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The Best Possible World Chapter 3 The Best Possible World 1 Introduction In the late 1130s, Peter Abelard completed a treatise, now known as Theologia “scholarium,” in which he raised a question that would occupy scholars for centuries to come: I think it should be inquired whether God can do more things or better things than he does; or whether he could in any way desist from doing what he does, so that he could at any time not do it.1 Abelard saw in this question a difficulty inherent in the Christian conception of God: if God can do whatever he wishes, he must be able to improve the world and make it better than it is now. But that which can be made better is necessarily an imperfect thing, and by consequence, God’s first creation would be something lesser than the best possible—a consequence that undermines his supreme goodness. What becomes apparent here is an exclusive relation- ship between God’s two fundamental attributes: his omnipotence and his goodness. Abelard arrived at the conclusion that the present world is the best pos- sible and therefore could not have been made any better. But his argument did not seem convincing to others, who soon criticized his thesis. Peter Lombard (1095/1100–60), whose discussion will be examined in due course, presented a contrary view in his Sentences. For present purposes, it is necessary to note the importance of his decision to take up this issue in a text that would enter the canon of theological literature at the medieval universities. The incorporation of the Sentences into the curriculum prompted countless schol- ars of theology to produce commentaries and explore the questions raised within the work by using Aristotelian analytical tools. In this way, the topics discussed by Lombard became focal problems with which the leading Western 1 Abelard, Theologia “scholarium,” 511 (bk. 3): “Querendum arbitror utrum plura facere possit deus uel meliora quam faciat, aut ab his etiam que facit ullo modo cessare posset, ne ea umquam uidelicet faceret.” On this question in Abelard, see Sikes, Peter Abailard, 122–29; Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 134 –35; Colish, Peter Lombard, 290–92. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/97890043�0�00_005 54 Chapter 3 minds engaged, and as a result, Abelard’s question continued to be subject to detailed examination well into the sixteenth century.2 Aware of this longstanding tradition, Scaliger, too, approached Abelard’s question in ex. 249 and 250 of his Exercitationes, but since he was not a theolo- gian, he did not present his ideas as a commentary on the Sentences. Instead, he framed his discussion as an objection to Cardano’s thesis of De subtilitate. Characteristically, Scaliger did not just compose a refutation of his opponent’s arguments, but also added a detailed exposition of his own ideas. This part of the Exercitationes is most relevant for the present study because it reveals the underlying rationales of Scaliger’s worldview. As shown in the previous chapter, Scaliger developed his understanding of the world in sharp contrast to Cardano’s. He now strengthened it through inquiry into Abelard’s question. By investigating God’s relationship with created beings, Scaliger tried to dem- onstrate why the world was necessarily created in the way proposed in his phi- losophy, and not otherwise. Existing scholarship has recognized the significant impact of Abelard’s question on the subsequent history of theology and philosophy. Two studies in particular have developed our understanding of its influence. Arthur Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being (1936) presents Abelard as the first advocate of philosoph- ical optimism in the West, which was developed further much later by Spinoza (1632–77) and Leibniz (1646–1716), and became widespread in the eighteenth century. Lovejoy’s masterful treatment of the seventeenth and following cen- turies, however, is not matched with similar attention to the sixteenth century: Giordano Bruno is the only figure to whom he dedicates a detailed analysis. Another important study, Edward Mahoney’s “Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being” (1982), has addressed this gap in historiography. Mahoney offers a substantial examination of various sixteenth-century phi- losophers, with particular emphasis on those educated at the University of Padua. Yet even Mahoney omitted the case of Scaliger and thereby the new theoretical dimension that Scaliger’s confrontation with Cardano’s philosophy brought to the traditional problem. To my knowledge, the only scholar who has substantially addressed this problem is Andreas Blank, who examined it in connection with Scaliger’s idea of the emergence of new living species. In this chapter, however, I shall approach the topic from a more theological point 2 On the Sentences tradition in general, see Rosemann, Story of a Great Medieval Book; Evans and Rosemann, Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences..
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