Jesuit Psychology and the Theory of Knowledge

Chapter 5 Jesuit Psychology and the Theory of Knowledge

Daniel Heider

1 Introduction

Although Jesuit philosophical psychology of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century was mostly united against secular Aristotelianism, exemplified by “the sects” of the Alexandrists and the Averroists, doctrinal vari- ety conflating the panoply of Scholastic streams with important ingredients of the neo-Platonic and medical tradition can be seen as a typical feature of the early Jesuits’ philosophical syncretism.1 Despite this doctrinal heterogeneity, the goal of this chapter is to propose what I regard as an important “paradigm shift” in the development of the early (Iberian) Jesuits’ psychology. It has been claimed that Jesuit philosophers of the third generation, such as Pedro Hurta- do de Mendoza (1578–1641), Rodrigo de Arriaga (1592–1667), and Francisco de Oviedo (1602–51), substantially revived the Scholastic via moderna.2 This histo- riographical hypothesis about the crucial role of late medieval nominalism— there are, as yet, very few studies on the matter—will be verified on two issues typical of the period, both of which can be viewed as variants of the classical problem of “the one and the many.” First, there is the query about the char- acter of the distinction between the soul (the principle of unity) and its vital powers (the principle of plurality). Famously, critiques of the Scholastic theory of really distinct accidents (i.e., powers interceding between the soul and its acts; henceforth, the real distinction thesis [rdt]) constituted a representative piece of the philosophical agenda for early modern philosophers in general.3

1 For Jesuit syncretism, see Daniel Heider, “Introduction,” in Cognitive Psychology in Early Jesuit Scholasticism, ed. Daniel Heider (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2016), 1–11. 2 For Hurtado, see Ester Caruso, Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza e la rinascita del nominalismo nella Scolastica del Seicento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979); for Arriaga, see Stanislav Sousedík and Tereza Saxlová, eds., Rodrigo de Arriaga (†1667): Philosoph und Theologe (Prague: Karo- linum, 1998). For the influence of late medieval nominalism on Oviedo, see Daniel Heider, “The Notitia intuitiva and Notitia abstractiva of the External Senses in Second Scholasticism: Suárez, Poinsot and Francisco de Oviedo,” Vivarium 54, no. 2–3 (2016): 173–203, here 192–200. 3 For a critique of Descartes and John Locke (1632–1794), see Dominik Perler, “Faculties in Me- dieval Philosophy,” in The Faculties: A History, ed. Dominik Perler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 97–139, esp. 97–100.

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The second issue is the gradual elimination of the intentional species (species intentionales).4 As is well known, mainstream Scholastic thinkers conceived intentional likeness as a necessary principle in explaining the production of cognitive acts. They were regarded as necessary “mediators” between sensible objects and cognitive powers. The flat reduction of the intentional species to their “mechanicized” counterparts epitomized the second important topos for philosophers and scientists active in the era of the scientific revolution.5 Im- portantly, proponents of both real identity between the soul and its powers (the real identity thesis [rit]) and of (partial) elimination of the species are far from restricted to traditional early modern philosophy. Not only can they be found in late medieval nominalism and even before in medieval Augustinian- ism and late ancient philosophy;6 both views were firmly established parts of the early Jesuit philosophical curriculum on the eve of modernity. This chapter compares Suárez’s rdt and his theory of the universal applicability of the sensible species in the external senses with Mendoza’s rit and his tenet of only partial applicability of the external senses’ sensible species. The following (chronological) objection can immediately be raised. Although Suárez wrote his commentary on De anima in the first half of the 1570s in Segovia, it was not published until 1621, while Hurtado’s Universa philosophia (Universal philosophy) was published for the first time six years earlier, in 1615. If we (rightly) assume that no essential innovations were made by Hurtado in the relevant parts of the Cursus, he could not react explicitly to Suárez’s views. Three partial replies can be proposed to defend the historical and the system- atic merit of this comparative project: (1) Although Hurtado does not quote from the commentary on De anima, he cites Suárez’s psychological views from

4 For the process of elimination of the intelligible species, see Leen Spruit, Species intelligibi- lis: From Perception to Knowledge, vol. 2, Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1995); see also Katharine Park, “The Organic Soul,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 464–84. 5 For the Cartesian “mechanicized Aristotelianism” of the theory of visual perception, see Ce- lia Wolf-Devine, Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology and Visual Perception (Carbondale: South- ern Illinois University, 1993). 6 For the rit of William of Auvergne (c.1180/90–1249), see Perler, “Faculties in Medieval Philos- ophy,” 100–5; regarding Ockham’s rit combined with his “soul–mind dualism,” see Dominik Perler, “What Are the Faculties of the Soul? Descartes and His Scholastic Background,” in Continuity and Innovation in Medieval and Modern Philosophy: Knowledge, Mind, and Lan- guage, ed. John Marenbon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 9–38, esp. 25–31. Ockham’s elimination of the intentional species is examined by Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Cer- titude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 130–35.