Introduction

Bonaventure was born John of Fidanza in Bagnoregio in Tuscany around 1217. He took the name Bonaventure on entering the Franciscan order in 1243, after completing studies at Paris for the Master of Arts degree. He studied theology with the major Franciscan masters at Paris 1243–48, lectured there on the Sentences of Peter Lombard from 1250 to 1252, and taught as the Franciscan regent master at Paris until he was elected Minister General of the order in 1257, a position he held until his death in 1274. He was made Cardinal Bishop of Albano in 1273 and participated in the Second Council of Lyons the following year. Bonaventure's disposition prompted some to declare that in him it seemed as if Adam had not sinned. He nevertheless earned the enmity of many of his confreres, who contended that it was imperative for Franciscans to follow a rigorously poor style of life and one innocent of academic culture. Bonaventure defended the importance of university studies against these members of his order and justified a rule of life sufficiently relaxed to allow pursuit of such studies. He was considered a reactionary by some of his university colleagues, however, because of his antagonism to the growing dominance of the teachings of Aristotle. His most celebrated work is a compact synthesis of intellect and devotion, The Journey of the Mind to God. A similar fusion is evident in his discourses On the Ten Commandments, On the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and On the Six Days of Creation.

Introduction

Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, Egidius Colonna) was born in Rome around 1243–47. He joined the Hermits of St. Augustine at the age of fourteen. Sent to Paris in 1260, he completed his liberal arts studies in 1266 and entered the faculty of theology. He was studying there when Thomas Aquinas returned for his second period as regent master (1269–72). As a young theologian, Giles was soon caught up in disputes within the university over the teaching of Aristotle in the Faculty of Arts. In 1277 Stephen Tempier, the bishop of Paris, condemned as erroneous 219 propositions in theology and natural philosophy, fifty-one of which were drawn from Giles's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Withdrawing to Bayeux and thence to Italy, Giles nevertheless continued to work on a series of commentaries on Aristotle's philosophical texts. These included the Physics, Metaphysics, De anima, and On Rhetoric. In 1285 Giles was rehabilitated, returning to Paris as the Augustinians' first regent master in theology, and in 1287 his writings were made the official teaching of the Augustinian order. Giles was elected General of the order in 1292 and was made Archbishop of Bourges in 1295. Besides On the Rule of Princes, Giles's other major political work was a sweeping defense of papal plenitude of power, On Ecclesiastical Power (trans. R. W. Dyson, Woodbridge, 1986), which he composed in 1302 for Pope Boniface VIII. Giles died in 1316.

Introduction

For information on Godfrey's life and writings, see the introduction to Translation 6. For the place of the present selection in late thirteenth-century discussions of the rationality of self-sacrifice, see the introduction to Translation 7.

Reply to James of Viterbo on Love of God and Self

[1. An Argument that Theology Is a Practical Science in a Different Sense from Moral Philosophy]

{180} It might be argued further that it must at least be held that theology is practical in a different way from moral science, because love of the end, or of God, which ought to be a principle with respect to all possible actions pertaining to practical science, has a different character when it is considered by the theologian and by the moral philosopher. This is because the love with which human beings love God as considered by the moral philosopher (namely, as a love of the sort that arises from natural principles) is such that, with it, human beings love themselves more than God, in accordance with Ethics IX (4, 1166a1–2, b1–2; IX.8 1168b4–5): Friendliness toward another [derives] from friendliness toward oneself. The love with which God is loved as considered by the theologian, however (namely, as a love caused by a supernatural principle, i.e., by charity), is such that, with it, human beings love God more than themselves.

Introduction

After teaching at the Dominican school in Naples from around 1300, John of Naples was sent to Paris in 1310 for further theological study. He was a strict adherent of Thomas Aquinas and was commissioned in 1313 (together with Pierre de la Palu) to examine the teachings of their fellow Dominican, Durand of St. Pourcain. In 1315 John became a regent master at Paris, where he taught until returning to Naples in 1317 as Dominican lector. His work survives in the form of forty-two Disputed Questions, thirteen Quodlibets, and a series of sermons. He died around 1350.

John's discussion of just war provides further illustration of the close connection between teaching within the Faculty of Theology at Paris and issues of pressing political and ecclesiological concern in western Europe. In discussing whether evil can be used for a good end, in exploring the parallel drawn by Augustine between military and legal contexts, and in expounding Aquinas's reflections on the justification of war and the legitimacy of non-Christian lordship, John makes detailed use of Scripture and of the law – canon, Roman, and customary. His conclusion is nothing if not bold: It is indeed permissible for a Christian ruler to use non-Christian mercenaries to defend a Christian commonwealth. Basing his argument on the distinction between what is true without qualification (simpliciter, per se) and what is true in certain circumstances (secundum quid), John is careful to add important practical reservations.

Introduction

Henry of Ghent was born around 1217. He taught at Paris as a secular master in the Faculty of Theology from 1276 until his death in 1293. As a member of Stephen Tempier's commission of inquiry, he helped determine the 219 articles in theology and natural philosophy which were censured by the bishop in 1277. Henry's own particular fusion of Augustinian metaphysics and Aristotelian epistemology has left modern commentators both intrigued and perturbed by the tensions which such a combination produced. The core of Henry's teaching has been preserved in two major works, the Summa quaestionum ordinarium and a collection of fifteen Quaestiones quodlibetales. The quodlibet is the genre of academic inquiry which offers perhaps the most direct insight both into issues of contemporary intellectual concern and into a regent master's own opinions. Originally a penitential exercise at Easter and Christmas each year, it required a master to respond to a question on ‘any’ subject (de quolibet) and was often used to put him on the spot. Quodlibets can thus provide an index of those contentious issues which were dividing theologians at any given moment. In Henry's case, for example, this form of disputation provided the forum for his exchanges with Giles of Rome and Godfrey of Fontaines over the nature of the distinction between essence and existence. Henry's quodlibets also provide a commentary on issues of directly political and ethical import, such as the debate over the privileges of the mendicant orders, opposition to royal taxation, the connection between the moral and theological virtues, and the relationship between the individual good and the common good.

Introduction

(For information on Ockham's life and writings, see the introduction to Translation 13.)

Ockham's Dialogue between Master and Student, from which this selection is taken, grew out of disagreements between Pope John XXII and a small group of dissident Franciscans led by Michael of Cesena, of which Ockham was a member. In his constitution Cum inter nonnullos the pope had condemned as heresy a doctrine these friars believed had been endorsed by previous popes and accepted by the whole church. This, in their view, made John himself a heretic, and the majority of Franciscans who had accepted John's constitution were thus in their view either heretics or supporters of heresy. Part I of the Dialogue is accordingly a discussion of heresy, heretics, and supporters of heresy. The Master makes no assertions of his own but reports and discusses ‘the views of the learned.’

A heresy, in the definition apparently endorsed by the Master, is an assertion that contradicts catholic truth, which is found in the Bible and the teaching of the whole church. A heretic is not simply someone who believes a heresy but a baptized Christian (or one who presents himself as such) who believes some heresy pertinaciously. Pertinacity is unwillingness to accept the rule of faith, namely, the Bible and the teaching of the church. Book 4 discusses how it is proved that someone holds a heresy pertinaciously.

The idea of a series of volumes to be known as The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts originated in the Cambridge University Press almost as soon as work on The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy had begun. The first volume in the series, Logic and the Philosophy of Language, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, appeared in 1988. Work on the present volume began in 1991 with the selection of texts to be translated and the gathering of a team to do the translating. We are now happy to present a body of texts in moral philosophy which we have come to appreciate increasingly while working with them. A. S. McGrade, who is primarily responsible for Translations 1–2 and 13–14 and for editing the volume as a whole, was able to devote full time to the project in early 1991, thanks to a sabbatical leave from teaching granted by the University of Connecticut and a Visiting Fellowship from Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in 1994–95, thanks to a grant from the Translations Program of The National Endowment for the Humanities and the further hospitality of Clare Hall. Supplementary grants from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation and the encouragement of its director, Thomas G. Giolas, have been a great help to him. He is also grateful to the staffs of libraries at the University of Cambridge; the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Harvard University; Yale University; the University of Connecticut; and St. John's College and Merton College, Oxford.

Introduction

(For information on Godfrey of Fontaines' life and writings, see the introduction to Translation 6.)

Godfrey's discussion of obedience and resistance in 1295–96 deepens the analysis of two of the topics which had been broached by Henry of Ghent five years earlier (Translation 9). Henry's suspicion of rulers who simply appealed to ‘common benefit’ or ‘common utility’ as a justification for taxation was rooted in the connections which canonists and Roman law jurists had already established between taxation, utility, and consent. Just how utility should be judged and just what constituted consent, however, were open to very different constructions. Henry's own conception of tacit consent (that an individual's agreement can be assumed from his remaining physically present in a community) indicates that consent could be construed very widely indeed. When Godfrey of Fontaines came to discuss obedience and resistance, therefore, he made the assessment of utility and the exact nature of consent central to his argument.

Like Henry, Godfrey proceeds to outline the grounds on which disobedience can be morally legitimate. In the aftermath of Philip IV's levies for war in Aquitaine and Flanders this was hardly surprising, as Henry's earlier warning lest rulers abuse the appeal to evident utility appeared to have been all too prophetic. For Godfrey, customary appeals to ‘defense of the realm’ provided no guarantee that a particular tax was actually justified. Godfrey therefore insisted that proof of the utility of such a demand should be provided by the consent of the community.

The aim of this volume is the same as that of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (CHLMP), to which it is a companion: to help make the activity of contemporary philosophy intellectually continuous with medieval philosophy. Direct acquaintance with medieval philosophical texts, or acquaintance as close to direct as translation from one language to another can provide, is crucial for this end. Philosophy is peculiarly resistant to summary. Even the best scholarly discourse about an Albert the Great or William of Ockham cannot provide the historical insight and incitement to further reflection that comes from reading the philosopher's own work. Our hope, then, is that this volume may both stimulate current philosophical discussion of normative issues and significantly broaden the understanding of earlier discussions.

Modern scholarship has recovered much that is philosophically illuminating from the Middle Ages. In particular, by focusing on late medieval problems and approaches that are intelligible from within the mind-set of Anglophone analytic philosophy, CHLMP has elicited increased engagement with medieval thought even from those who are not especially sympathetic to the period's dominant religious and metaphysical presuppositions. Yet at the same time as medieval thought has become more congenial to contemporary philosophers, doubts have been raised in various quarters about the intellectual and moral values of modernity and Enlightenment on the basis of which contemporary philosophy itself has developed.

Introduction

James of Viterbo was born around 1255. Having joined the Augustinian Order about 1270, he went to Paris to study theology ca. 1278–83. He became a regent master around 1293, succeeding Giles of Rome to the Augustinian chair and teaching there until 1297, when he left Paris to direct the Augustinian school at Naples. James was made Bishop of Benevento in September 1302 and Archbishop of Naples three months later. He died in 1308. He is better known, perhaps, for his pro-papal treatise De regimine Christiano (trans. R. W. Dyson, Woodbridge, 1995), written after, or just before, he became Bishop of Benevento. His teaching at Paris survives in the form of four quodlibets. The approach taken in these disputations is notable for its reserve and prudence. It is thus characteristic of James to clarify various alternative views before setting down his own answer to a question. In the debate over the relationship between essence and existence, for example, he referees between the positions already established by Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines (CHLMP, pp. 404–5). When he confronts the problem of self-love in Book IX of the Ethics, it therefore comes as no surprise to find him clarifying a range of different expositions before tentatively (‘as I think’) putting forward his own. At the same time, and as is also the case in De regimine Christiano, such studied moderation should not necessarily be taken at face value.

Introduction

Albert the Great (referred to as such from the fourteenth century) was born near Ulm about the year 1200. His first university studies were at Padua, where he joined the Dominican Order around 1220/3. He returned to Germany to study theology and in 1245 became the first German master at the University of Paris. Thomas Aquinas, one of Albert's pupils at Paris, followed him to Cologne, where Albert founded a Dominican house of studies and taught from 1248 to 1252. The following selection, which dates from this period, is taken from the first of Albert's two commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics. There is a tradition that Aquinas was assigned to write down these lectures. Albert was the Dominican Provincial in Germany from 1254 to 1257 and at papal insistence was elected bishop of Regensburg in 1260, but he was allowed to return to teaching at Cologne in 1262. In 1277 he went to Paris in a vain attempt to prevent the condemnation by Bishop Stephen Tempier of 219 propositions in philosophy and theology, many of which were commonly associated with his and Aquinas's teachings. He died at Cologne in 1280.

Albert was the first interpreter in the Latin west of Aristotle's work in its entirety. He distinguished sharply between philosophy and theology, insisting that philosophical problems be solved philosophically and denouncing the enemies of philosophy as ‘brute beasts’ who ‘blaspheme against what they do not know.’

Introduction

(For information on James of Viterbo's life and writings, see the introduction to Translation 7.)

Giles of Rome, Peter of Auvergne, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines all used Book III of the Politics to highlight the importance of Aristotle's discussion of the relative merits of rule by a good man and rule by good laws. For Giles and Peter, the goal seems to have been to accommodate the Philosopher's views on the collective wisdom of the multitude, on the merits of election and consent, and on the nature of law as pure reason unaffected by passion, but without allowing these views to impugn the status of kingship as the best form of government. In the case of Giles of Rome, writing a treatise for the future king of France, the motivation is clear enough; in the case of Peter of Auvergne, it is more problematic, especially given his own contribution to the debate over taxation in 1298. For Henry of Ghent, however, and for Godfrey of Fontaines, the agenda was more radical. Spurred on by their discontent with the papal bull Ad fructus uberes as well as by repeated papal and royal demands for taxation, Henry and, above all, Godfrey used Book III of the Politics to emphasize the critical importance of the consent and counsel of wise and prudent members of the community. This was the means of securing the common good of the political community in a world where rulers could not always be given the benefit of the doubt.

What follows is as much reconstruction provoked by Ockham as a study of Ockham. My main aim is to provide a framework to accommodate various things Ockham said but did not put together as neatly as we might wish.

What provokes this project is the apparent tension between obedience to divine will, which figures so prominently in Ockham's academic writings, and the nonsacral reasonableness so prominent in his political works. Granted, both divine command ethics and a demonstrative science of morals are found in the academic writings, and extensive references to God's will as well as astute Aristotelian political analysis are found in the political works. Ockham did not abandon God's will in favor of philosophical reason when he abandoned John XXII for the protection of Ludwig of Bavaria. Yet there is, I believe, something to the impression that Ockham, especially the earlier Ockham, held God's will to be a uniquely supreme, comprehensive, unrestricted moral principle, and also something to the impression that the later, political Ockham was distinctive in arguing for a secular political order operating according to a rationally ascertainable natural law but lacking any inherent religious orientation. At any rate, such impressions set the problem I want to grapple with in this chapter.

William of Ockham presents his ethical theory not systematically but in remarks and discussions scattered throughout his writings, a fact that has obscured the structure of his views. He worked within a tradition of moral philosophy that took the basic normative principles to be given in the Bible and the conceptual tools of moral theory to be given by Aristotle; with these materials he put forward an original, powerful, and subtle theory. Ockham holds the rightness or wrongness of an act to depend not on any feature or characteristic of the act itself or its consequences but on the agent's intentions and character (elaborated in Ockham's theory of the will and of the virtues respectively). The goodness or badness of the agent's will, in turn, depends on its conformity to the dictates of right reason in the first stage and to God's will in the final stage.

THE NATURE OF MORALITY

Morality deals with human acts that are in our control – more exactly, with acts that are subject to the power of the will according to the natural dictate of reason and other circumstances. The requirement that morality be a matter of reason and will rules out brute animals as moral agents2 while allowing angels and humans to qualify. But before one attempts to spell out the respective contributions of reason and will to moral action, a fundamental question needs to be addressed, Is morality a rational enterprise in the first place? Are there moral truths, and if so, can we know them?

In the year 1328 Ockham and certain leading members of the Franciscan order became convinced that the pope of the day, Pope John XXII, was a heretic and therefore no pope. From then until his death in 1347 Ockham wrote nothing more (or almost nothing) on logic, natural philosophy, or speculative philosophy but produced a large body of books and pamphlets, commonly called his “political” writings, advocating the deposition of John XXII and his successors, Benedict XII and Clement VI. The quarrel with these popes began when John XXII issued several documents attacking doctrines and practices of the Franciscan order on the subject of poverty, doctrines the Franciscans believed to be based on the Bible and the accepted teaching of the Church. To understand Ockham's political writings, therefore, we must first consider Franciscan ideas about poverty.

Ockham's treatment of the ten Aristotelian categories plays a crucial role in his innovative nominalist program. One of his main complaints against “the moderns,” as he is wont to call his opponents, is that they treat the categories as comprising ten mutually exclusive classes of distinct entities. Indeed, the unknown author of a work written against Ockham’s logic (characteristically entitled “A very useful and realist logic of Campsall the Englishman against Ockham”), writes:

Medieval logic begins for most purposes with the work of Boethius, who attempted a Latin rendering of the standard late-antique Greek logic course. As the Boethian treatises began to be more widely studied in the ninth and tenth centuries, an indigenous Latin tradition in logic developed that reached its zenith during the twelfth century in the work of figures like Peter Abelard. It was within this indigenous tradition that the major developments in the medieval theory of inference took place and that the foundations of later pictures of meaning were laid. As the work of the Byzantine grammarian Priscian became known in Western Europe, the grammatical and semantic theory embodied in it fused with the indigenous tradition. The resulting picture was then transformed by a flood of new translations of texts of Aristotle, of Greek commentaries, and of Islamic commentaries and treatises. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the digestion of this material and its integration into the already existing tradition. Some consequences of this were new theories of the semantic properties of terms (including theories of the analysis of sentences), the development of propositional logic more or less as we know it today, the working out of the theory of the categorical syllogism (including its modal extensions), the flowering of modal logic generally, and the development of a general theory of inference. By the mid-fourteenth century these developments were more or less complete. William Ockham is one of the greatest of the figures who completed them. He is in some ways an idiosyncratic logician, but his importance can hardly be overestimated.