation of which argument is that those two powers, namely the intellect and will, are of equal range, because whatever can be attained by one, can likewise be attained by the other; nor is there some concept that can be attained by one that cannot be attained by the other. therefore it seems that there cannot be posited diverse formal concepts of them.

Additio auctoris incerti

The following 'addition of uncertain authorship' on the essential unity of spiritual and corporeal matter is appended to Distinction III in some manuscripts of St Bonaventure's Sentences commentary and is printed there in the Quaracchi edition. The editors are not sure whether it is an addition of Bonaventure's own long after the composition of the original work or whether it was added by a later reader. I incline to the latter view, in light of the author's uncertainty about fully embracing Bonaventure's doctrine, and in light of the reference to Avicebron, whose name never appears in Bonaventure's works. Here is the passage, followed by a pretty literal translation:

Haec autem dicta sunt de unitate materiae spiritualium et corporalium secundum essentiam ipsius nudam et absolutam; quoniam secundum esse diversificari habet in diversis non tantum secundum esse accidentale, sed etiam secundum esse substantiale. Unde in diversis secundum substantiam diversificatur substantialiter, sicut patebit in sequenti articulo quaestionis. Licet autem non contingat in natura reperire essentiam materiae ab omnibus formis et dispositionibus denidatam, contingit tamen vere intelligere et aliquid ei vere attribuere, sicut Augustinus, in XII Confessionum docet satis aperte, et in libro De vera Religione, dicit quod est quasi medium inter aliquod et nihil, et Philosophus, in I libro De generatione, dicit quod est ita simplex sicut punctus. Quemadmodum igitur rerum corporearum compositarum et extensarum contingit vere intelligere materiam esse per essentiam simplicem, et hoc per privationem omnis compositionis et extensionis, quamvis secundum esse naturae impossibile sit rerum corporearum materiam ab extensione separari, ut in pluribus locis dicit Augustinus, maxime in libro De immortalitate animae, et Super Genesim ad litteram: sic rerum diversarum et distinctarum et numeratarum vere contingit intelligere materiam per suam essentiam indistinctam et non numeratam, et ita quodammodo numero unam per privationem omnis numerationis et distinctionis, ut praedictum est. Et hoc expresse dicit Commentor, Super I Metaphysicae, in illo capitulo: ‘Quoniam autem in fundamento’, ubi assignat differentiam inter unitatem generis et materiae; id ipsum expressissime dicit, Super XII, ubi etiam dat modum, qualiter hoc possit intelligi, quod diversorum sit materia numero una, ostendens quod hoc potius privitave dicitur quam positive. Hoc ipsum dicit auctor Fons vitae in prima parte sui libri et expresse probat in [X]IV, quod corporalium et spiritualium est materia per essentiam una. Et hoc probat per hoc, quod omnis diversitas est a forma, et per hoc, quod, si spiritualia et corporalia non haberent materiam per essentiam unam, impossibile esset quod aliquid esset eis univocum, quia diversitas radicum prohibet convenientiam in ramis. Aliorum autem auctoritates causa brevitatis omitto. –Et propter haec et his similia dictum fuit a principio, hunc modum dicendi esse philosophicum, quamvis nihil prohibeat, ipsum esse catholicum et theologicum, dum tamen recte intelligatur. In nullo enim modus iste dicendi repugnat dignitati substantiae spiritualis, nec distantiae inter ipsam et corporalem, nec creationi spirituum. Non enim propter hoc oportet ponere, spiritus fieri de materia praeiacente, quia materia, induta forma corporali, non potest illa exspoliari; nec Deus facit contra ea quae stabilivit a principio, et ideo cum creatur substantia spiritualis, necesse est cum ea suam materiam concreari. Et quemadmodum creatio spirituum non tollit eis convenientiam essentialem in unitate formae specificae, sic etiam non tollit unitatem materiae per essentiam nudam et absolutam, quoniam, sicut dictum fuit, maioris amplitudinis est haec unitas quam unitas generis vel speciei; et praeterea nunquam creatur nec creata fuit materia sine aliqua forma, sub qua habet diversificari, sicut dictum est supra. Si quis igitur essentiam materiae nudae potest intelligere, videbit quod satis probabiliter potest dici una numero privative. Et haec sufficit de ista positione.
Est autem et alius hic dicendi modus, quod spiritualium et corporalium non est materia per essentiam una, quantumcumque intelligatur denudari a formis et dispositionibus superadditis, immo adhuc essentialiter distinguuntur se ipsis. Sicut enim prima rerum genera se ipsis distinguuntur, et essentia formae se ipsa distinguitur ab essentia materiae, et essentia materiae a Deo propter simplicitatem; sic essentia materiae se ipsa distinguitur ab essentia materiae. Et secundum hanc positionem, si Deus per infinitatem suae potentiae de corpore faceret spiritum, nihil maneret commune, sed totum transiret in totum. –Et si obiciatur contra hanc positionem, quod omnis diversitas est a forma, et quod solus actus dividit, et consimilia; breviter secundum hanc positionem respondetur quod illum verum est de distinctione et diversitate completa. Sicut enim essentia materiae, omni forma abstracta, est incompleta respectu distinctionis. Et per hoc possunt quasi omnes rationes ad oppositum determinari, sicut patet pertractanti. Et ideo non oportet in hoc diutius immorari. –Utraque igitur harum positionum in hoc concordar, quod spiritualium et corporalium est materia una unitate analogiae. Sed utrum istud sufficiat dicere ad sustinendam unitatem generis—cum substantiarum et accidentium sint principia eadem per analogiam, sicut vult Philosophus, nec tamen habeant unum genus commune—utrum etiam oporteat ad indistinctionem; diu consideranti et bene intelligenti difficile est videre. Et ideo sanius est uni istarum positionum cum formidine partis alterius adhaerere, quam in alteram omnino praecipitare sententiam; maxime cum magistri et probati clerici utrumque dicant.

"But these things are said of the unity of spiritual and corporeal matter according to its naked and absolute essence; for according to its being it has to be diversified in diverse things, not only according to accidental being, but also according to substantial being. Whence things which are diverse according to substance are diversified substantially, as will be clear in the following article of the question. But although it may not happen that one finds in nature the essence of matter denuded of all forms and dispositions, nevertheless one can truly understand it and truly attribute something to it, as Augusine teaches clearly enough in XII Confessionum, and in his book De vera religione he says that [matter] is as it were a medium between something and nothing, and the Philosopher, the first book of De generatione, says that it is as simple as a point. Just as, therefore, one can truly understand matter through its simple essence to be [present] in composite and extended corporeal things, although according to the being of nature it is impossible for the matter of coporeal things to be separated from extension, as Augustine says in many places, especially in his book De immortalitate animae, and Super Genesim ad litteram: so one can also understand matter through its indistinct and unnumbered essence [to be present] in diverse and and distinct and numbered things, and so [one may understand it to be], by a certain kind of number, one through the privation of all enumeration and distinction, as was said before. And the Commentor expressly says this, in Super I Metaphysicae, in the chapter ‘Quoniam autem in fundamento’, where he assigns the difference between the unity of genus and [the unity of] matter; he expressly says the same thing in Super XII, where he gives the way how it can be understood that there can be numerically one matter for diverse things, showing that this is said privatively rather than positively. The author of the Fons vitae says the same thing in the first part of his book and expressly proves in [X]IV that the matter of spiritual and of corporeal things is essentially one. And he proves it this way: every diversity is from form; and this way: if spiritual and corporeal things did not have matter which was essentially one, it would be impossible for them to have anything univocal, for diversity in the roots prevents in the branches. I omit the authorities of others for the sake of brevity. –And on account of these and similar considerations it was said from the beginning that this way of speaking is philosophical, although nothing prohibits it from also being catholic and theological, so long as it is rightly understood. For this way of speaking in no way detracts from the dignity of a spiritual substance, nor from the distance between it and a corporeal [substance], nor from the creation of spirits. For one need not because of this [doctrine] posit that a spirit is made from previously-existing matter, because matter, clothed in corporeal form, cannot be robbed of it; nor does God act against what he has established from the beginning, and therefore when a spiritual substance is created, it is necessary for its matter to be cocreated with it. And just as the creation of spirits does not take from them [their] essential agreement in the unity of [their] specific form, neither also does the unity of matter through its naked and absolute essence take [it from them], because, as was said, this unity is of a greater extent than the unity of genus or species; and furthermore matter is not created nor was ever created without some form under which it is diversified, as was said above. If therefore anyone is able to understand the essence of naked matter, he will see that it can with sufficient probability be called privatively numerically one. And these [words] suffice about this position.
But there is another way of speaking here, [by saying namely that] the matter of spiritual and of corporeal things is not essentially one, howsoever it may be understood to be stripped of form and superadded dispositions, but rather [that the two matters are] still essentially distinguished from one another. For as the primary genera of things are distinguished from one another, and [as] the essence of form is by itself distinguished from the essence of matter, and the essence of matter from God on account of simplicity; so the essence of matter by itself is distinguished from the essence of [the other kind of] matter. And according to this position, if God through the infinity of his power were to make a spirit out of a body, nothing common would remain [between them], but the whole would pass into the whole. –And if it were objected against this position, that all diversity is from form, and that act alone divides, and similar [things were said]; briefly according to this position one would respond that this is true of complete distinction and diversity. For as the essence of matter, abstracted from all form, is incomplete with respect to distinction . . . [lacuna?] And in this way all the arguments for the opposite [side] can be determined, as is clear to anyone who works through it. And therefore one need not be delayed by this matter any longer. –But both of these positions can be harmonized in this one, that the matter of spiritual and of corporeal things is one with the unity of analogy. But whether this is sufficient to preserve the unity of genus—since the principles of substances and of accidents are the same by analogy, as the Philosopher has it, nor nevertheless do they have one common genus—and also whether [this position would seem] sufficient for indistinction, is difficult to see [even] for one who considers and understands [the matter] well. And therefore it is saner to stick to one of these positions together with due respect for the other side, rather than to throw oneself headlong altogether into one opinion; especially since masters and esteemed clerics say each."

Matter is a Slut

A while back I posted the following excerpt from Chaucer, with comment:

To Colcos comen is this duc Jasoun,
That is of love devourer and dragoun.
As mater apetiteth form alwey
And from forme into forme it passen may,
Or as a welle that were botomles,
Right so can false Jason have no pes.
For to desyren thourgh his apetit
To don with gentil women his delyt,
This is his lust and his felicite.

--Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women, "The Legend of Medea"

It turns out that Chaucer was being less imaginative and more learned than I suspected. Today I came across much the same metaphor in none other than John Quidort:

Unde nullus antiquorum ponentium materiam in omnibus creaturis, posuit materiam diversarum specierum vel rationum, sed diversimode se habentem in istis inferioribus et in spiritibus. Quae diversitas non provenit ex diversitate materiae absolutae, sed ex diversitate formae inferiorum et superiorum, quia forma non terminat vel capit totum ambitum materiae, quae est ad formas naturales. Ideo materia informata actu inferioris formae, quasi meretrix viro suo non satiatur actu formae quam habet, sed appetit supponi alii formae. Forma vero corporis caelestis vel intelligentiae, qua movet universum, virtute continet omnem formam, ad quam materia prima est in potentia. Ideo terminat totum appetitum materiae et ideo materia actu informata forma superiorum, non est in potentia ad aliud extra. Ideo non machinatur in maleficium corruptionis per appetitum alterius formae et corruptionem formae habitae. Ideo mulieri castae comparatur.

--John of Paris (Quidort). Le Correctorium corruptorii “Circa”, ed. J.P. Muller (Studio Anselma, 12-13), Rome, 1941. p.56

Rather than translate verbatim, I'll just include the note I wrote on this passage for my dissertation this afternoon:

"None of the ancients positing matter in all creatures went so far as to posit matters of different kinds or characters [specierum vel rationum]. The diversity of things comes not from a diversity of matters but from a diversity of superior and inferior forms, since no one form exhausts or expresses [terminat vel capit] the whole extent of matter’s potency to natural forms. Like a slut who is never satisfied with her husband, matter informed with with an inferior form is never satisfied with it, but always desires to replace it with another. On the other hand, John claims, the form of a heavenly body or of one of the Intelligences which moves the universe virtually contains every form to which prime matter is in potency (he does not explain in what sense this is true). Therefore such a form exhausts the whole desire of matter for form, and so matter informed with a superior form in not in potency to something else. These sorts of substances, then, are not entangled in the offense of corruption through the desire of some other form and the corruption of the form possessed, and so the matter of these higher substances is like a chaste woman."

Another Scotist Dogma?

I have in mind the constitution Benedictus Deus issued by Benedict XII in 1336. According to the recent book by Avery Cardinal Dulles, this decree is one of the view such from the Medieval period that theologians hold to be clearly infallible. Trottmann takes it as the end-point of his massive tome on the beatific vision, which I think may be the source of my information. I was having an argument with a Thomist about this, as I think I remember Trottmann claiming that this doctrine endorsed the Scotist position on the beatific vision, as being an example of intuitive cognition. I quote the relevant passage, from Denzinger 67:

"[the angels and "court of heaven"] viderunt et vident divinam essentiam visione intuitiva et etiam faciali, nulla mediante creatura in ratine obiecti visi se habente, sed divina essenta immediate se nude, clare et aperte eis ostendente, quodque sic videntes eadem divina essentia perfruuntur, nec non quod ex tali visione et fruitione eroum animae, qui iam decessertun, sunt vere beatae et habent vitam et requiem aeternam, et etiam illorum, qui postea decedent, eamdem divinam videbunt essentiam, ipsaque perfruentur ante iudicium generale; ac quod visio huiusmodi divinae essentiae eiusque fruitio actus fidei et spei in eis evacuant, prout fides et spes propriae theologicae sunt virtutes; quodque postquam inchoata fuerit vel erit talis intuitiva ac facialis visio et fruitio in eisdem, eadem visio et fruitio sine aliqua intercisione seu evacuatione pradicateae visionis et fruitionis continuata extitit et continuabitur usque ad finale iudicium et ex tunc usque in sempiternum"

Now the point of all this was to resolve whether the dead see God after death or not, and the document does define that the blessed dead enjoy intuitive cognition of the divine essence (sorry, seventh-day adventists, you lose). By saying this may be a "Scotist" dogma I am not saying that it is necessarily opposed to Thomism. Thomas if I recall my recent exam question correctly, thinks that the divine essence becomes a form for the intellect; so it is also direct. But Thomas does not use the term "intuitive" which, while not coined by Scotus, did historically seem to explode in the extent of its usage due to his employment of it. By this I mean that after Scotus, discussions of intuitive and abstractive cognition became standard fare in the prologues to Sentence commenaries, though he does not talk about intuitive cognition at all in the prologue to his Parisian Reportatio, instead develops a complicated and controversial usage of abstractive cognition. Essentially, Scotus thinks intuitive cognition is the direct cognition of something qua existing in the here and now. Abstractive cognition "abstracts" from the here and now, and is mediated by an intelligible species. Returning to Benedictus Deus, then, Benedict XII is using a technical term known have been developed in its "modern", 14th century sense by Scotus.

Of course, this does not exactly constitute a dogma...the dogma is that there is a vision of God after death that is intuitively immediate. The Scotistic part is the manner of the vision. The tricky part of all this is that intuitive cognition is a mode of cognition naturally had by the intellect (its manner of functioning in this life is unclear in Scotus and highly disputed by scholars). While this may be logically distinct from his notion of being as the object of the intellect, in that context he denies the existence of the lumen gloriae, which if you, gentle readers, recall from an earlier post, apparently is dogma [though as the affirmation of it was directed against the Beghards and not a scholastic, and as I read an article the other day saying certain other parts of the council of Vienne weren't considered dogma, I am entirely unsure of the status of that bit on the lumen gloriae]; but, all is not lost, for he says that God is maximally intelligible, and maximally light, and so therefore does seem to shine on the intellect (this bit is from Ord. III where he talks about the knowledge of Christ). But the whole point of the lumen gloriae is that the intellect of itself can't see God and needs to be elevated by the divine light [I am reminded of a recent entry on energetic processions in which Perry I think lamented some intellectual propterty issues he was having...in the area of Scotistic studies and 14th century philosophy, the field is so wide open that I gladly here give the status questionis of an article someone could write]. Such are my rambling thoughts of the day. Now its time for bed so I'll sign off now. enjoy