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Enjoyment at Oxford after Ockham: Philosophy, Psychology, and the Love of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Arthur Stephen McGrade*
Affiliation:
The University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut
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Extract

I want to discuss today some questions about enjoyment pursued at Oxford in roughly the second quarter of the fourteenth century by Ockham and four other philosophically acute theologians: Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham, Robert Holkot, and Thomas Bradwardine. Each of these authors has claims to importance in the history of scholasticism. The numerous footnote references to Chatton in the beautiful new Ockham edition testify to his critical role in the development of his fellow Franciscan’s ideas. Marilyn Adams gives Chatton credit for forcing the Invincible Doctor to change his position on so pivotal a matter as the object of universal concepts. Chatton’s own writings continue this dialogue. Wodeham, also a Franciscan, was a student of Ockham’s and is currently regaining the reputation he once had as a major thinker in his own right.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987 

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References

1 Adams, Marilyn McCord, ‘Ockham’s nominalism and unreal entities’, The Philosophical Review 86 (1977) 144–76; p. 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In 1512 John Major placed Wodeham among the two or three leading English men of letters since Bede ( Courtenay, William J., Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden 1978 p. 1)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is heartening that the Franciscan Institute has undertaken an edition of his works. For Wodeham as a philosophical psychologist, see Wood, Rega, ‘Adam Wodeham on sensory illusions with an edition of ‘Lectura Secunda,’ prologus, quaestio 3’, Traditio 38 (1982) 213–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Courtenay’s study is an admirable introduction not only to Wodeham but to the entire period of the present essay. The sources for this essay are: [Ockham] Guillelmi de Ockham Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum Ordinatio: Prologus et Distinctio Prima, ed. Gedeon Gal, O.F.M. with the assistance of Stephen Brown, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure, New York 1967), vol. 1 of Ockham’s Opera Theologica in the Franciscan Institute edition of his Opera Phiìosophica et Theologica; the editors arrive at 1317-19 as the probable date of composition. [Chatton] Walter Chatton, Lectura (on the Sentences of Peter Lombard), bk. 1, dist. 1, Paris BN MS 15886 fols. 58ra-79va. [Wodeham] Adam Wodeham, Lectura secunda, bk. 1, dist. 1, q. 4, Cambridge Gonville and Caius MS 281/674 fols. 137va-145vb. [Holkot] Robert Holkot... In quatuor libros Sententiarum questiones argutissime… Determinations item quarundam aliarum questionum (Lyons 1581; reprinted Frankfurt 1967). De causa Dei] Thomae Bradwardinae Archiepiscopi olim Cantuariensis De Causa Dei contra Pelagium et de Virtute Causarum Ad suos Mertonenses Libri Tres (London 1618). I am deeply grateful to Fr. Gedeon Gál and his colleagues at the Franciscan Institute for making available to me their transcriptions of Chatton and Wodeham. Although there is an order of seniority from Ockham through Chatton, Wodeham, Holkot, and Bradwardine, influence, positive and negative, was often reciprocal. Courtenay proposes as dates of composition 1323-30 for Chatton’s Lectura; after 1334 for Wodeham’s Lectura secunda; 1329-31 for Holkot’s Sentences commentary; and 1332-40 for the De causa Dei, which was published in final form in 1344. Katherine Tachau has demonstrated the variety of positions on perception and knowledge taken by thinkers of this period who are often bundled together as Ockhamists or nominalists in ‘The problem of the species in medio at Oxford in the generation after Ockham’, Medieval Studies 44 (1982) 394-443 and ‘The response to Ockham’s and Aureol’s epistemology (1320-1340)’ in Alfonso Maierú, ed., English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, Acts of the $th European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, Rome, 10-14 November 1980 (Naples 1982) pp. 185-217.

3 Gilson, Etienne, The Unity of Philosphical Experience (New York 1937) pp. 8690.Google Scholar

4 See n. 24 below.

5 Ockham, disc 1, q. 1, pp. 376-9. I have discussed Ockham’s treatment of distinction 1 in ‘Ockham on enjoyment: towards an understanding of fourteenth-century philosophy and psychology’, Review of Metaphysics, 34 (1981) pp. 706-28.

6 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 1, pp. 383-4.

7 Chatton, q. 1, art. 3, fol. 61ra/vb. Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 4, F, Secunda conclusio.

8 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 3, pp. 407-22.

9 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 2, pp. 397-402.

10 Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fols. 67ravb. Wodeham, art. 3, fols. 142va-145vb.

11 Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 3, art. 6.

12 Holkot seems at least tolerant of this view at Sent., bk. 1, q. 3, art. 8, Ad secundum principale huius dubii. See also Determ. 9, L, N, Z and the passages referred to in nn. 28-30 below.

13 Wodeham, art. 3, fol. 142va. ‘Fruido est active a voluntate, delectatio non, sed ab obiecto sicut et trisritia. Non enim voluntas ex quo libera est contristarei se ipsam si posset.’

14 Ibid., fol. 142va: ‘Frui … est operano; delectatio non est operano sed passio superveniens operationi.’ Also fol. 143rb.

15 Ibid., fol. 142va. ‘Sola ilia est fruido beatifica per quam formaliter excludirur miseria… Sed tristitia ultima possibilis est summa miseria, igitur istam excludit fruido beatifica. Sed nihil formaliter repugnat trisritiae in subiecto nato recipere trisririam nisi delectado. Igitur fruido ista est realiter delectado.’

16 Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fol. 67ra. ‘Si non esset aliud argumentum possibile nisi solum quod nolo concedere … quod aliquis esset ita beatus essendali beatitudine sicut Mater Dei, et tamen esset de potenria Dei sine omni delectarione, tenerem oppositum.’

17 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 3, p. 428.

18 Ibid., pp. 423-4. Wodeham, art. 3, fols. 142va-143ra.

19 That pleasures are not passions caused by pleasant objects, was maintained by Ockham, dist. 1, q. 2, p. 395; q. 3, pp. 421-2.

20 Wodeham, art. 3, fol. 143vb. ‘Cum dicis quod rane voluntas libere contristarei se: bene volo … ad hunc sensum quod libere causât illam formam quae est tristitia. Sed ex hoc non sequitur quod libere velit contristali, quia ille est actus reflexus, licet quandoque homo hoc velie libere, quia quidam vellent esse tristes quando pro peccatis vel huiusmodi. Sicut enim voluntas potest Ubere causare dilectionem absque hoc quod velit dilectionem, sed obiectum tantum, ita potest libere causare tristitiam licet non velit tristitiam, sed nolit et odiat obiectum sibi disconveniens.’

21 Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fol. 68va. ‘Postquam intellectus cogitaverit de aliquo… edam… movetur ipsa imaginario organica, quod tunc ad praesentiam imaginarionis conformas intellecrioni transmutetur organum apperitus sensitivi, [et] isto modo poneretur quod omnia de quibus potest intellectus cogitare possunt cadere sub sensibus interioribus, [et] secundum istud posset dici quod illa tristitia quam experimur respectu cuiuscumque cogitabilis ab intellectu, est tristitia sensitiva quae non est immediate in potestate nostra, eo quod immediate causatur ad transmutationem organi.’

22 Ibid. ‘Licet sit in nostra potestate cogitare vel non cogitare de tali re, tamen si cogitet homo, non est in sua potestate quin organum apperitus sensitivi sic dispositi transmutetur transmutarione ad quam sequitur in anima talis vel talis passio.’

23 Wodeham, art. 3, fol. 143ra: ‘Id quod est eligibilius videtur esse melius. Sed credo quod quantum esset pro bono suo et commodo suo si dilectio beatifica… et ¡sta summa delectado sive laetitia et suavitas beatifica distinguerentur realiter et daretur optio alterius praecise sine alterio quod quilibet praeeligeret illam absorptivam laetitiam et suavitatem. Igitur si distinguatur est melius fruitio beatifica. Sed hoc falsum [est] … igitur non distinguitur.’ Compare Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fol. 67ra.

24 Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 4, N: ‘Illud est ab homine summe diligendum: quod scitur ab eo esse summe bonum ipsi nomini: sed si ista sciatur ab homine/deus est: sicut quod illud est quod est summe bonum nomini: ergo scitur quod illud est quod est ab homine summe diligendum.’ Holkot argues that God’s existence cannot be demonstrated just before N; also at O, Contra primam conclusionem secundae difficultatis, and at R.

25 Ockham, prol., q. 11, p. 306; dist. 1, q. 4, p. 441. The Ottawa editors of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (n. to 1a2ae, q. 26, a. 4) refer the distinction, which Thomas develops on an Aristotelian basis, to Praepositinus of Cremona, Summa, Tours MS 142, fol. 102vb and Guilelmus Altissiodorensis, Summa Aurea in quattuor Libros Sententiarum (Paris 1500)fol. 139rb.

26 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 1, pp. 372-3, 393.

27 Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 3, A. ‘Ad quaestionem dico quod sic: sicut habet quilibet dicere.’

28 Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 3, art. 3, Contra opinionem.

29 Holkot, Sent., bk. 1, q. 3, art. 3, Probatur conctusio huius articuii, Secundo. ‘Quanto bonum ostensum alicui magis apparet: tanto difficilius voluntas respuit illud. ergo cum potentia qua homo respuit… sit finita: et bonum potest apparere melius et melius in infinitum: sequitur quod continget excedere omnem potentiam respuitivam voluntatis: et sic necessitabitur voluntas.’

30 Holkot, Determinatio 3, P.

31 Ockham, dist. 1, q. 3, pp. 425-6.

32 Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fol. 69ra/b. Chatton makes some attempt to show that if enjoyment and pleasure were distinct, pleasure would be die nobler of the two.

33 Presented and discussed in Ockham, disc, 1, q. 4, a. 3, pp. 439-45.

34 Chatton, q. 2, art. 2, fol. 69rb. Wodeham art. 3, fol. 144ra, 144rb. Holkot, too, contends against the idea that enjoyment is essentially a reflex act (Determinatio 7, J-M). He doubts that the reflex act is in fact a separate act from the direct act. Given that it is, he argues that even though a capacity for awareness of their own acts is a distinctive property of immaterial powers such as the human mind, it does not follow that the act by which such a power knows its own act will be more perfect than any of its other acts. But even given that the quieting of the intellect is not completely caused until such a reflex act is caused, it does not follow that the quieting is caused by that act—rather, the quieting is more efficaciously caused by the object and by the direct act. Again, whether or not greater pleasure follows the reflex act, the quantity of that pleasure is not from the reflex act but from the object and the direct act.

35 Wodeham, art. 3, fol. 144va.

36 De causa Dei, bk. 1, cap. 40, p. 369. ‘Operario propria chantaos et grariae est diligere Deum chare et gratuite super omnia finaliter propter ipsum… sed quamdiu his [charitate et gratia] caret, necessario diligit maxime proprium commodum et seipsum.’

37 Ibid., cip. 39, p. 325.

38 Ibid. p. 350C/D.

39 Ibid., bk. 2, cap. 34, p. 627C.

40 Ibid., p. 627A. ‘Amor namque ad bonum extenditur, et quanto merit maius bonum, tanto magis amandum. Tu autem Domine Deus meus es omnis boni bonum, super omnia bona bonus, bonum infinitissime infinitum … quantum ergo rationabiliter debeo te amare? Nunquid proportionabiliter infinite?

41 Ibid., bk. 1, cap. 1, pp. 23-4. ‘Contra indoctos arris amandi, nescientes Deum esse propter seipsum amandum, et caetera propter Deum, omnesque actus humanos ad ipsum propter se finaliter ordinandos’

42 ibid., p1C.

43 Ibid., bk. I, caps. 40-1.

44 Ockham, disc. 1, q. 2, pp. 397-8.

45 De causa Dei, bk. 1, cap. 25, p. 247A; bk. 2, cap, 4, p. 476E.

46 Ibid., bk. 2, cap. 3, p. 449. Even in relation to God, Bradwardine preserves freedom at a point where some of his contemporaries had contended it was out of place, in beatitude. At bk. 2, cap. 15, p. 519D/E he refers to the view of some that the great vehemence of beatitude and the pleasure annexed to it inebriate the blessed, so that their free will is bound, and they cannot resist. No sober person would accept this view, according to Bradwardine, for the philosophers and theologians say that beatitude is the ultimate human perfection, which implies that human powers should there be in perfect act. Bradwardine’s concern to defend human freedom as well as God’s absolute sovereignty is recognised by Oberman, H. A., Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine A Fourteenth Century Augustinian (Utrecht 1957) pp. 6570, 224–6Google Scholar. Human freedom from necessitation by natural and irrational forces is characterised as a major theme in the De causa Dei by Leff, Gordon, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge 1957) pp. 87, 93.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., bk. 2, cap. 3, p. 452D. ‘Obiectum namque delectabile sive triste est alicuius virruris in movendo voluntatem humanam ad volendum vel nolendum, et ipsa voluntas est virtutis tantum finitae in resistendo sicut in essendo, vel ergo minoris; aequalis, vel maioris; si minoris, necessario, superarur.’

48 Ibid., p. 453A. ‘Item obiectum delectabile et triste irresistibiliter superar voluntates parvulorum, morionum, furiosorum, et perfecte forsitan ebriorum; sed voluntas adultorum bene disposita non est infinite potenrior… voluntatibus praedictorum.’

49 Ibid. ‘Item bestiae necessitantur ab obiectis, et homo non est infinite fortior bestia.’

50 Ibid., p. 464E.

51 Ibid., p. 464B.

52 Ibid., pp. 464E-465A.

53 Ibid., p. 465B.

54 Ibid., p. 454B-E: ‘Pro primo … soluendo; secundum Philosophos Naturales et Medicos, est sciendum quod delectado cuiuscunque virtutis seu potenriae perceptiuae causatur ex conuenientia, et certa proportione, seu habitudine naturali obiecti delectabilis creati cum potentia delectante: cuiusunque autem rei delectabilis creatae ad quamcunque potentiam natam delectan in ilia, est aliqua maxima conuenientia, et aliqua proportio seu habitudo conuenientissima naturalis, puta A delectabilis ad B potentiam liberam, C conuenientissima habitudo: A vero delectabili sub C gradu, potest B resistere, et esse maioris virtutis in resistendo, quam illud in mouendo, sicut praecedentia manifestant. Quare A quantumlibet augmentara potest B resistere facilius quam prius: Licet enim A sit delectabilius absolute, et fortius tunc quam prius et magis motiuum, non tamen respectu B, sed tunc minus delectabiliter vel forsitan indelectabiliter seu tristabiliter earn mouet propter dissolurionem illius proportionis conuenientissimae pracedentis… Quare et euidenter apparet, quod tales argutiae sunt fallaces; hoc delectabile tantum mouet hunc hominem; ergo duplum in duplo plus, seu fortius, et quadruplum in quadruplo, et sic deinceps, propter causam praedictam… Ex quibus patet similiter quod in hac proportione conuenientissima est difficultas maxima resistendi, quare et si per augmentum delectabilis soluatur proportio, minuitur difficultas. De tristabili autem sicut de delectabili idem sentiendum. Patet ergo quod nullum delectabile tristabileue creatum potest necessitare hominem ad volendum vel ad nolendum, praesertim quam diu liberum arbitrium manet sanum.’

55 For physical qualities, Clagett, Marshall, Nicole Orarne and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions (Madison, Wisconsin 1968)Google Scholar. For psychological qualities, such discussions of the augmentation of grace as Ockham, , Quaestiones in Librum Tertium Sententiarum, ed. Kelley, F. E. and Etzkorn, G. I., Opera Theologica 6 (St. Bonaventure, New York 1982)Google Scholar, q. 8, Utrum anima Christi habuit summam gratiam possibilem haberi.

56 Emden(O) 3 p. 1807.

57 Ockham, disc. 1, q. 4, pp. 430, 447.

58 Chatton, q. 2, art. 3, fol. 70ra/va.

59 On the religious and scientific import of the fourteenth-century criticism of metaphysics, see Murdoch, John E., ‘The analytic character of late medieval learning: natural philosophy without nature’ in Roberts, Lawrence D., Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages (Binghampton, New York 1982) pp. 171213.Google Scholar