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Philosophy in the Early Latin Middle Ages (C. 700 – C. 1100): a Survey of Recent Work

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Philosophy in the Early Latin Middle Ages (C. 700 – C. 1100): a Survey of Recent Work 92619_RTPM_09-2_04_Marenbon_AP 18-01-2010 23:08 Pagina 365 PHILOSOPHY IN THE EARLY LATIN MIDDLE AGES (C. 700 – C. 1100): A SURVEY OF RECENT WORK John MARENBON If any period in the history of philosophy deserves that bad old epi- thet «the Dark Ages», it is the early medieval centuries (c. 700 – c. 1100) in the Latin West. But modern scholarship searches out the obscurest corners, and even this black hole of the philosophical uni- verse has two superstars, Eriugena and Anselm. So this survey of work over the last twenty years would be very long indeed, did I not under- stand the word «philosophy» in its title in a particular way. I under- stand «philosophy» institutionally and retrospectively, so that the phi- losophy of a past period consists in its treatment of questions similar or related to those which interest philosophers today, or to which their interests might be extended, in a manner they would regard as philo- sophical1. Of course, despite such similarities, the wider setting for the philosophy of a period like the Middle Ages is utterly different from that of philosophy now, and its historians need to know this context thoroughly and understand their material within it. But the wider intellectual context of philosophy is not itself philosophy. In medieval (and perhaps especially early medieval) studies, there has been a tendency towards a very broad view of what counts as philos- ophy, or, sometimes, the decision, justified by its advocates as avoid- ance of anachronism, to do without such a category altogether. Dis- cussions of various kinds about the intellectual life of the period and its outstanding thinkers are brought together without distinction. Were I to follow this approach, I would need, for example, with regard to «philosophy» at the court of Charlemagne, to look closely at 1. Even with this strict criterion for philosophy, I have had to be selective, and there are many discussions of early medieval philosophy within wider chronological studies that I have not tried to include. And, because selectivity should begin at home, I do not refer to any of my own work (except for relevant reviews I have written). Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 76(2), 365-393. doi: 10.2143/RTPM.76.2.2045810 © 2009 by Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales. All rights reserved. 92619_RTPM_09-2_04_Marenbon_AP 18-01-2010 23:08 Pagina 366 366 J. MARENBON Donald Bullough’s revisionist studies of Alcuin’s life, works and their chronology and at a whole range of work that has been changing our understanding of Carolingian intellectual life2. All this work is, indeed, important for historians of philosophy to know about (and so I note it here), but amidst all this activity there has been next to no study of Alcuin or any other Carolingian as a philosopher3. The great bulk of philosophical work has been on the two central (though in many ways very unusual) figures, John Scottus Eriugena (discussed in Section 2) and Anselm of Canterbury (discussed in Section 4), with a little inter- est in some tenth- and eleventh-century thinkers such as Abbo of Fleury, Berengar of Tours, Peter Damian and their period (discussed in Section 3). As a distinct period, to be treated as a whole by histo- rians of philosophy (like the twelfth century, or the scholasticism of the medieval universities), the Latin early Middle Ages seem hardly to exist. But I begin with a monograph that, exceptionally, looks at one central theme through these four centuries. 1. A View of the Period as a Whole The only complete exception to the neglect of the philosophy of the early medieval period as a whole is the bold and comprehensive 2. D.A. BULLOUGH, Carolingian renewal: sources and heritage, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1991; «Alcuin before Frankfort» in: R. BERNDT (ed.), Das Frankfurter Konzil von 794 im Spannungsfeld von Kirche, Politik und Theologie, Mainz 1997 (Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 80), pp. 571-585; Alcuin: achieve- ment and reputation; being part of the Ford lectures delivered in Oxford in Hilary Term 1980, Leiden, Brill, 2004. Valuable recent work on Alcuin is published in: L.A.J.R. HOUWEN – A.A. MACDONALD (eds.), Alcuin of York. Scholar at the Carolingian Court, Groningen, Egbert Forsten, 1998 (Mediaevalia Groningana 22, Germania latina 3). A challenge to Bullough’s datings, and a study of the sources and composition of Alcuin’s logical treatise, De dialectica, is made in E. BOHN, Candidus and the Continuity of Carolingian Intellectual Life, PhD The- sis, University of Cambridge, 2004. There has also been an important new edition of the Libri Carolini, now convincingly attributed to THEODULF OF ORLEANS — a work one section of which is important for the history of medieval logic: Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini), ed. A. FREEMAN with the cooperation of P. MEYVAERT, Hannover, Hahnsche Buch- handlung, 1998 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia 2, suppl. 1). A useful recent survey of intellectual life in the period (stretching up to Eriugena) is: A. BISOGNO, Il metodo carolingio. Identità culturale e dibattito teologico nel secolo nono, Turnhout, Brepols, 2008. 3. Two exceptions are studies of Alcuin’s thought about language: T. SHIMIZU, «Alcuin’s Theory of Signification and System of Philosophy», in: Didascalia 2 (1996), pp. 1-18 and C.H. KNEEPKENS, «Some Notes on Alcuin’s De perihermeniis with an Edition of the Text» in: HOUWEN – MACDONALD (eds.), Alcuin, pp. 81-112. 92619_RTPM_09-2_04_Marenbon_AP 18-01-2010 23:08 Pagina 367 PHILOSOPHY IN THE EARLY LATIN MIDDLE AGES (C. 700 – C. 1100) 367 theory advanced by Christophe Erismann, piecemeal and partially in a series of articles and fully in his forthcoming monograph4. Erismann concentrates on the theory of universals, a topic which historians of medieval philosophy have traditionally presented as important, or even central, but only from the early twelfth century onwards. Erismann accepts that there was not in these earlier centuries the open debate between realists and nominalists which we find in Abelard’s time and again in the fourteenth century. Rather, both Eriugena and Anselm, and other less well-known figures, such as Macarius the Irishman (whose views are known through Ratramnus of Corbie) and Odo of Tournai5, up to and including Abelard’s teacher and opponent, William of Champeaux, were all exponents of the same theory of uni- versals, «immanent realism». Immanent realism is, according to Eris- mann, a carefully and consciously conceived theory, which shows that there was genuine metaphysical speculation in the early Middle Ages, long before the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It is, he says, a position based on the few texts of Aristotelian logic available, especially the Categories and Porphyry’s Isagoge. The idea that Aristotelian logic was the source for early medieval metaphysics is not an entirely new one (though it goes against the traditional view of the period as Pla- tonic in outlook), but Erismann gives it an important, new twist. For him, Porphyry is not — as scholars such as A.C. Lloyd and Sten 4. C. ERISMANN, L’Homme commun: la genèse du réalisme ontologique durant le haut Moyen Âge, Paris, Vrin, 2009. The most important of Erismann’s earlier articles are: «Generalis essentia. La théorie érigénienne de l’ousia et le problème des universaux», in: Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen âge 69 (2002), pp. 7-37; «Processio id est multiplicatio. L’influence latine de l’ontologie de Porphyre: le cas de Jean Scot Erigène», in: Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 88 (2004), pp. 401-460; «Un autre ari- stotélisme? La problématique métaphysique durant le haut Moyen âge latin. A propos d’Anselme, Monologion 27», in: Quaestio. Annuario di storia della metafisica 5 (2005), pp. 143-160; «The Logic of Being. Eriugena’s dialectical ontology», in: Vivarium 45 (2007), pp. 203-218; «Immanent realism. A reconstruction of an early medieval solution to the problem of universals», in: Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 18 (2007), pp. 211-229. 5. Erismann and Dominique Poirel are making a new edition of Odo’s De peccato originali, with French translation. There is a recent English translation, with intro- duction and notes, of this and another treatise of Odo’s, by I.M. RESNICK: ODO OF TOURNAI, A disputation with the Jew, Leo, concerning the advent of Christ, Son of God: two theological treatises, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Unfortu- nately, this edition does not resolve the problems of edition or fully place the material in context. 92619_RTPM_09-2_04_Marenbon_AP 18-01-2010 23:08 Pagina 368 368 J. MARENBON Ebbesen have presented him6 — a philosopher who puts Plato com- pletely aside when he expounds Aristotelian logic, but rather — fol- lowing the work of Riccardo Chiaradonna — one whose logic, Aris- totelian in context and appearance, is subtly transformed by an underlying Platonism7. Erismann characterizes immanent realism by six theses: 1. Not just particular substances, but also species and genera are real. 2. Genera and species are the cause of the realities subordinated to them — the particular substances. 3. Genera and species do not exist separately from particulars. 4. Genera and species are entirely and simultaneously present in each of their subdivisions. 5. Specific substance is common to all members of a species. 6. Individuals of the same species are individuated by a unique bun- dle of accidents. These theses turn out to underlie the metaphysics of Eriugena’s mas- terpiece, the Periphyseon — which are analysed here with unequalled clarity — and Erismann is also able to show how Eriugena’s reading of Greek Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Con- fessor encouraged him to develop a realist strain already implicit in Porphyry’s Isagoge.
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