Some on the Liber de causis reflections

C. J. DE VOGEL

ANY years have passed since Bardenhewer published his edition of M both the Arabic text of the early Medieval Book "on the Pure Good", and its Latin translation, made towards the end of the I 2th century by Gerhard of Cremona. It is still a highly valuable work, and up till a few months ago it was the only text of the so-called Liber de Causis we could consult. Very rightly this edition of 1 8 82 has been recently reprinted. Though the text edition, of course, was of the first interest, this is by no means all. The volume also contains the history of this famous little book throughout the Middle Ages. It is very interesting, indeed, to consider how from the end of the i 2 th century (Alanus ab Insulis) onwards this book is cited by almost all 1 3th century ecclesiasti- cal authors of any importance, and how they interpret certain texts of it. Bardenhewer duly mentions St. Thomas' commentary and gives us some idea of its significance. However, it was not until 19 s4 that a modern critical edition of this work appeared from the hand of Fr. H. D. Saffrey, and not until 1966 that A. Pattin published a new edition of the Latin text of the De Causis. It appeared in the Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, (Louvain) March 1 966 . Saffrey's edition of St. Thomas' commentary is a very welcome and truly interesting contribution to the study of the Liber de causis. It is preceded by an introduction of which the "Partie historique et doctri- nale" might have been somewhat fuller and, in a sense, more critical (I hope to explain this), but at least it does give a few points of view that are of real interest. In my following reflections on some aspects of the "concept" of God found in the Liber I gratefully used Saffrey's work, after and next to Bardenhewer's and the new text edition of Pattin. The modern reader who has spent a great deal of his life on reading and meditating the Greek text of Plato and of Plotinus, will come to the Liber de causis and its direct source, Proclus' Elementa theologiae, with very different ideas from those St. Thomas had when reading the same treatise. At the time St. Thomas commented on the De causis (which must have been a few years after William of Moerbeke finished his translation of Proclus' Elementa (1268)), i.e. in the last years of his life, he had spent many years on the main works of Aristotle, which he read in recent Latin translations; he had commented on the Physics, the

67 Metaphysics, the De caelo and the De anima ; he had read and meditated the De generatione, the logical works and the Ethics. His information on Plato came from Aristotle. Metaph. A 9 had left a fresh impression on his mind: to him "Platonism" meant a doctrine of substantiae separatae, that is to say, abstractions such as "man", "animal", "justice", were made by Plato into separately existing beings of a transcendent order and con- sidered as "gods". Hence, when Proclus, speaking of the "henads" which he posits as self-complete beings or "gods", beyond Being, Life and Nous - i.e. above the level of Eternal Being, which for Plotinus was identical with the -, says that "Every god is participable except the One'\ St. Thomas, not disturbed by this strange construction, explains: These henads are Plato's so-called Ideas, the jormae universales of sensible objects, raised into separate existence and called "gods"2. Moreover, since intellects are supposed to think by means of intelligible forms, "the Platonists" according to St. Thomas posited the existence of a number of superior intellects that "partici- pated" in the above-mentioned divine Forms. We can hardly find fault with St. Thomas for this explanation, since he had to do, firstly, without direct contact with Plato's own works, secondly, without Plotinus' profound thoughts about eternal Being. But we do think that Saffrey might have said something about the character of Thomas' explanations of what he calls "Plato and the Platonists", instead of just presenting this commentary to the reader of to-day as, say, an acceptable and well-founded interpretation of the matter under discussion. This is what it was not. It is a commentary which not only had undeniable merits in its own day, but which can still be read with profit in the present century - under the condition, however, that certain reservations are made. Two things were clearly recognized by St. Thomas: first, the de- pendence of the De causis on Proclus' Elements (which, of course, " Thomas could see, since he had the complete translation of the "Elementa" by Van Moerbeke before him), second, that the Arabic author did not simply follow Proclus' text but altered its line of thought in a theist sense. Because Thomas had also the Areopagitica at his disposal, this way of "correcting" the clearly polytheistic tendency of Proclus' argument into a monotheist theory reminded Thomas of a number of passages in the Book on the Divine Names. I do not think he wanted to assert that the author of the De causis wrote his work under the in- ' Proclus, Elem. I6. 6 . 2 Saffrey,p, 8 (in Prop. 3); cf. also p. 1 2,1 1-1 (in prop. 2). 68