Clerical and Aristotelian science

The question of the interpretation of Aristotle in the Middle Ages must be dealt with within the context of the medieval conception of science. Medieval learning was characterised by an attitude which was dominant – though in varying degrees and varying circumstances – from the time of Alcuin to that of Bellarmine. For the Middle Ages it was not the individual who taught, but the Church, through the clergy. Clerical science was accordingly the corporate transmission of traditional wisdom. The cleric was a ‘master’ chosen by God to teach his people the way of salvation, as Rhabanus Maurus put it at the beginning of his De institutione clericorum. His authority as a teacher was guaranteed by a divine call within the ecclesiastical hierarchy; the authority of his teaching was guaranteed by Scripture and the Church Fathers. But his authority extended even beyond the sacred sciences, in a way which reveals the relationships between this clerical attitude towards knowledge and the structure of medieval society. The relationship between the clergy and the laity is clearly symbolised in Alcuin's Dialectica, a dialogue in which Alcuin as magister instructs Charlemagne himself as discipulus, in one of the profane sciences of the trivium and quadrivium.

Within this conception of the scientific enterprise a standard method of interpretation was developed based on the presumed concordance of the fundamental authorities, and schools evolved whose function was the training of masters who should transmit traditional learning to God's people.

The first translations

During the Middle Ages the Nicomachean Ethics received less attention than Aristotle's writings on natural philosophy and metaphysics, and still less than his logical writings. Although the Ethics was never condemned in any form, it was apparently not until the second half of the fourteenth century that it was adopted as a regular textbook in the Arts faculties; and it was only in the fifteenth century, as the number of commentaries shows, that it began to be studied really intensively.

We are not so well informed about this period as we are about the beginnings of philosophical ethics in the Middle Ages. According to the latest historical research, the first translation of the Nicomachean Ethics appeared in the twelfth century; but it covered only the second and third books (ethica vetus.) A second translation, of which only the first book (ethica nova) and a few fragments remain, came at the start of the thirteenth century.

The new conception of philosophical ethics

The texts thus made available to Latin readers make two claims for philosophy: (a) happiness and human perfection are a legitimate object of philosophical concern; (b) virtue, or good human character, can be rationally discussed without recourse to theology.

These philosophical claims were not easy to accept. The problem does not lie in the conception of a natural virtue. Such an idea was already present in twelfth-century theology, and so the reception of the Aristotelian concept of virtue was not a revolutionary step.

Sources of the concept of intention

The concept of intention played a key role in the discussions of epistemological, logical, and semantic questions in later medieval philosophy. The significantly different use of ‘intention’ in other fields such as ethics or natural philosophy is not at issue here.

‘Intention’ in the relevant sense is associated with two concepts that occur already in the writings of Al-farabi and Avicenna, where they are associated with the words “m'qul” and “ma'na”, both of which were translated into Latin as ‘intention’. In his commentary on the first chapter of Aristotle's De interpretation Al-farabi understands by “ma'qui” — his translation of the Greek word ‘noēma’- a concept or a thought that has to be examined by the logician in two respects: in its relation to things outside the soul and in its relation to words. “Ma'qul” means nearly the same as “ma'na”, which appears already in Al-farabi's De intellectu et intellecto and was later used by Avicenna to signify the reality of the known considered as known. Thus “ma'qul”, ma'na, or intentio is that which is immediately before the mind, whether the object of the intention is outside the mind (in which case the intention is a first intention) or itself an intention (in which case the intention is a second intention). The distinction between first and second intentions was prefigured in Al-farabi's theory of abstraction.

Introduction to the medieval Latin Aristotle

All of Aristotle's works were translated into Latin in the Middle Ages and nearly all were intensely studied. The exceptions are the Eudemian Ethics, of which no complete translation survives, and the Poetics, which, although translated by William of Moerbeke, remained unknown. Most of the works were translated more than once, and two of them, the Physics and Metaphysics, were translated or revised no fewer than five times. The translations we are concerned with spanned a period of about 150 years; some were made from the Arabic, but the majority directly from the Greek. Some translations became popular and remained so; some became popular but were then superseded by other translations; others barely circulated at all.

An examination of the medieval Latin Aristotle cannot consider only the genuine works of Aristotle, but must also deal with works credited to Aristotle in the Middle Ages although now believed to be spurious. It is also essential to consider translations of Greek and Arabic commentators on Aristotle. (All these translations – of genuine and spurious works and of commentaries – are listed for easy reference in a single table below.)

The basic source for our knowledge of medieval Latin translations of Aristotle is a corpus of over 2,000 manuscripts dating from the ninth to the sixteenth century, most of which are distributed among the major libraries of Europe. They contain the texts of the translations and in some cases constitute the only documentation we have.

The prevalence of issues involving infinity and continuity

Natural philosophy in the fourteenth century is, when compared to that of the preceding century, more extensive, less repetitious, and more varied in the problems it treats, the solutions it sets forth, and the approaches and methods it employs in reaching those solutions. However, if one examines in some depth not merely the expositions and questions dealing with the relevant works of Aristotle but also the numerous non-commentatorial works constituting this literature, one cannot but be impressed by the unusual amount of time and effort spent in dealing with problems involving in one manner or another the infinite and the continuous.

Often these problems concern infinity or continuity from the outset; but equally often the problems are extended or developed by the fourteenth-century scholar to take into account some aspect of the infinite or the continuous in a manner that was not apparent in the problem as initially stated. A discussion of the way in which one should measure a quantity that varies in intensity throughout its subject might, for example, be carried so far as to accommodate ‘infinite values’. Alternatively, a discussion of angelic motion might involve one in a rather full investigation of the composition of all continuous quantities. Indeed, the prevalence of issues involving the infinite or the continuous in later medieval natural philosophy is such that an exhaustive history of these two notions in the later Middle Ages would constitute a very large part of the history of natural philosophy during this period.

Three problems involving future contingents

There is more than one problem of future contingents. There is first the problem raised by Aristotle – that of reconciling the principle of bivalence (the principle that for any sentence P either P is true or not-P is true) with the view that some claims about the future are contingent, are such that neither the claim nor its denial is necessarily true. Medieval discussions of this problem often rely on our intuitions that the past and the present are ‘fixed’ in some way in which the future is not, and so these discussions often illuminate medieval views on tense and modality.

A second problem has to do with the possibility of foreknowledge. Can one hold both that some future event is contingent and that it is foreknown?

A third problem is specifically theological. Can complete knowledge of the future by an immutable, infallible, impassible God be reconciled with the contingency of some aspects of the future?

These are distinct problems. Theories which solve the problem of contingent truth may fail to account for foreknowledge, and theories which account for both future contingent truth and foreknowledge may yet fail to explain how contingent future events, e.g. sins, can be known by a knower who cannot be causally acted upon.

Yet all three problems are variations on a single theme. We are inclined to think that there is an objective difference between the past and the future.

Terms and propositions

Separate treatments of the semantics of terms and the semantics of propositions are justified by the Aristotelian distinction between two levels of speech and thought (Categories 1a16, 2a4; De interpretatione 16a10): the level of names and verbs and the thoughts corresponding to them, which do not yet involve any combination (symplokē, complexio) that makes the notions of truth and falsity applicable, and the level of expressions and thoughts formed by a kind of combination that has to do with truth and falsity. Just as Aristotle had made the applicability of the notions of truth and falsity the criterion for the relevant kind of combination, the medieval semantics of complex units of speech and thought (complexa) concentrated on sentences that are used for making statements and are thus either true or false – the sort of sentences with which logic is primarily concerned. A combination of words that is used to make known something that is either true or false (oratio verum falsumve significans) was called an enuntiatio or propositio. The Latin word ‘propositio’ practically always designates a declarative sentence; accordingly, in this chapter ‘proposition’ is used in this medieval sense and never in the modern sense of that which is expressed by a declarative sentence. Most medievals were aware of a distinction between a complexio in the sense of mere predication, without any assertive (or other) force, and a complexio which is accompanied by an act of judging or asserting that it is so.

The scope of this study

This study makes no pretensions to being a comprehensive survey of medieval commentaries on the Politics; it is confined to a few of the known commentaries on Moerbeke's translation, all dated to the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Within this narrow range, it aims to discuss, firstly, how close the earliest commentaries, those of Albert the Great and of Thomas Aquinas with the Continuation by Peter of Auvergne, came to explaining Aristotle's meaning accurately and, secondly, what motives later commentators had in writing, what arguments they considered valid, and how far, if at all, their own views can be inferred from what they wrote. To make some useful comparison between the texts, I shall, after a few introductory remarks on each commentary, concentrate on what each scholar made of Aristotle's arguments for the proposition that the multitude of freemen in a state should participate in its political life (Politics III, 1281b and 1282a). Because they recognised its importance, all the commentators expanded, illustrated, or interpreted this passage in a way which brings out their individual characters and sometimes their political ideas.

William of Moerbeke's translation

The exact date at which Moerbeke finished his translation of the Politics is still uncertain, but it was probably around 1260. Moerbeke tried to render Aristotle's meaning without the slightest interpretation of his own – an aim which he believed could be best fulfilled by translating word for word, preserving the Greek word order, some Greek double negatives, and even an occasional Greek term – e.g., ‘epikeiea’ – for which there was no exact Latin equivalent.

Two senses of ‘term’

Medieval philosophers and logicians used the word ‘term’ (terminus) in several senses, two of which are especially pertinent to this discussion. Strictly speaking, a term is what is subjected to the predicate or predicated of the subject in an ordinary categorical proposition – the subject term or the predicate term, the two ends (termini) of the proposition. In this sense whole phrases may be terms, but only certain sorts of words – nouns, adjectives, and verbs – can serve by themselves as terms. Less strictly, and in the later Middle Ages more prevalently, a term is any word at all, regardless of propositional context. In this discussion ‘term’ will be used in the less strict sense unless otherwise noted.

Signification as a psychological and causal property of terms

There are two basic properties for the medieval semantics of terms: signification and supposition. Signification is a psychologico-causal property of terms – a fact responsible for many disagreements and tensions in medieval semantics. The main source for the notion of signification was Boethius' translation of De interpretatione 3, 16b 19: ‘[Verbs] spoken in isolation are names and signify something. For he who speaks [them] establishes an understanding and he who hears [them] rests’. Hence ‘to signify’ something was ‘to establish an understanding’ of it. The psychological overtones of ‘to signify’ are similar to those of the modern ‘to mean’. Nevertheless, signification is not meaning. A term signifies that of which it makes a person think, so that, unlike meaning, signification is a species of the causal relation.

Scientia demonstrativa in the Middle Ages

From the thirteenth century down to the Renaissance, philosophers attempted to forge plausible accounts of Aristotelian ‘demonstrative science’ and its basis, the ‘knowledge-producing syllogism’ (syllogismus faciens scire). The term ‘scientia demonstrativa’ is ambiguous, referring both to the knowledge a demonstrative syllogism effects in someone who understands it and to a system of syllogisms comprising propositions which satisfy the requirements for demonstration stipulated in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. In expounding Aristotle's theory, medieval authors typically interpret and criticise it in the light of their own conceptions and doctrines; for example, their treatments of the requirements that premisses of demonstrative syllogisms be true, necessary, and certain invoke various views of truth, necessity, and certainty. So while it is true that almost all the major figures of medieval philosophy in some sense endorse what is traditionally called ‘the Aristotelian ideal of demonstrative science’, this appearance of unanimity can be misleading. The generalisation that this ideal dominated medieval thinking regarding scientific knowledge obscures or ignores the variety in philosophical accounts of its foundation and scope.

Much of our current understanding of medieval epistemology is based on doctrines concerning acquaintance with and knowledge of particular entities or states of affairs, and the subsequent formation of general concepts. Because discussions of more elaborate cognitive activities, those involving relatively complex judgements and inferences, have until recently received less attention, the full significance of theories of demonstrative science in late medieval epistemology remains to be determined.

Potentia Dei absoluta

The Condemnation of 219 articles in theology and natural philosophy by the bishop of Paris in 1277 points to a significant development in the history of medieval philosophy generally, but especially natural philosophy. Whatever may have induced bishop Stephen Tempier and his advisers to promulgate the condemnation, the most significant outcome was an emphasis on the reality and importance of God's absolute power (potentia Dei absoluta)to do whatever He pleases short of bringing about a logical contradiction. Although the doctrine of God's absolute power was hardly new in the thirteenth century, the introduction into the Latin West of Greco-Arabic physics and natural philosophy, with their independent, and often deterministic, philosophical and scientific explanatory principles, conferred on that doctrine a new and more significant status. After 1277, appeals to God's absolute power were frequently introduced into discussions of Aristotelian physics and cosmology.

The range of the Condemnation

The wide range of topics covered by the Condemnation indicates its potential impact on natural philosophy. Among the themes at which several articles were directed are God's knowability, nature, will, and power; the causation and eternality of the world; the nature and function of intelligences; the nature and operation of the heavens and the generation of terrestrial things; the necessity and contingency of events; the principles of material objects; man and the active intellect. Whether implicitly or explicitly, many of the articles asserted God's infinite and absolute creative and causative power against those who those who thought to circumscribe it by the principles of natural philosophy.

Scotus and Ockham as the focal points of the discussion

The fourteenth century is especially rich in controversies about knowledge, but our understanding of them, while improving, is still limited. The relevant texts are not widely available, and as a result the analysis that has been produced is isolated and sketchy. Consequently, while we can frame tempting hypotheses about developments in the period and their influence on subsequent thought, it is still the familiar landmarks that best serve to present the themes of the time and the orientations of recent commentary. Especially notable among those landmarks are the theories of intuitive cognition in Duns Scotus and William Ockham. Nearly all the medieval discussions of intuition that follow them are an attack on or defence of one or the other. Consequently, a presentation of the notion of intuition that focuses around Scotus and Ockham will provide a useful picture of the terrain on which subsequent battles have been fought.

The problem of the cognition of individuals

Around 1250 – the position of William of Auvergne suggests things may not have been so neat in the immediately preceding period – writers of both Aristotelian and Augustinian persuasions could maintain as a matter of course that the province of the human intellect is the immaterial, so that with respect to the physical world our cognitive experience of existent individuals comes through sensation while the intellect contributes only the universal. Orthodox belief, of course, required that God's knowledge extend, as his providence does, to individuals.

Lordship and ownership

Before the arrival in the west of Aristotle's Politics, the origin of organised society was usually discussed in terms of the institution of lordship and ownership (dominium). Dominium was seen to arise from an act of force, an act of God, human agreement or an amalgam of these, just as in fact the assumption of power often proved to be a combination of events such as usurpation, the test of utility and merit, ‘divine right’, hereditary claims and election or confirmation by the community or its clerical part.

The view that lordship arose from the forceful assumption of power and the subjection of other men had been handed down by Patristic writers. It was illustrated by the story of the Fall and of the appearance with Cain and Nimrod of sinful ambition and dominion, and it reflected too the Stoic assumption (cf. Seneca, Epistola, XIV.2 (90)) that men had enjoyed equality, freedom, and self-sufficiency in an original state of innocence which had been lost through the appearance of human wickedness. The history of the ancient Roman empire attracted much interest since it had obviously gained authority from conquest. Government, then, was the consequence of sin and it arose from the lust for power and domination. But in so far as coercive authority restrained further abuse of free will, it was a necessary and legitimate remedy of sin. After the loss of innocence many men were no longer fit to enjoy freedom and equality or to practice common ownership.