Andrea Di Maio
SAINT BONAVENTURE’S DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES
AN APPLICATION OF LEXICOGRAPHY TO TEXTUAL HERMENEUTICS
English translation by Paul Spilsbury
PREFACE
This study intends in general to offer an example of the application of lexicographical methods to philosophical and theological textual hermeneutics; and in particular to contribute to the reconstruction and explanation of the complex (and much studied) systematisation of knowledge elaborated by Bonaventure, by leading it back more deeply to his systematisation of reality. In this first part, of a synchronic character, we have ascertained that the Bonaventurian divisions and treatments of knowing, though they are all in a theological context, have also an intrinsic philosophical value. Such divisions are ‘systematic’, and have the incarnation of the Word as ‘key’, formulated through the concept of ‘nature’ (which articulates the whole Bonaventurian vision of the world). On the historiographic plane, the comparison between the texts of Bonaventure and those of Thomas relates to the stucturing of knowledge, showing their common and their divergent features. Both, then, are “scholastics” in the elaboration of their sources, in that they do not select just some of the contents of tradition (“aut aut”), but seek in different ways to take on and synthesise in a coherent way the whole of the tradition known to them (“et et”). Bonaventure undertook the way of extracting individual items from their original context and inserting them into a scheme which was entirely traditional as to its contents, but entirely new as to its structure (he seems to have been attached to this scheme, already sketched out in the Reductio, all his life). Thomas, on the other hand, undertook the way of combining items through a concordance and hierarchy of schemes (which do not all have the same “weight”, and play different parts), clearly giving the epistemological primacy to the Aristotelian system, but without ever showing that he was entirely satisfied with the schemes obtained. Further, in articulating philosophy and theology both Thomas and Bonaventure share the (Biblical and Augustinian) paradigm of “parallel doublets”, carrying it out with perhaps extreme rigour, though with different shades of meaning: Thomas shows the natural basis of supernatural perfection, and Bonaventure shows the necessity and natural impossibility of such perfection. SYNCHRONIC
INTRODUCTION
Every age, in every context, has sought somehow to systematise knowledge, so as effectively to see reality properly. Among the various systems which have followed one another throughout history, that elaborated in the second half of the thirteenth century by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio1 is particularly interesting. This is because he synthesises the distinctions he inherited from the past, and offers a quite original vision of knowledge and reality, emphasising and reinterpreting the Aristotelian principle, “Scientiae secantur quemadmodum et res.”2 Paradoxically, Bonaventure is one of the medieval authors who was much concerned with the devision of knowledge in general, and of philosophy in particular,
1 Sancti BONAVENTURAE Opera omnia, Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) 1882-1902 (in 10 volumes). The Breviloquium and theological sermons are quoted from the editio minor: Opera theologica selecta, vol. 5, Ad Claras Aquas 1964. The collations in Hexaëmeron are quoted in the first recension from the editio maior; for the second recension from Sancti Bonaventurae Collationes in Hexaëmeron et bonaventuriana quaedam selecta, ed F. Delor- me, Ad Claras Aquas 1934. The other Bonaventurian texts are quoted accor- ding to CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts - CLCLT-3, Lovanii Novi - Turnhout 1997 [i.e. Breviloquium, Itinerarium, De reductione, De scientia Christi, Legenda maior & minor, Sermones dominicales, De donis, In Hexaëmeron (Delorme)]. The following abbreviations are used here: Brev (Breviloquium), Don (De donis), Hex (In Hexaëmeron, ist recension), HexD (In Hexaëmeron, recension edited by Delorme), Itin (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), Red (De reductione artium ad theologiam), Sent (In Sententiarum li- bros). 2 Sent 3.35 ad db 1; De Anima 3.8. [We may translate this as “How we know is determined by what we know”, i.e. the nature of reality controls the way we know it. Trans.] without ever writing any work of philosophy. All his distinctions, even those most clearly articulated, are made in a theological context. On the other hand, Bonaventure elaborated a complex and original system of theology which he never made explicit except in passing. The principal systematisations of knowledge which he inherited are: the Academic, Stoic and Augustinian division of philosophy into Physics (natural philosophy), Logic (rational philosophy) and Ethics (moral philosophy); the Aristotelian division of knowledge into Logic, Theoretical Philosophy (Physics, Mathematics and ‘First Philosophy’ or Metaphysics), Practical Philosophy (Ethics, Economics and Politics) and Poetical Philosophy (Poetics and Rhetoric); the late classical and high medieval division of the ‘liberal arts’ into the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic or Logic) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy); the Hebrew, and especially Christian, distinction between natural knowledge and revealed knowledge (according to which we speak of a ‘double scheme’). We propose here to approach the Bonaventurian division of knowledge (which has already been abundantly studied3) through a careful methodological reading, and a
3 Cf just for the question of the Bonaventurian division of the sciences: Chr. WENIN, Les classifications bonaventuriennes des sciences philosophi- ques, in: Scritti in onore di G. Giacon, Padova 1972, p. 189-216; B. HINWOOD, The Principles underlying St. Bonaventure’s Division of Human Knowledge, in: J. G. BOUGEROL (ed), S. Bonaventura 1274-1974, Grottafer- rata 1973, v. 3, p. 463-504; H. M. STIEBING, Bonaventuras Einteilung der Wissenschaften als Beleg für universalkategoriales Vorgehen in der Wissen- schaftstheorie des Mittelalters. Eine semiotische Analyse, in: Sprache und Er- kenntnis im Mittelalter, Berlin 1982* (“Miscellanea Mediaevalia” 13), v. 2, p. critical questioning of the texts that express it, adopting (and possibly illustrating) an hermeneutical and lexicographical key.
Lexicography finds a particularly noteworthy application in the ‘division of sciences’. On the linguistic plane, the division of the sciences consists in a classification of a functional type, whose elements are reciprocally determined on each level by verbal opposition (antonymy).
Leaving the methodological questions to be dealt with elsewhere4, it is sufficient at this point to recall some lexicographical ideas. Classification (taxonomy) is a logical structure rather like a tree, arranging words (or rather what they signify)
602-608; A. SPEER, Triplex Veritas. Wahrheitsverständis und philosophische Denkform Bonaventuras, Dietrich Cölde Verlag, Werl 1987; C. DEL ZOTTO, La sistematizzazione della filosofia e teologia del cuore di S. Bonaventura, in G. BESCHIN (ed), Antonio Rosmini, filosofo del cuore? Philosophia e theolo- gia cordis nella cultura occidentale (Atti del Convegno tenuto a Rovereto il 6- 7 ottobre 1993), Trento - Brescia 1995, p. 113-46. For connected questions cf also C. BÉRUBÉ, De la Philosophie à la Sagesse chez Saint Bonaventure et Roger Bacon, Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, Roma 1976; R. RUSSO, La me- todologia del sapere nel sermone di san Bonaventura “Unus est Magister ve- ster Christus”. Con nuova edizione critica e traduzione italiana, Grottaferrata 1982 (“Spicilegium Bonaventurianum” 22); P. MARANESI, Formazione e svi- luppo del concetto di “Verbum Inspiratum” in San Bonaventura, in “Collectanea Franciscana” (1994), p. 5-87; E. CUTTINI, Scienza e teologia nel «De reductione artium ad theologiam» di Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, in “Miscellanea francescana”, 95 (1995), p. 395-466; Kl. OBENAUER, Summa actualitas. Zum Verhältnis von Einheit und Verschiedenheit in der Dreiei- nigkeitslehre des heiligen Bonaventura, Frankfurt a. M. 1996 (Europäische Hochschulschriften. XXIII. Theologie 559). 4 Cf A. DI MAIO, Il concetto di Comunicazione. Saggio di lessicografia filosofica e teologica sul tema di ‘communicare’ in Tommaso d’Aquino, Roma 1998, paragraphs 1, 15-39, 61, 72, 85-86, 95 e 115. according to relationships of semantic implication (which may be according to class, to composition or to function). Given a key-word, the word hierarchically superior to it is termed its ‘hyperonym’; the words hierarchically inferior to it are its ‘hyponyms’; those laterally related, by having the same hyperonym, are its ‘perionyms’; and it is opposed reciprocally to some ‘antonym’, which may be strong or weak. Classification pure and simple (as in ‘Porphyry’s tree’) divides genera into species, so that the general hyperonym is predicated universally of the special hyponym, but not vice versa (e.g. ‘dwelling’ is divided into ‘palace’, ‘villa’, ‘flat’ etc. Every flat is a dwelling, but every dwelling is not a flat) Compositional classification divides ‘wholes’ into ‘integrating parts’, so that neither is the integrating hyponym predicated of the integral hyperonym, nor is the integral hyperonym predicated of the integrating hyponyms (e.g. ‘dwelling’ is subdivided into ‘wall’, ‘roof’, etc. The wall is not the whole house, nor is the house just the wall, but the wall and all the other parts). Functional classification is somewhere between the two, and it refers to systems rather than objects. It divides the whole (in terms of its powers) into parts which potentially contain it, so that the ‘potestative hyperonym’ is predicated of its hyponyms, but not exhaustively (e.g. a ‘dwelling’ viewed as a building may consist of a number of flats which are also ‘dwellings’. The Universal Church consists of local churches, each one of which is wholly ‘church’, though not ‘The Church’). In a system of classification, the division of hyperonyms into hyponyms may come about in two ways: a) either by decision from above (as in the Platonic ‘diairesis’, or in a ‘flow diagram’ of information), with respect to a request for a ‘closed’ answer (does it or doesn’t it have a given characteristic? So ‘animal’ is divided into ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’); b) or by discovery from below of groups of differences of the same sort, as in Aristotelian division. When the classification is justified and complete (so that from its very articulation one understands that it is thus, and cannot be otherwise), it expresses an ‘ideal system’. (Such an ideal system can be interpreted in different ways, as being a necessary, conventional or arbitrary structure, either ‘in reality’, ‘in thought’ or ‘in speaking’). This implies that if two different systems of classification are adopted by the same speaker to divide the same concept, they are either incompatible and successive (one being substituted for the other at a different time); or they are simultaneous, and hence not only compatible but to a certain extent interchangeable. They are founded on a principle of common meaning (‘homology’), through a system of classification involving the same concepts. The division of the sciences is a ‘functional classification’. Many say that it is also justified and complete, and based upon an ‘ideal system’, not a ‘mere classification’ or grouping, as Boethius thought in his commentary on the ‘Isagoge’. In particular, philosophy is divided into natural, rational and moral; or into theoretical and practical, each of which is philosophy, but not the whole of philosophy.
In conformity with the method chosen, the Bonaventurian texts concerning the division of the sciences will first be analysed in sequence, and placed in concentric circles in their contexts. The works of Bonaventure are strongly structured, and so in themselves ‘classificatory’. Then they will be placed in parallel, showing their compatibility, and re-read side by side, through the reconstruction of the meaning of the words. Finally, they will be re-connected to their antecedent ‘hypertexts’ (the sources quoted) and to analogous contemporary medieval texts. All this will be done so as to extract their schemes of classification, and then to show how such schemes are ways to situate concepts, and so be able to operate with them. We shall further try to advance conjecturally from those structures which are evident to those which underlie, sustain and generate them. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ‘REDUCTIO’ The ‘De Reductio Artium’ (fruit of university preaching and composed around 1255) contains both a macrostructural division of all the ways of acquiring information about the world (sense-perception, technical expertise, and true and proper knowledge, philosophical and theological), and an articulated internal division of philosophy. As is known, the second part of the work ‘reduces’ the different modes of acquisition to theology, proceeding through analogy and metaphor.
«Licet […] omnis illuminatio cognitionis interna sit, possumus tamen rationabiliter distinguere ut dicamus quod est lumen exterius scilicet lumen artis mechanicae, lumen inferius scilicet lumen cognitionis sensitivae, lumen interius scilicet lumen cognitionis philosophicae, lumen superius scilicet lumen gratiae et sacrae scripturae. Primum lumen illuminat respectu figurae artificialis, secundum respectu formae naturalis, tertium respectu veritatis intellectualis, quartum et ultimum respectu veritatis salutaris» [Red 1].*
The text opens with a declaration of intent, doubly metaphorical. It speaks of an internal illumination (meaning the cognitive phenomenon), and distinguishes in it four (metaphorically spatial) dimensions. Bearing in mind that ‘lumen sacrae scripturae’ is equivalent to ‘lumen supernaturalis’5, we find here the classical topological structure of reality, biblical in origin but thematised by Augustine (who, however, has only three dimension- extra, intra and supra).
*[My translation: “Although that illumination which is knowledge is internal, we can yet distinguish rationally what we may call an outward light (the light of practical skill), a lower light (the light of sense- knowledge), an inner light (the light of philosophic knowledge) and a higher light (the light of grace and of Holy Scripture). The first light enlightens us with respect to artificial patterns, the second with respect to natural form, the third with respect to intellectual truth, and the fourth and last with respect to saving truth.”]
Topology of knowledge
5 In the light of Breviloquium 0.0.3. ABOVE ––– theological knowledge ––– saving truth
The corporeal world (commonly considered by Bonaventure as exterior) appears here duplicated in a lower sphere and an outer sphere.
Such a distinction reflects a double dynamism (described in chapter 2 of the ‘Itinerarium’) with which, by means of the body (an element hinged between the two- nowadays we would speak of ‘the body we have’ and ‘the body we are’), the human microcosm is related to the macrocosm. Through perception or sense-knowledge the macrocosm comes to be ‘interjected’ as to its structures or forms into the ‘lower’ (corporeal) sphere of the microcosm. In return, through technical skill, the microcosm projects and imposes its own designs (figurae- or, if we may put it this way, ‘structures of structures’) on the external macrocosm. (For example, the design of an artefact is simply a structure which organises as one many natural things, each with its own form). Elsewhere6 the ‘lower dimension’ is given a different interpretation, as the fallenness and mortality of
6 Cf for example Solil 0.2. human nature; but this is not a problem, because there the author speaks metaphorically, whereas here he speaks conventionally.
Precisely because of this opposed dynamism, perception, though sensible, is already termed ‘knowledge’, whereas technical expertise [or ‘know-how’] on the contrary is not. True knowledge is then a second stage divided into two in the scheme. On the one hand there is natural truth, on the other supernatural truth (we shall have to return to this point).
So then: in the realm of natural philosophic knowledge, Bonaventure distinguishes three parts and nine sciences:
«Tertium lumen quod illuminat ad veritates intelligibiles perscrutandas est lumen cognitionis PHILO- SOPHICAE quod ideo interius dicitur quia interiores causas et latentes inquirit et hoc per principia disciplinarum et veritatis naturalis quae homini naturaliter sunt inserta. Et hoc triplicatur in rationalem, naturalem et moralem. […]
[1.] Sermocinalis sive rationalis PHILOSOPHIA triplicatur […] in grammaticam, logicam et rhetoricam […]. [2.] Rursus quoniam intellectus noster dirigi habet in iudicando secundum rationes formales et hae tripliciter possunt considerari – vel in comparatione ad materiam et sic dicuntur rationes formales, – vel in comparatione ad animam et sic intellectuales, – vel in comparatione ad divinam sapientiam et sic ideales, ideo naturalis PHILOSOPHIA triplicatur – in physicam proprie dictam, – in mathematicam – et in metaphysicam, ita quod physica consideratio est circa rerum generationem et corruptionem secundum virtutes naturales et rationes seminales, mathematica est circa considerationem formarum abstrahibilium secundum rationes intelligibiles, metaphysica circa cognitionem omnium entium quae reducit ad unum primum principium a quo exierunt secundum rationes ideales, sive ad deum in quantum principium finis et exemplar. Licet inter metaphysicos de huiusmodi rationibus idealibus nonnulla fuerit controversia.
[3.] Postremo […] moralis PHILOSOPHIA triplicatur scilicet in monasticam, oeconomicam et politicam» [Red 4] .*
The premise for this division of the sciences modifies the concept of the ‘natural’. It says that all philosophy lies within the sphere of natural truth, but it specifies that this comes about inasmuch as it operates by natural principles inserted into man (i.e. philosophy is natural but not innate- rather it is acquired, though naturally). Within it, the threefold division into rational, natural and moral philosophy is assumed, not justified (Bonaventure will do that in the texts which follow).
We should note that rational philosophy is placed at the beginning (in accordance with the traditional scheme which Bonaventure will progressively change), inasmuch as it furnishes the criteria for scientific knowledge, and inasmuch as it corresponds (pedagogically) to laying the foundation which a student must have. We should note in particular the synonymy between rational (rationalis) and logical (sermocinalis) philosophy, a sign of the close relationship already achieved in the Faculty of Arts between logical analysis and reflection on language. Perhaps that is why the trio of rational sciences is closed by rhetoric, and not logic.
We should note the reduplication in the classification of ‘rationes’, the object of natural philosophy. In general, they are all ‘formal’, but properly speaking it is those that relate to the forms of matter which are termed ‘formal’. For greater precision, a little later on, (and again in what follows) they are called (in Augustinian terminology) ‘seminales’, insofar as they contain the diversity of things seminally or potentially. The intellectual reasons are formal, but in an intentional sense; the ideal reasons are formal, but in an exemplary sense.
*[My translation: “The third light, which gives light for the investigation of intelligible truths, is the light of philosophical knowledge. It is called ‘inner’, because it inquires into inner and hidden causes, and it does this by the principles of learning and natural truth which are innate in man. These are three in number: rational, natural and moral, […] (1) The logical or rational philosophy may take three forms: grammatical, logical and rhetorical. […] (2) Further, because our intellect takes its direction in judging according to formal reasons, and these three can be considered in three ways: by comparison with the material, (termed ‘formal reasons’); by comparison with the soul, (‘intellectual reasons’); or by comparison with the divine wisdom, (‘ideal reasons’); so natural philosophy is divided into three: physics, properly so called; mathematics; and metaphysics. Physical study treats of the generation and corruption of things according to their natural powers and seminal principles; mathematics treats of abstract forms according to intelligible principles; metaphysics concerns the knowledge of all beings, as reducible to a first principle from which they have come according to ideal principles, or to God as beginning, exemplar and end (although there has been some disagreement among metaphysicians about these ideal principles). (3) Lastly, […] moral philosophy is divided into three, to whit monastic, economic and political]
Natural philosophy is said to be concerned, not with three classes of different objects, but with three levels of rationes (seminal, intellectual and ideal) of each object (i.e. the things in the world). In other words, each sensible object has in itself seminal reasons which make it an object of physics, intellectual reasons which make it an object of mathematics, and ideal reasons which make it an object of metaphysics. The consequence of such a formulation (as we shall see) is that metaphysics does not properly study supra- sensible reality, but its reflection, through exemplary causality, in sensible things.
We should note, finally, that the order of natural philosophy is here, once again, an ascending one; from physics to mathematics, to metaphysics. The three sciences or, better, the natures that they include, include their respective rationes. They will then be related to the three natures of Christ.7
7 «Summa perfectio et nobilissima in universo esse non possit nisi [1] natura in qua sunt rationes seminales [2] et natura in qua sunt rationes intel- lectuales [3] et natura in qua sunt rationes ideales simul concurrant in unita- tem personae, quod factum est in filii dei incarnatione. Praedicat igitur tota naturalis PHILOSOPHIA per habitudinem proportionis dei verbum natum et incarnatum» [Red 20]. My translation: “the supreme and most noble perfection in the universe cannot be, unless the nature in which there are seminal rea- sons and the nature in which there are intellectual rea- sons, and the nature in which there are ideal reasons, come together in the unity of a person; which came about in the incarnation of the Son of God. According to the Chalcedonian doctrine, the two natures in Christ, human and divine, are distinct and inseparable. Bonaventure, by contrast, emphasises the further distinction between corporeal and spiritual nature in the human nature of Christ. This is because of the debated scholastic question regarding Christo in triduo, that is, the ontological state of Christ’s body in the three (incomplete) days during which it remained in the tomb, separated from the soul but not from the divinity, and therefore truly to be adored. This dispute bore within it important implications regarding the unity (according to Thomas) or plurality (according to more Augustinian theologians) of the substantial form.
As far as moral philosophy is concerned, the division into monastic (the ethics of the individual), economic (the ethics of the family) and political (the ethics of the civil community weakly echoes the three classical works of Aristotle on practical philosophy (the Nichomachean Ethics, the Economics- attributed to him by the medievals- and the Politics). On the other hand it mainly reflects the Christian assimilation of ethics. Here ‘monastic’ alludes properly to monastic discipline (or rather the ascesis of Christian monks, according to the ‘topos’ of monachism as philosophy)8,
Therefore the whole of natural philosophy preaches, by disposition of proportion, that the Word of God is born and incarnate.” 8 Cf Hex 2.3 (quoting Eth. Nic. 2.4), in which ‘disciplina scholastica’ is contrasted with ‘disciplina monastica sive morum’, although both are necessa- ry for attaining wisdom. Cf also R. QUINTO, «Scholastica». Contributo alla storia di un concetto. I – Sino al secolo XIII, in “Medioevo”, 17 (1991), p. 1- 82. while economics and politics are probably just words to complete the trio.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ‘ITINERARIUM’ A brief and as it were fleeting paragraph in the ‘Itinerarium’ (conceived at the end of 1259) offers the most clear and concise formulation of the theory of the division of the philosophical sciences and their theological reduction.
«Omnis PHILOSOPHIA aut est naturalis aut rationalis aut moralis. Prima agit de causa essendi et ideo ducit in potentiam patris, secunda de ratione intelligendi et ideo ducit in sapientiam verbi, tertia de ordine vivendi et ideo ducit in bonitatem spiritus sancti. Rursus prima dividitur in metaphysicam, mathematicam et physicam. Et prima est de rerum essen- tiis, secunda de numeris et figuris, tertia de naturis, virtutibus et operationibus diffusivis. Et ideo prima in primum principium patrem, secunda in eius imaginem filium, tertia ducit in spiritus sancti donum. Secunda dividitur in grammaticam quae facit potentes ad exprimendum, in logicam quae facit perspicaces ad arguendum, in rhetoricam quae facit habiles ad persuadendum sive movendum. Et hoc similiter insinuat mysterium ipsius beatissimae trinitatis. Tertia dividitur in monasticam, oeconomicam et politicam. Et ideo prima insinuat primi principii inna- scibilitatem secunda filii familiaritatem tertia spiritus sancti liberalitatem» [Itin 3.6].* The text opens with a complete functional classification (of the type: “Every A is either X or Y or Z”), and so with the formulation of an articulated system. The contrast between ‘divide’ and ‘lead’ shows us a single process (of a neoplatonic pattern, but also biblical) of the one to the many (divisio) and of the many to the one (reductio). The synonymity of ‘lead’ and ‘suggest’ reveals the true character of ‘reductio’- it is not a ‘reduction’ in the modern sense of the term, but a ‘leading back’ by allusion. It consists in making known the isomorphism between two structures (in this case, the structure of the sciences and the structure of the Trinitarian doctrine) and in associating an element of the first with an element of the second, such that the first is ‘full of its meaning’. (Paradoxically, in the ‘Reductio’ the idea of ‘reduction’, although more developed, is less clear than here.)
Precisely because of the ‘reduction’ to the Trinity (according to the Augustinian appropriation of power, wisdom and love to the three Persons), the traditional order is changed. So, natural philosophy and, in its turn, metaphysics are placed first (although respectively they come second and last), the better to correspond with the power of the Father; and rational philosophy, and in turn logic, are placed second (although they come, respectively, second and last+), the better to correspond with the wisdom of the Son.
*[Ewart Cousins’ translation (SPCK, London, 1978): “For all philosophy is either natural or rational or moral. The first deals with the cause of being and therefore leads to the power of the Father; the second deals with the basis of understanding and therefore leads to the wisdom of the Son; the third deals with the order of living and therefore leads to the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Again, the first, natural philosophy, is divided into metaphysics, mathematics and physics. The first deals with the essences of things; the second with numbers and figures; and the third with natures, powers and diffusive operations. Therefore the first leads to the First Principle, the Father; the second to his Image, the Son; and the third to the gift of the Holy Spirit. The second, rational philosophy, is divided into grammar, which makes men able to express themselves; logic, which makes them skilful in arguing; and rhetoric, which makes them capable of persuading and moving others. This likewise suggests the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. The third, moral philosophy, is divided into individual, domestic and political. The first suggests the unbegottenness of the First Principle; the second, the relatedness of the Son; the third, the liberality of the Holy Spirit.”] + surely this should be ‘first and second’? [Trans] Beyond the problem of homology in philosophical and theological structures (both, as we shall see, have a common internal structure), there exists anyway good reason for this change of order. Putting metaphysics first and rhetoric last corresponds in fact to the profound needs of an arrangement which is inspired both by the biblical message and by the neoplatonic plan. We can show this by using modern terminology.9 Metaphysics considers the transcendent and transcendental ontological structures of things themselves
9 But it reflects well the Augustinian teaching on the three modes of exi- stence of things (in their material nature, in the created intelligence, and in the mind of the Creator), which, as we shall see, is one of the sources on which it rests. (which are conditioned ‘a priori’). Mathematics considers intellectually transcendent mathematical structures of things (also conditioned ‘a priori’). Physics considers the immanent structures of things (learned ‘a posteriori’). Finally, rhetoric marks the passage from the intellectual sphere to the volitional, through the formulation of practical syllogisms needed for choices.
A VARIANT: THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ‘TEN SILVER COINS’ In a celebrated sermon (the third for Epiphany), preached to the clergy of the University of Paris at an uncertain date, Bonaventure propounds the same scheme of classification of the nine sciences as in the ‘Itinerarium’, but with some important variations, some of which he does not put forward again in succeeding divisiones. (This permits us to give a probable dating for the sermon between 1260 and 1267.)
«“Mulier”, anima rationalis, “habens decem drachmas” [Lc 15,8-9], id est decem illuminationes, quarum tres principales, scilicet naturalis, moralis et rationalis, et quaelibet istarum habet tres. Naturalis continet physicam, mechanicam et mathematicam; rationalis similiter continet tres: grammaticam, rhetoricam, logicam; moralis tres: monasticam, politicam, oeconomicam, et ultra istas est decima illuminatio, scilicet cognitio divina. Et istam ultimam cognitionem anima rationalis amisit; quia dicit Hugo [De sacr. chr. fidei 1.10.2], quod “oculus carnis in sua luce remansit, oculus rationis obnubilatus, oculus divinae contemplationis excaecatus est”. Quia igitur anima rationalis istam decimam drachmam, scilicet divinae cognitionis et contemplationis, amiserat, ideo quaerit eam modo historice, modo allegorice, modo tropologice, modo anagogice, quousque eam inveniat» [De modo inveniendi Christum, 7-8].*
*[My translation: “‘The woman having ten drachmas’ is the rational soul, which has ten illuminations. These have three headings, namely natural, moral and rational, and each of these has three more. The natural contains physics, mechanics and mathematics; the rational similarly contains three: grammar, rhetoric and logic; the moral three: individual, political and domestic, and after these is the tenth illumination, namely divine knowledge. It is this last knowledge that the rational soul has lost. As Hugh says, ‘The eye of flesh retains its own light, the eye of reason is clouded over, and the eye of divine contemplation is blinded.’ And so because the rational soul had lost this tenth drachma, to whit that of divine knowledge and contemplation, she seeks it sometimes historically, sometimes allegorically, sometimes tropologically and sometimes anagogically, until she finds it.’ ”] We will look only at some variations in the classification of the sciences already examined. As to rational philosophy, Bonaventure here returns to the traditional order of the three. But in natural philosophy, Bonaventure strangely (for him, that is, not for us) includes technique (mechanica), immediately after physics and before mathematics (as though in an intermediate degree of abstraction: probably that of figurae artificiales); even more strangely, this insertion of mechanics is made in place of metaphysics, which moreover is here identified (according to the Aristotelian model) with ‘divine knowledge’ or ‘contemplation’. This, according to a typical procedure of the latest Bonaventurian speculation, is the object of a research which naturally is as much necessary as impossible: all the sciences are intrinsically philo-sophical (desiring wisdom), without however being able to achieve wisdom.
Here we come up against the paradox of research, enunciated first by Plato in the ‘Meno’, developed in a Christian way by Augustine, and reformulated by Bonaventure (and again later on by Pascal and Blondel).10 The very one who seeks (precisely because he does not yet know just what he is looking for, and on the other hand does not want to give up the credit of success in finding it) risks not recognising it and not getting it when, all unexpectedly, he happens to come across it. It is necessary, then, to change the manner of research, passing from the investigative method of philosophy to the investigative method of Scripture. The first way is ‘scientific’, the second is, rather, ‘hermeneutical’, investigating in their depth the progressive
10 Cf A. DI MAIO - S. GUACCI - G. STANCATO, Il concetto di ‘quaerere’ (“cercare”) in Tommaso d’Aquino, in «Medioevo» 22 (1996), p. 39-135. It is the famous question of the natural desire for the supernatural, discussed by Henri DE LUBAC in Surnaturel. senses of the sacred text, which show (in the light of Bonaventure’s whole complex doctrine on the matter) an interesting structural homology; the literal sense, the allegorical sense (concerning faith in the mysteries it makes known as past), the tropological sense (concerning charity to act in the present) and the anagogical sense (concerning hope in what is desired in the future).11
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ‘GIFTS’ In 1267 Bonaventure, then residing at Paris as General of the Order of Friars Minor, preached a cycle of collationes on the Decalogue to the friars of the University of Paris. This is presented as the general Plan (to be precise, the Law) of God for humanity. In 1268 he preached a second cycle of collationes on Grace, and in particular on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are the divine inspirations, in the exercise of which man progresses along the path of actualising the Law. This work becomes a summa of ascetic and dynamic theology. While the ‘Itinerarium’ (as also the ‘De Triplici Via’) offers a predominantly speculative itinerary, in which the successive stages are in logical order, but certainly not pedagogical (indeed, recognising God in the ‘vestige’ is certainly not a job for beginners), the collationes de donis (and their continuation in the Hexaëmeron) provide a concrete ascetical itinerary which goes its way step by step. According to scholastic theology, the seven ‘gifts’ of the Spirit are infused together in the justified soul; but they are ‘exercised’ (and ‘established’) by the spiritual man one after another.
11 Cf Hex 2.12-19, 13.11. Beginning with the exercise of the fear of God (and hence of contrition), the spiritual man little by little, through piety (and prayer) begins to grow in the interior knowledge of the mysteries of God, in strength to bear witness, in counsel for adapting to the particular will of God regarding him, and lastly, through the spiritual understanding (or intuition) of Christ in his own heart, he attains more and more wisdom, the experimental knowledge of God. In this itinerary, it is not possible to avoid the delicate relationship between the gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom (in the biblical and spiritual tradition), and the dianoëtic habits of the same name treated by Aristotle. We can find clarifications and some very interesting classifications at the end of our study.
«Hic notandum est, quod
Claritas scientiae PHILOSOPHICAE est magna secundum opinionem hominum mundialium, parua tamen est in comparatione ad claritatem scientiae christianae. […].
Verum est quod scientia PHILOSOPHICA et theologica est donum dei; proprie uero est donum dei scientia gratuita; scientia uero gloriosa non tantum est donum sed etiam praemium. […].
Scientia PHILOSOPHICA nihil aliud est quam ueritatis ut scrutabilis notitia certa. Scientia theologica est ueritatis ut credibilis notitia pia. Scientia gratuita est ueritatis ut diligibilis notitia sancta. Scientia gloriosa est ueritatis ut desiderabilis notitia sempiterna. Primo incipiamus a scientia PHILOSOPHICA. […]. Ipse [Deus…] describit scientiam PHILOSOPHICAM tripliciter, id est secundum triplicem rationem describit eam, ut naturalem, ut rationalem, et ut moralem, scilicet in quantum est causa essendi, ratio intelligendi et ordo uiuendi. […]. PHILOSOPHICA scientia uia est ad alias scientias sed qui ibi uult stare cadit in tenebras» [Don 4.3 + 4.5-6 + 4.12].* Human and philosophical knowledge is contrasted with Christian knowledge, which is three-fold: theological, gratuitous and eternal. The text shows a profound depth which has already been noted by scholars.1
Type of knowledge ‘epistomological status’ formality required: ‘notitia’ truth, as object of [natural] philosophical certain rational inquiry [supernatural] theological pious faith gratuitous holy charity glorious eternal hope
Note that only gratuitous knowledge (in solidarity with glorious knowledge) is counted among the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The other two, natural (philosophical) and supernatural (theological) knowledge, are rather dianoëtical virtues, or intellectual habits: except that theological knowledge starts from articles assumed by faith (through the intellectus fidei), while philosophical knowledge starts from first principles acquired through the habit of intellectus principiorum. The theological difference between theological knowledge and gratuitous (gift) knowledge, is that the first
1 Cf J.-F. BONNEFOY, Le Saint Esprit et ses dons selon Saint Bonaventu- re, Paris 1929.
32 can be acquired by study applied to faith, even merely unformed faith (i.e. not necessarily informed by grace), and hence it is not lost by sin; whereas gratuitous knowledge is given by the Holy Spirit to all the faithful who are in grace, even the unlearned.
*[Translation from ‘Franciscan Archive’ website: www.franciscan-archive.org/ “Here it must be noted, what is the brightness of philosophical knowledge, of theological knowledge, of gratuitous knowledge, and (what is) the brightness of glorious knowledge. The brightness of philosophical knowledge is great according to the opinion of worldly men, nevertheless it is small in comparison to the brightness of Christian knowledge. […] Philosophical knowledge is nothing other than a certain knowing of the truth as scrutable. Theological knowledge is a pious knowing of the truth as credible. Gratuitous knowledge is a holy knowing of the truth as loveable. Glorious knowledge is a sempiternal knowing of the truth as desirable. First let us begin from philosophical knowledge. […] He [God} describes philosophical knowledge in a threefold manner, that is He describes it according to a threefold reason, as natural, as rational, and as moral, that is, inasmuch as it is "the cause of existing, the reason for understanding and the order of living. […] Philosophical knowledge is the way to the other sciences; but he who wants to stand still [stare] there, falls into darkness.”]
THE MACROSTRUCTURE OF THE ‘SIX VISIONS’ We have arrived, finally, at the last and most articulate of Bonaventure’s expositions of the division of the sciences,
33 contained in the (reported) text of the Collationes in Hexaëmeron, preached at Paris before the Friars Minor of the University, between Easter and Pentecost 1273, and interrupted, as we know, by the naming of Bonaventure as Cardinal Bishop of Albano. We possess two recensions of these conferences.2
The Collations in Hexaëmeron wish to guide the hearers, who are all committed Christians, in the exercise of the final gifts, and in particular in developing the intuition of the inspired Word through six stages, the first of which (paradoxically) will include philosophy.
«Clavis […] contemplationis est intellectus triplex, scilicet intellectus Verbi increati, per quod omnia producuntur; intellectus Verbi incarnati, per quod omnia reparantur; intellectus Verbi inspirati, per quod omnia revelantur. […]. Intelligentia enim opus est in visione. Visio autem est triplex […]: corporalis, imaginaria, intellectualis. […]. Praeter has est visio sestuplex […] quibus minor mundus fit perfectus, sicut maior mundus sex diebus. Est visio intelligentiae [1] per naturam inditae, et visio intelligentiae [2] per fidem sublevatae, [3] per Scripturam eruditae, [4] per contemplationem suspensae, [5] per prophetiam illustratae, [6] per raptum in Deum absorptae. Ad has sequitur visio [7] septima animae glorificatae» [Hex 3.2 + 3.22-24].*
‘Intellectus’, here, is not the faculty but its habit (or rather its habitual activity, in the background). To translate it,
2 The first (longer) recension is that of the editio maior of Quaracchi; the other (shorter, but which the reportator says was revised and corrected by Bonaventure himself) has since been edited by Fr Delorme (cf supra, note 4).
34 we may use the English terminology (made famous by Lonergan) of ‘insight’, or else the Italian terms ‘intelligenza’ or ‘intellezione’ (making clear that we are not talking of an action at a point in time, but a continuing activity), or else ‘intuizione’ (which, however, is not immediate). The source, often misunderstood, of this concept is probably the doctrine of ‘epignosis’, contained in the first chapter of the Second Epistle of Peter: the intuition of Christ ‘according to the Spirit’ which the Christian has by faith, and on which every virtue and Christian ‘gnosis’ is based. Behind this doctrine is the problem of ‘second hand Christians’, who like Paul himself3 had not known the historic Jesus (‘according to the flesh’), but only the Christ of faith (‘according to the Spirit’), which was however the essential Christ. (In a nutshell, this is the solution to the problem that Kierkegaard handed on historically as ‘Lessing’s Problem’) . This conception of biblical origin obviously interweaves with the Aristotelian doctrine of understanding as the dianoëtic habit of the first principles.
*[José de Vinck’s translation (St Anthony Guild Press, Paterson N.J., 1970): “And so, the key to contemplation is a threefold understanding: of the Uncreated Word by whom all things
3 Cf 2Cor 5,16; HexD 2.2.6-7.
35 are brought forth; of the Incarnate Word by whom all things are restored; and of the Inspired Word by whom all things are revealed. […] Understanding is needed in the case of a vision… Generally speaking, there are three kinds of vision: the bodily, the imaginary, and the intellectual. […] Besides these visions, there is one that is sixfold: […] through these the lesser world is made perfect, as was the greater one in six days. There is a vision through that understanding which is given by nature, and a vision through that understanding which is lifted up by faith, taught by Scripture, exalted by contemplation, enlightened by prophecy, absorbed by rapture in God. And after these there is a seventh vision of the glorified soul.”]
There is a distinction between an intuition of the uncreated Word (which all men have in a general way in every true knowing), one of the incarnate Word (which all believers have in recognising Jesus as the Christ), and one of the inspired Word (which only the just have). Only this last intuition is the understanding which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. An extraordinary effect of this understanding is the threefold vision (bodily, imaginative and intellectual) granted to ‘visionaries’, according to a classical distinction stemming from Augustine.4 But an ordinary effect of such understanding is the sixfold vision granted to the just while still in via. Clarifying the list in the light of the succeeding treatment, we can say that they are six chronologically successive phases (and six levels of growing perfection and difficulty) in the exercise of the understanding: innate research, hearing by faith, biblical meditation, contemplation, prophecy and mystical union. (The two last are in fact
4 De Genesi ad litteram 1.12.6.15.
36 achieved by very few, but in principle they are accessible to all believers).
THE INTRODUCTORY CLASSIFICATION OF THE FIRST VISION We come, then, to the first vision, introduced by a rigorous and complete classification which is the philosophical basis of the structure of philosophy itself. (Nevertheless, this must not make us forget that we are within the first vision given by the understanding of the inspired Word).
«Prima visio animae est intelligentiae per naturam inditae. […]. PHILOSOPHI dederunt novem scientias et polliciti sunt dare decimam, scilicet contemplationem.
Sed multi PHILOSOPHI, dum se voluerunt dividere a tenebris erroris, magnis erroribus se immiscuerunt; “dicentes enim, se esse sapientes, stulti facti sunt” [Rm 1,22]; superbientes de sua scientia, luciferiani facti. “Apud Aegyptios densissimae tenebrae erant, sed sanctis tuis maxima erat lux”. Omnes, qui fuerunt in lege naturae, ut patriarchae, prophetae, PHILOSOPHI, filii lucis fuerunt 5. Lux animae veritas est; haec lux “nescit occasum”. Ita enim fortiter irradiat super animam, ut etiam non possit cogitari non esse nec exprimi, quin homo sibi contradicat: quia si veritas non est, verum est
5 In the alternative reportatio, the philosophers too stand in the darkness, while only the sacred writers, the authors of the Bible, are children of light: «“apud Aegyptios erant tenebrae, filiis autem tuis”, scilicet patriarchis, legi- slatoribus, sacerdotibus, prophetis, apostolis, “fuit lux” […] in revelatione apertae veritatis » [HexD 1.1.1; cf Wisd 17,20; 18,1]. [With the Egyptians was darkness, but with your children, that is, the patriarchs, lawgivers, priests, prophets, apostles, was light… in the revelation of open truth.] Either version is plausible, but personally I prefer the other.
37 veritatem non esse; ergo aliquid est verum; et si aliquid est verum, verum est veritatem esse: ergo si veritas non est, veritas est […]. Emittit autem haec lux tres radios primos; unde in Ecclesiastico: “Tripliciter sol exurens montes”. Est enim veritas rerum, veritas signorum seu vocum et veritas morum. Veritas rerum est indivisio entis et esse, veritas sermonum est adaequatio vocis et intellectus, veritas morum est rectitudo vivendi. Et istae sunt tres partes PHILOSOPHIAE, quas PHILOSOPHI non invenerunt, ut essent; sed quia iam secundum veritatem essent, in anima adverterunt, secundum Augustinum [De civ. Dei 16.5]. Haec triplex veritas consideratur ex parte principii originantis, ex parte subiecti suscipientis et ex parte obiecti terminantis. Respicit autem originans principium in ratione triplicis causae: originantis, exemplantis et terminantis. […]. Ex parte autem animae omnis irradiatio veritatis super intelligentiam nostram fit tripliciter: aut fit super ipsam absolute, et sic pertinet ad notitiam rerum speculandarum; aut in comparatione ad interpretativam, et sic est veritas vocum; aut in comparatione ad affectivam et motivam, et sic est veritas operabilium. Ex parte obiecti sic. Omne quod est, aut est a natura, aut a ratione, aut a voluntate. Secundum primam est notitia, quae est de rebus, secundo modo de sermonibus, tertio modo de moribus» [Hex 4.1-5].*
Leaving aside the problem of the threefold definition of truth, and going back to the problem of the tenth, contemplative, knowledge, let us concentrate on the complete classification of the three parts of philosophy (that for the structure of philosophy in itself, not according to
38 historical contingencies). All that exists is either a res or a sign or behaviour. If it is a res (which does not have the impersonal overtones of our term ‘thing’), it is inserted into the ‘world’ of nature (which we know to be on three planes: divine, spiritual and corporeal; the last being endowed with three types of ‘reason’- the seminal, internal to itself, the intellectual and the ideal which are internal to spiritual and divine nature respectively). If it is a sign it is inserted into the ‘world’ of reason (and is regulated by its laws). If it is behaviour, it is inserted into the ‘world’ of the will (and is regulated by its rules).
The classification is so strict that even the supernatural dimension cannot be conceived as a reality external to nature: it is in fact understood as the capacity to act which is proper to the divine nature but gratuitously communicated by God to angelic and human nature (this trans-natural action is called ‘sursumactio’). In other words, there is no such thing as a ‘supernature’, but an exercise of a created nature supernatural to the created nature itself.
Correspondence between the quality of the Subject, the Object and the Principle SPHERE TYPE OF OBJECT FACULTY OF THE SUBJECT “QUALITY” OF THE PRINCIPLE natural things (of nature)
*[José de Vinck’s translation: “The first vision of the soul is by means of understanding naturally given. […]
39 The philosophers have offered nine sciences and promised a tenth: contemplation. But many philosophers, while attempting to avoid the darkness of error, have themselves become involved in major errors. While professing to be wise, they have become fools [Rom 1.22]. Because they boasted of their knowledge, these philosophers have become the likes of Lucifer. With the Egyptians was the densest darkness, but with your saints was the greatest light. All those who properly followed the Law of Nature, the patriarchs, the prophets, and the philosophers, were the sons of light. Truth is the light of the soul. This light never fails. Indeed, it shines so powerfully upon the soul that this soul cannot possibly believe it to be non-existing, or abstain from expressing it, without inner contradiction. For if truth does not exist, it is true that truth does not exist: and so something is true. And if something is true, it is true that truth exists. Hence if truth does not exist, truth exists! […] Now this light sends out three primary radiations, hence in Ecclesiasticus: The sun, three times as much, burneth the mountains [Ecclus 43.4]. There is, indeed, a truth of things, a truth of signs or words and a truth of behaviour. The truth of things is indivision between existence and essence, the truth of words is equality between expression and understanding, the truth of behaviour is the rectitude of a morally good life. And these three are the three parts of philosophy which the philosophers did not invent, since they are: but because they already existed in the order of truth, they became the concern of the soul, as Augustine explains. This threefold radiation may be considered from the viewpoint of the originating principle, from that of the receiving subject, and from that of the object in which it terminates. For it concerns the originating principles in terms
40 of the three causes: the primary (efficient), the exemplar (formal), and the final. […] On the part of the soul [the receiving subject], every radiation of truth over our power of understanding comes about in one of three ways: it shines upon it absolutely, and then refers to things to be seen; or in relation to the interpretative faculty, and then it consists in the truth of words; or in relation to the affective or motive faculty, and then it is the truth in things to be done. It is the same as regards the object. Everything that exists depends upon essence, reason, or will. The first leads to the knowledge of things, the second to the knowledge of words, and the third to the knowledge of behaviour.”] Natural philosophy studies things (that is, objects: note that here Bonaventure already makes use of the ‘subject/ object’ pairing in what would become the modern or post- Cartesian sense). Rational and moral philosophy study those particular ‘things’ or events which are language (note the quasi-synonymity between ‘signa’, ‘voces’ and ‘sermones’) and behaviour endowed with meaning. This formulation reminds us of the structure of ‘World 2’ within ‘World 1’, according to Popper.
The fact that here the philosophers are mentioned as being ‘ancient’ has led to some errors in interpretation, as if philosophy itself was for Bonaventure merely a past stage, no longer repeatable. Certainly, for him, to turn to philosophy would not be the mark of true philosophers (understood properly as ‘lovers of wisdom’), but of ‘philosophisers’,6 because philosophy is a ‘way’: “To want to stop in it is a fall into darkness”; in the sciences there is a
6 Cf respectively Itin 1.9 and De Tribus Quaestionibus 12; HexD 1.15-16.
41 very great danger (and the argument here is either with the heterodox artistae, or with his confrère Roger Bacon, so devoted to the experimental sciences), the danger precisely of “turning back to the slavery of Egypt”.7 All the same- one must be exact- this is only a danger, into which it is possible but not necessary to fall; it is also opportune to run the risk for the benefit of the Church, given that in theology as well one must first investigate the literal sense, that is, fill the jar of water right to the brim.8
In effect, Bonaventure freely admits that “there are in the Church […]
With logical argument (clearly Aristotelian) and pragmatism, Bonaventure not only utilises the principle of non-contradiction, but also the self-reference of truth. Its light, “which knows no setting” (a biblical quotation mediated through the ‘Paschal proclamation’10), alludes to Christ who is Wisdom, and hence to the doctrine of the natural and supernatural illumination on the part of the Word. The whole Bonaventurian dynamism regarding knowledge is in this ‘chiaroscuro’: it is not possible to
7 Don 4.12; Hex 17.25; 19.12; Hex 1.9; for the argument, cf Bérubé, cit.; P. Michaud-Quantin, Études sur le vocabulaire philosophique du moyen âge, Roma, Ateneo 1970. 8 Cf Hex 19.15 and 22.9; 19.8. 9 Hex 22.9 and 1.13. 10 Wisd. 7,10, applied (in the proclamation) to the Paschal candle, the symbol of Christ the light of the world.
42 maintain that one cannot know any truth, but it is not possible either to maintain that one does not fall into at least some error; “The philosopher is bound to fall into some error unless he is helped by the light of faith”; on this point Thomas is still more radical: for him, ‘pure’ reason, in investigating reality, makes mistakes usually (‘plerumque’) and not just sometimes.11
THE VARIANT OF THE SEVEN CENTRES By way of parenthesis, we can take a step backwards in the reading of the text. The first three collations in Hexaëmeron constitute a general statement of intent and the determination, respectively, of the centre and middle of the journey (Christ), of its goal (the gift of wisdom) and of the point of action at which the hearers should already have arrived (the gift of understanding). Thus, at the very beginning, Bonaventure has a way to illustrate his meaning in the concrete context of his hearers (student friars and professors at the University), with the effective and paradoxical affirmation of the Christocentrism of all the sciences.
«Propositum igitur nostrum est ostendere, quod in Christo “sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae Dei absconditi” [Col 2,3] et ipse est medium omnium scientiarum. Est autem septiforme medium, scilicet [1] essentiae, [2] naturae, [3] distantiae, [4] doctrinae, [5] modestiae, [6] iustitiae, [7] concordiae. [1] Primum est de consideratione metaphysici, [2] secundum physici, [3] tertium mathematici,
11 The two texts, already compared by Van Steenberghen, are in Sent 2.18.2.1 ad 6; SCG 1.4.5.
43 [4] quartum logici, [5] quintum ethici, [6] sextum politici seu iuristarum, [7] septimum theologi» [Hex 1.11]*
In the continuation of the text, it is said that Christ becomes the centre of each science in a particular Christological mystery; moreover metaphysics, physics and politics are treated in a fuller way than usual, as we shall see in the following scheme.
Without getting involved in Christological questions, it is enough for us to note some important variants in the classification of the sciences. The need to associate the sciences with the Christological mysteries, conventionally but happily seven in number, obliges Bonaventure to combine several sciences, but the criterion for combination involves something more than the way it was perceived at the time in the concrete articulation of the University of Paris. The first discipline (Metaphysics), part of the second (Physics), the third (Mathematics), the fourth (Logic), the fifth (Ethics) and part of the sixth (Politics) constituted the teaching of the Faculty of Arts. Grammar and Rhetoric are not counted, probably because they are not separate from the competence of Logic. In the second and the sixth science, then, there were included the teaching of the Faculties (respectively) of Medicine and of Law (significantly, connected with the corresponding philosophical sciences). On the other hand, the seventh science, which constitutes the teaching of the Faculty of Theology, is entirely autonomous with respect to philosophy, and crowns the sequence of the sciences with an interesting notation: “Theology […] considers how the world made by God is led back to God. Theology, in fact, although also dealing with the works of creation, deals above all with the works of reconciliation.”
44 As a whole, perhaps, there emerges as well a new way of speaking. Anticipating the modern way of looking at the matter, the sciences are divided not only ‘in res’, but also ‘in scientes’; that is, they are articulated according to the functional divisions of the scientific community.
*[José de Vinck’s translation: “Our intent, then, is to show that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and that He Himself is the central point of all understanding. He is the central point in a sevenfold sense, in terms of essence, nature, distance, doctrine, moderation, justice and concord. The first is in the metaphysical order, the second in the physical, the third in the mathematical, the fourth in the logical, the fifth in the ethical, the sixth in the political or juridical, and the seventh in the theological.”]
45 Another variant in the classification of sciences is as it were hidden in a paragraph treating of metaphysics.
«Metaphysicus […] licet assurgat ex consideratione principiorum substantiae creatae et particularis ad universalem et increatam et ad illud esse, ut habet rationem principii, medii et finis ultimi, non tamen in ratione Patris et Filii e Spiritus sancti. Metaphysicus enim assurgit ad illud esse considerandum in ratione principii omnia originantis; et in hoc convenit cum physico, qui origines rerum considerat. Assurgit etiam ad considerandum illud esse in ratione ultimi finis; et in hoc convenit cum morali sive ethico, qui reducit omnia ad unum summum bonum ut ad finem ultimum, considerando felicitatem sive practicam, sive speculativam. Sed ut considerat illud esse in ratione omnia exemplantis, cum nullo communicat et verus est metaphysicus» [Hex 1.13].
The interweaving of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and Christian ideas is interesting. God is considered as a universal substance by the non-finiteness of his being, and so the universality of his influence. Rather than speaking of efficient cause, Bonaventure speaks of originating principle, using therefore a more general metaphysical notion, so as to be able to attribute it to God, and really in God (the Father); if Aristotle had directed Physics towards research into origins (but not only that) and ethics to the determination of ends, Bonaventure makes for it a specific domain; with a severe but sharp criticism, he considers the Metaphysics of Aristotle as a masked Physics and Ethics (that is to say, limited to immanence) through the rejection of exemplary causality. We should say that for Bonaventure, exemplary causality (which filters Neoplatonism through Christianity)
46 means simply to affirm that God knows and wills the world,12 while for us it means that the truth of the world is really meta-physical: deny that, and one sets off a chain of consequences.
Finally, some stylistic features are significant: if in the first text the term ‘verus metaphysicus’ implies a metaphysics of biblical and Neoplatonic inspiration aimed at transcendence, and not reducible to physics or ethics (as that of Aristotle would risk), in the following part of the collatio the terms ‘verus metaphysicus’, ‘nostra metaphysica’, ‘nostra logica’, ‘iudicium nostrum’ send us back explicitly to the idea of Christian philosophy (which we shall discuss at the end).
*[José de Vinck’s translation: “Although the metaphysician is able to rise from the consideration of created and particular substance to that of the universal and uncreated and to the very notion of being, so that he reaches the ideas of beginning, center and final end, yet he does not attain the notions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For the metaphysician rises to the notion of this being by seeing it in the light of the original principle of all things, and in this he meets physical science that studies the origin of things. He also rises to the notion of this being in the light
12 Cf Hex 6.1-6
47 of the final end, and in this he meets moral philosophy or ethics, which leads all things back to the one Supreme Good as to the final end by considering either practical or speculative happiness. But when he considers this being in the light of that principle which is the exemplary of all things, he meets no other science, but is a true metaphysician.”]
THE PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE ‘FIRST VISION’ After treating in a summary way (but completely) the contents of the nine philosophical sciences, and before passing to the treatment of philosophical Wisdom, Bonaventure recapitulates the division of philosophy.
«Haec sunt novem lumina illustrantia animam, scilicet veritas rerum, vocum, morum: rerum, scilicet essentiarum, figurarum, naturarum quantum ad quidditatum differentias occultas, quantum ad quantitatum proportiones manifestas, quantum ad naturarum proprietates mixtas. Primo metaphysica, secundo mathematica, tertio naturalis seu physica. Veritas vocum tripliciter: quantum ad locutiones, argumentationes, persuasiones; primo quantum ad locutiones indicantes mentis conceptus; secundo quantum ad argumentationes trahentes mentis assensus; tertio quantum ad persuasiones inclinantes mentis affectus; prima grammatica, secunda logica, tertia rhetorica. Veritas morum tripliciter: quantum ad modestias, industrias, iustitias: modestias, quantum ad exercitationes consuetudinales; industrias, quantum ad speculationes intellectuales; iustitias, quantum ad leges politicas. prima
48 virtus consuetudinalis, secunda virtus intellectualis, tertia virtus iustitialis.
Has novem scientias dederunt PHILOSOPHI et illustrati sunt. “Deus enim illis revelavit”. Postmodum voluerunt ad sapientiam pervenire, et veritas trahebat eos; et promiserunt dare sapientiam, hoc est beatitudinem, hoc est intellectum adeptum; promiserunt, inquam, discipulis suis» [Hex 5.22-23].*
Some considerations on the novelty of this classification as regards the usual schemes: above all, the text opens and closes (by ‘thematic inclusion’) with a reference to the ‘illustratio’ of the philosophers, making plain that the hidden theme of the text is illumination.
We should note that all the objects of science are in the plural, which sounds rather unusual in scholastic Latin, and is a constant marks of Bonaventure’s style. Science is in fact the consideration of objects, and such a consideration is possible only by differentiating, or leading back multiplicity to different unities. The plurals might not be limited simply to indicating the gradations of essences, but also the singular differences (according to a concrete usage). Essences, configurations (‘figurae’) and natures are usually not three things, but three ontological and epistemological levels of the same things. The ‘consideratio scientialis’ (or the observation of things, regarded strictly as objects) is contrasted with ‘contemplatio sapientialis’ (or the calm
*[José de Vinck’s translation (words in
49 “These are the nine luminaries enlightening the soul, to wit, the truth of things, words and actions; of THINGS, that is, of essences, of figures, and of natures; in their ‘suchness’ referring to hidden differences, in their quantity referring to manifest proportions, in their nature referring to mixed properties.
13 HexD 1.3.1
50 itself (‘convertere super se’) by reflection, and then directed by speculation to the intelligences, so as to be able, finally, to attain the contemplation of God; by way of reasoning, experience and ‘contuition’ (that is, not immediate intuition, but mediated by the world ‘understood as a whole’ dependent upon the Creator).
The distinction which is formally made here of the wisdom of metaphysics (understood as ontology) is a most remarkable fact, philosophically. Although the whole Neoplatonic tradition had already distinguished ‘henology’ and ‘ontology’, we have here a quite different terminology. Wisdom, according to a rule which unites Greek and Christian tradition (biblical and monastic), and which may be called ‘Christian Socratism’ is the understanding of self, of the intelligences, and of God.
Man understands things (and the artificial world of language and institutions) as objects by science, which is the foundation; while he understands himself as subject by reflection, the intelligences by speculation, and God as source by reasoning, experience and contuition.14
The division of moral philosophy is new, and shows traces of the vigorous debate at the time regarding Aristotelian ethics. The terminology adopted by Bonaventure immediately recalls the Nicomachean Ethics.
Thus, the term ‘virtus consuetudinalis’ translates the ‘aretè ethiké’ of Aristotle, that is, the overall name for all these moral virtues- such as temperance, fortitude, liberality
14 Cf Hex 6.
51 etc.- which are acquired by good habit and which regulate the various passions according to the just mean. The treatment of them covers Books III and IV of the Nicomachean Ethics. The term ‘virtus intellectualis’ in turn translates ‘aretè dianoetiké’, the overall name for the dianoëtic virtues (habits of thought such as prudence, knowledge, art, understanding, wisdom).15 Their treatment is in Book VI of the Ethics. The term ‘virtus iustitialis’ corresponds to the Aristotelian ‘dikaiosýne’ (but it also includes ‘philía’), whose treatment not only occupies Books V, VIII and IX of the Ethics, but in a sense the whole of the Politics as well.
In his last systematisation of moral philosophy, then, Bonaventure on the one hand eliminates ‘economy’ and reduces ‘politics’ to the part of ethics that studies justice and the relational virtues (such as friendship), and on the other hand re-reads ethics, gathering it into three parts: the ethics of the passions (or of the affection), the ethics of thought (or of the intellect) and the ethics of actions (or of effect), as a basis for a threefold partition of the whole matter of morality, common also to Thomas.16
From the contemporary Parisian artists, Bonaventure takes the idea of a metaphysics of a sapiential and beatifying tendency: while condemning it in the name of Christian faith, he does not in fact undervalue the neo-Aristotelian ideal of
15 Cf Eth Nc 1.13 (1103a). The dianoëtic habits (not to be confused with the supernatural virtues and gifts which have the same or similar names) are above all- circa necessaria- wisdom (circa causas altissimas: principles of being), understanding (circa principia- principles of knowing), knowledge (circa conclusiones- the contents of knowledge), and then- circa contingentia- prudence (as to agibilia) and art (as to factibilia) [HexD 1.2.12]. 16 Cf 3SN 33.2.1d co; 34.3.2a co.
52 the beatitude of the intellect that has attained its goal (‘intellectus adeptus’).17 He makes of it on the contrary a key-structure in his doctrine of natural desire for the supernatural, a desire which, however, is of itself necessarily put into check (having to desire the impossible), and so becomes aware of the new possibility of grace.
17 Hex 5.22 and 33
53 SYSTEMATIC: THE TAXONOMIC SCHEMATIZATION OF THE TEXTS
In virtue of the principle of homology between homogeneous complete taxonomies, we must suppose their invariance unless there are precise reasons for change over time (if the author has changed the terminology of the system, in such a way that the succeeding terminology is substituted for the preceding). Bonaventure, then, has elaborated various tentative divisions of knowledge, convergent but not totally identical. Leaving aside the marginal differences, and taking into consideration the developments which we have noted, we can try to ‘reconstruct’ a more comprehensive division than all the others. First of all, we can in this regard point to the complete internal articulation given by Bonaventure to theological knowledge.18 One can speak of God “vel per positionem, vel per ablationem”: “per affirmationem, a summo usque ad infimum; per ablationem, ab infimo usque ad summum; et iste modus est conveniens magis”19; but this double dynamism corresponds perfectly to the articulation of theology set out respectivly in the Breviloquium and the Itinerarium. The first treats all the theological matter in
18 Cf A. DI MAIO, San Bonaventura e la teologia francescana, § 9 and 14, in G. OCCHIPINTI, Storia della Teologia. 2. Da Pietro Abelardo a Roberto Bellarmino, Roma - Bologna 1996, p. 59-104. 19 Respectively De Triplici Via 3.11 (which recalls Augustine and Dio- nysius); Hex 2.33
54 seven parts “a summo, quod est Deus altissimus […] ad infimum, quod est infernale supplicium” (in other words, from top to bottom), but also “a primo, quod est primum principium […] ad ultimum, quod est praemium aeternum” (or from first to last, according to the economy of salvation). The second goes back over the whole gamut of theology in seven stages (three double steps, then the destination) as “ascensus non corporalis, sed cordialis ab imo ad summum”. A third division of theology, however, in terms of the threefold reading of Scripture- allegorical, tropological and anagogical- is only hinted at.20
Thus we distinguish an affirmative and descending theology, structured as a chronological process (God in eternity; the formation by nature at the beginning of time; the de-formation by sin; the re-formation by grace in the fullness of time by means of the missions of Christ and of the Spirit; the sacramental con-formation by Christ in the Church; the dei-formation by glory at the end of time); and a negative, ascending theology, structured according to a ‘topological’ procedure: symbolic theology (of the vestige of God in the external macrocosm), the theology we may call ‘iconic’ (of the image and likeness of God in the internal microcosm), theology proper (of the names of God in his own superior nature) and mystical theology (of the union with God). The whole system of knowledge and reality is in the end placed within the threefold work of the Word: as uncreated, he is the light which enlightens every man, and the (general) foundation of philosophy; as incarnate he is the fullness of revelation and the foundation of theology; as inspired (or rendered present by the Spirit in the heart of every believer)
20 Respectively Breviloquium 1.1.2 (and cf. 0.6.5 and capitula); cf Itine- rarium capitula and 1.1-9; Reductio 5
55 he is the foundation of the inner Christian knowledge and wisdom.21
We see, then, a uniting together of philosophy, theology and mysticism in a typically Bonaventurian scheme. Moreover- proper to him, maybe- he has played an historically important role in bringing together ‘mysticism’ in the sense (usual today) of spiritual ascesis and ‘mystagogy’ and ‘mystical theology’ in the Dionysian understanding (the culmination of negative theology).
21 The sequences correspond to those of the parts of the Breviloquium and to those of the chapters of the Itinerarium (in the light of Itin 1.7). The expressions ‘-formation’ are intended to express (on the basis of Bonaventu- rian vocabulary) the structure of the titles of the parts of the Breviloquium, in the light (for example) of the Soliloquium 0.2, Itin 1.6 and 4.5, Hex 21.18; for the triple book, cf. De Mysterio Trinitatis 1.2 co, Lignum Vitae 41 and 46; Hex 3 and 12.
56 Bonaventurian system of knowledge
“INTELLECTUS” [regarding principles] = “intuition” of the WORD
uncreated incarnate inspir
reading of the book of nature reading of the book of Scripture reading of the b (exterior = Jesus, abbreviated word and interior)
“SCIENCE” gratui natural science supernatural science gift of k = PHILOSOPHY = THEOLOGY A: natural A: affirmative/descending B: negative/ascending 1. physical 1. God in himself Recognition of God 2. mathematical 2. Formatio by nature 1-2. By and in his vestigia 3. metaphysical 3. Deformatio by sin in corporeal nature B: rational 4-5. Reformatio by grace 3-4. By his images & 4. grammatical of Christ & of the Spirit in his likeness 5. logical 6. Conformatio in spiritual nature Six 6. rhetorical by means of the sacraments illumina C: morale 7. Deiformation by glory 5-6. By his manifestation – enquiry 7. ethical as Being – hea 8. “dianoetic” & in his revelation – medit 9. political as Good (= Love) – con 7. directly in ecstasy – prophecy – ecst
“WISDOM”
philosophical wisdom: theological wisdom true Christian w
- reflection on self (knowledge of God) = gift of wisdom - speculation on the intelligences (myst - contemplation of God by reason, experience, contuition = insufficient !
57 QUESTIONS: PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE TEXTS
The texts as schematised present no small difficulties and problems of interpretation. Above all, there is a two-fold problem about the reductio of the parts of philosophy to theological principles as set out by Bonaventure. In general, the procedure itself is perplexing, because the same elements (grouped in sets- ‘number groups’- having in common a fixed number ‘n’) can be taken back to different principles. In particular, then, one does not understand the value of an association of such heterogeneous elements: what do the sciences have to do with the divine persons or the nature of Christ or with his mysteries?
58 Problems regarding reductio Father Son Holy Spirit
NATURAL RATIONAL MORAL PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY
Divine nature Metaphysics Grammar Individual of Christ ethics
Spiritual Mathematics Logic Economy nature of Christ
Bodily nature Physics Rhetoric Politics of Christ
There then follow many problems about the value of the concept of ‘nature’, which we find at several levels of the Bonaventurian division. Are we dealing with an equivocal term? Further, what relationship is there between the physical plane and the natural plane, and between the metaphysical plane and the supernatural plane (given that the terms are etymologically equivalent)? An analogous problem is that of the different meanings (due to the bringing together of philosophical and biblical sources) of the terms ‘scientia’, ‘intellectus’ and ‘sapientia’.
59 Problems regarding the concept of ‘nature’
[natural sphere] 0– [Prescientific knowledge] 0.1– Tecnique: application of knowledge to the realisation of artificial plans 0.2– Sensible knowledge: knowledge of natural forms 1–Natural science = Philosophy 1.1– natural 1.1.1– metaphysics [etymologically equivalent to supernatural]: studies the ideal reasons of things, which are in the divine nature 1.1.2– mathematics: studies the intellectual reasons of things, which are in the spiritual nature 1.1.3– physics [etymologically equivalent to natural]: studies the seminal reasons of things, which are in the corporeal nature 1.2– rational 1.3– moral [supernatural sphere in the wide sense] 2– Supernatural science [in the strict sense] = theology 3– Gratuitous science + 4– Glorious science
Finally, there arises the problem of the massive weight Bonaventure gives to topological metaphors. What philosophical value do metaphors have? And however can their application to concepts and things be entirely different from univocal?
Problems regarding topological metaphors
“ nature reasons steps lights place” [ ecstasy beyond] a natura ideal divine supernatu bove divina reasons of things names [= theology ral light of of revelation] Scripture w natura intellectu images & interior ithin spirituale al reasons of likeness light of reason things
60 [ natura seminal vestige inferior under] corporea reasons of things light of = things perception in their natura o propria utside exterior light of technique
Things are still more complicated if we take into consideration all the correspondences between Bonaventure’s established , but very variable, ‘number groups’.22
Ultimately, the relations between philosophy and theology raise a series of difficulties and questions. However can philosophy, which corresponds to the book of nature containing the manifestation of the uncreated Word, fit in as the first vision of the inspired Word? How can philosophy be science which by its nature tends towards wisdom, but is not able to attain it? And what does this mean in the context of the radical Parisian Aristotelianism? And what underlies the reductio, making the correspondence between the theological ‘number groups’ and the philosophical ones?
22 By way of example, one may consider the following groups with an internal numbering that does not allow an isomorphic combination: 1 Begin- ning, 2 Middle, 3 End; 1 fontal fullness of the Father, 2 procession (by gene- ration) of the Son, 3 procession of the Spirit, 1/4 Creation; 1 Unity, 2 Truth, 3 Goodness, 4 Beauty or Justice; 1 things (grasped by the speculative intellect), 2 understanding, 3 affection, 4 effect; 1 natural, 2 rational, 3 moral, 4 artifi- cial; 2 faith, 3 hope, 4 charity; 1 literal sense, 2 allegorical sense, 3 anagogical sense, 4 moral sense.
61 METHODOLOGY: THE CONCEPT OF ‘NATURE’ AS KEY TO THE TEXTS
We shall try to resolve, or at least confront, the aforesaid questions with the help of a lexicographical method.
As to the question of the apparent terminological confusion in the conceptual and translinguistic (from Greek to Latin) history of the threefold division of philosophy, we must have recourse to the principle of the ‘specialisation of foreign words’, whereby when one language imports words from another, in respect of their lexical equivalent in the same language, the imported word tends to acquire a restricted and technical meaning, and no longer have its general meaning.
Let us take the three pairs of terms ‘naturalis’ and ‘physicus’, ‘rationalis’ and ‘logicus’, ‘moralis’ and ‘ethicus’. Among the elements of each pair there would be expressed, from a merely morpholexical point of view, the same concept; but by the phenomenon of the specialisation of foreign words, they end up not only by differing, but by placing themselves on two different taxonomic levels.
We must say first that the aforesaid terms of Greek origin were be imported from the technical language of philosophy, where they operated at first as feminine singular
62 adjectives (‘physiké’, ‘loghiké’, ‘ethiké’) attached to the substantive word ‘philosophia’ (expressed or often understood), or else as neuter plurals (‘ta physiká’, ‘ta metà ta physiká’, ‘ta ethicá’ etc.), to indicate the (specifically Aristotelian) treatise. Imported into Latin, where the termination of the nominative feminine singular and of the nominative neuter plural of first-declension adjectives is the same, the words ‘logicus’, ‘physicus’, ‘ethicus’, the neologism ‘metaphysicus’ (and other similar combined words) were each changed from simple adjectival words into sets of three substantive sub-terms: the masculine substantives ‘logicus’, ‘physicus’, ‘ethicus’, ‘metaphysicus’ etc. to indicate the students of the respective disciplines; the feminine substantives ‘logica’, ‘physica’ etc. to indicate the disciplines themselves; and the neuter plural substantives (e.g. ‘physica- physicorum’) to indicate the respective Aristotelian treatises (this last linguistic phenomenon is certainly connected with the scholastic approach to studying a discipline by studying the established texts). Hence, no longer functioning as adjectives, and characterised immediately as words in a technical language, no longer common, and referring to a very precise range of disciplines, the foreign words ‘logica’, ‘physica’, ‘ethica’ are no longer semantically equivalent to (respectively) ‘rationalis’, ‘naturalis’ and ‘moralis’, but end up by constituting hyponyms (just like other similar foreign words, such as ‘grammatica’, ‘rhetorica’, ‘metaphysica’, ‘politica’…).
As regards the different meanings of ‘scientia’, ‘intellectus’ and ‘sapientia’, the principle of ‘the combination of strange and foreign words with the same meaning’ has force (as we shall see in reconstructing the sources). The fact that different concepts, from outside a language, come to be expressed (for reasons of translation)
63 by the same term within the language, on the one hand reflects a certain semantic affinity perceived by the translators, and on the other hand constrains speakers (philosophers and theologians in particular) to harmonise all the meanings inherited from tradition around a significant nucleus (the so-called ‘vertex of the semantic cone’).
As to the question of the apparent equivocity of the concept of ‘nature’ (which looks to be a privileged key to understanding the deeper structure of the Bonaventurian system), we must have recourse to the principle of ‘mutual determination of antonyms’ and to the ‘principle of use’.
In general, but above all in the case of philosophical or theological terminology, always analogous and shifting, every concept is determined in relation to and in opposition to others. In the linguistic sense, omnis determinatio est negatio. So, to understand properly the meaning of a term, one must first determine precisely what antonym it is opposed to. Therefore, the word ‘natura’ will signify different things if we oppose it to ‘persona’, or to ‘voluntas’, or to ‘ars’ or to ‘gratia’. In the first case (for example when we say that in God there is one nature in three persons), ‘natura’ will mean ‘ontological commonness’ or ‘essence’; in the second case, ‘natura’ will indicate the field of what is conditioned ontologically or physically, in opposition to the field of liberty; in the third case, ‘natura’ will indicate (within the field of everything physically conditioned) the realm of living and non-living beings which produce and reproduce of themselves, as opposed to the field of human production; finally, in the fourth case, ‘natura’ will indicate the foundation that man has by creation, ‘gratia’ on the other hand being ‘superadditum’, and hence ‘not owed’ in the order of creation.
64 Through lexicographical reconstruction, drawing on the different meanings of the words of the group ‘-natur-’ actually used by Bonaventure (without however taking account of the explicit reductive definitions which the author himself gives of them),23 we can get back, conjecturally, to the vertex of the semantic cone: ‘natura’ has as its first and most general meaning nothing else but the notion of ‘ontologically communicable’ (every ‘quality’ the object of possible static commonness or dynamic communication on the part of one or more subjects), as opposed to ‘res’, understood as ‘ontologically incommunicable’ (every subject unrepeatable as to commonness or communication, above all the ‘person’). Nature so understood is at determined least implicitly by an adjective which expresses its ontological ‘measure’: ‘natura divina’, ‘natura spiritualis’, ‘natura corporea’, ‘natura humana’ (intersecting the previous two), ‘natura creata’ (or ‘natura naturata’, or simply ‘natura’ or ‘creatura’, understood as the union of the preceding natures as opposed to the creating divine nature. In this usage, ‘natura’ has a triple function (constitutive, concrete and collective): for instance, ‘natura humana’ signifies either the constitutive ‘quality’ which makes a subject a human being, or the concrete man (but in general, not this or that man), or the collection of all men; similarly ‘natura’ (‘creata’ understood ) would mean either the ensemble of all creatures (in a collective sense), or the creation itself (in a concrete sense: as universe and as book) or creatureliness (in a constitutive sense, opposed to grace and to glory, and
23 Cf A. DI MAIO, Il vocabolario bonaventuriano per la Natura, in “Mi- scellanea Francescana” 88 (1988), p. 301-356; La dottrina bonaventuriana sulla Natura, ibid. 89 (1989), p. 335-392; La concezione bonaventuriana della Natura quale potenziale oggetto di Comunicazione, ibid. 90 (1990), p. 61-116.
65 characterised by the laws of nature); while ‘natura’ (‘corporea’ understood) would mean either the ensemble of sensible beings (in a collective sense), or the physical world (in a concrete sense, as ‘machina mundialis’), or the natural or physical dynamic itself (in a constitutive sense, as the physical causal process).
Since in general every nature is communicable by an action (the divine processions in the divine nature, creation between the divine nature and created nature, generation within the various corporeal natures, and in an imperfect manner human art as a product of artificial design), we mean by ‘natural’ every perfection which is innate and ontologically connatural to a determinate nature, by ‘naturally acquired’ every perfection which while it is not innate comes about from a proper action of the nature itself, and by ‘supernaturally infused’ every perfection that is unable to follow from created nature, but is obtained by the gratuitous gift of the divine nature. And since human nature (made in the image of the divine) has the power to communicate also by intelligence and will, we see that with the natural sphere in the strict sense there are associated the rational and moral spheres (which yet belong to the sphere of the naturally acquired).
From this brief notation, it is clear that the confusion is not in the Bonaventurian use of the concept of nature, but in the unthinking way in which the modern reader confuses the different meanings and levels of terminology (one thinks of the frequent equivocation in mistaking ‘natural law’ understood as an ethical norm situated in created nature generally and human nature in particular, for ‘natural law’ understood as a causal physical process…).
66 As regards, then, the question of the evident variability of the reductio, and of the use of corresponding metaphors, we must recall both the principle of homology between homogeneous taxonomies, and a principle of metaphorical relativity.
Let us recall schematically the Bonaventurian semantic system of reductio (freely inspired by Dionysius): 24 reductio is making evident the latent unity in the division of the many, just as resolutio is making evident the latent simplicity in the composition of the multiplicity.
Semantic system of “reductio”
divisio :: reductio compositio :: resolutio
MULTA :: UNUM MULTIPLEX :: SIMPLEX latet patet latet patet
Every classification, then, whether it be conventional or entitrely arbitrary, which is constructed according to a diairetically exhaustive criterion, must be superimposable upon any other classification which (though it be entirely different in its contents) is constructed according to an homologous criterion. In other words, it will always be possible to establish an isomorphism between one classification and the other, varying according to how the criterion selected by the correspondence varies (as we shall see better in the last section). Ultimately, if in order to exhaustively divide the semantic universe it is decided to adopt the metaphorical classification of ‘supra’, ‘intra’, ‘infra’, such a classification must be isomorphic not only to
24 Cf Sent 2.24a.2.1 ad 8; Red 7 & 26; Hex 1.17 & 3.32.
67 the three fundamental ontological dgrees of being (or the three natures, divine, spiritual and corporeal), but also to the classification of the three levels or rationes (ideal, intellectual and seminal) contained in corporeal nature alone, without this implying any incoherence or vagueness in the system (in fact there is a rigorous way of treating even vague concepts).
This is the more so because many of the metaphors adopted by Bonaventure are relational, and hence they change meaning according to the purpose for which they are chosen. It would be like accusing someone of incoherence if he said he had left a book inside the room but outside the drawer, or someone else who when asked by two beggars which way to go, regarding the same destination but from opposite directions, told the first to turn right and the second to turn left…
Finally, as to the question of philosophy (the knowledge of the per se natural) being located as the first vision of the understanding of the inspired Word (which is supernatural), one can answer in the first place that Christian ascetics retraces the study of philosophy, placing it within a new (Christocentric) horizon of meaning, and in the second place that philosophy is the object of the understanding of the inspired Word, not as regards the nine sciences but as regards the wisdom promised by philosophy and not given by them. In other words, grace would bring to a conclusion a process natural in itself, but incurably interrupted by sin. One can discuss the teaching from a theoretical point of view, but one cannot surely accuse it of incoherence or confusion of planes.
68 FINAL HERMENEUTIC
In the light of all the points considered so far, we can try to put forward an hypothesis for a global interpretation: the Bonaventurian division of knowing is based upon the idea of an “original and originating structure” of reality.
We may presume (although we cannot prove it) that Bonaventure visualised the original and originating structure metaphorically like a Franciscan cross or T.
According to Ezekiel the Tau- the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and thus a symbol of completion- was the “sign of the most High God on the foreheads of the elect; in the Apocalypse the Tau- a Greek letter in the shape of the cross of Jesus- was stamped by the angel of the sixth seal and by another angel who came from the East, identified by the second generation of Franciscans with Francis, the alter Christus 25.
25 Cf Hex 16.29 & 20.29-30.
69 The original and originating theological structure (the “Tau” and the intelligible “circle”)
Natura divina Father Son / Word Holy Spirit / Love [natura naturante] Natura spirituale “formatio” (nature) Human soul deiformatio (glory) [natura naturata] of Christ Natura corporea “deformatio” (sin) Human body conformatio
“reformatio” (grace )
To be sure, Bonaventure did not explicitly describe the Cross, but in various texts he shows that it was very present to his symbolic imagination. The Cross is for him the symbolic recapitulation of the whole divine work of manifestation and revelation (“omnia in cruce manifestantur”); the universal measure which measures the measurer himself, showing him the centre of reality (just as in geometry the crossing of the two diagonals of a square circumscribing a circle serves to find the centre of the circle that has been lost); it is the intersection of the various dimensions of the real (“crux beata, quatuor finibus terminata”: i.e. inside, outside, above and below), within the intelligible circle of the reductio.26 More precisely, in the prologue to the Breviloquium (freely quoting the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians), Bonaventure elaborates the theory of the ‘intelligible cross’, resulting from the intersection of certain axes (breadth, length, height and depth), of which the first two (breadth and depth) refer to Scripture; and the other two (length, or temporal extension, and height, or hierarchical disposition)
26 Cf respectively De triplici via (3)5; Hex 1.24; Soliloquium 0.2; Red 7, Hex 1.17 e 3.32.
70 refer to reality.27 In fact, to the real universe (which is in itself impossible for man to traverse, either in ‘time’ or ‘space’) there corresponds the textual universe of the Bible, which is as it were an intelligible image of it, whose horizontal axis is the collection of sacred books (or, so to say, the extensive plane of things with meaning), and whose vertical axis is the totality of the four scriptural senses (or the intensive plane of what is meant): the literal sense and, at a deeper level, the three further mystical senses known by faith, charity and hope.28
To the ‘quaternary’ just illustrated (length, breadth, height and depth), Bonaventure joins the ‘ternary’ or “ratio causae triformis” (originating, exemplifying, finishing), such that the septenary which results “derives its reason and origin from the archetypal uncreated world”, but is reflected in the created world.29 The archetypal ternary allows us to think and to distinguish in God the three divine persons by appropriation (or by the isomorphism which the theologian establishes in virtue of revelation between the three aspects of primal causality and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit); the triad is reflected in the created world both by the three causes of things (efficient, exemplar and final), and in the three faculties which the soul (subject) has of knowing (intellect), desiring (affection) and doing (effect):30 we note the inversion of order (in man, doing comes last) and the correspondence with the tetrad already examined in the division of knowledge: natural, rational, moral (the philosophical trio) and artificial.
27 Cf Brev 0.6.4, 0.0.6 & Hex 2.17. 28 Cf Brev 0.2.4 & 0.3.2; Brev 0.1 & 0.4; Red 5; Hex 2.12-19. 29 Cf Hex 16.9 & HexD 3.4.8-9. 30 Cf Hex 1.12-13; 16.9; Brev 0.4.5, Hex 4.2-5.
71 In our visual reconstruction of the intelligible Cross, the archetypal ternary functions as the horizontal axis, which we may call the cosmological axis, because it scans the universal order, starting from that of the three persons in one divine nature; in turn, the other ternary of height or hierarchical disposition functions as the vertical axis, which we may call topological, because it corresponds to the threefold determination of above, within and below, or to the three ontological grades of the three fundamental natures (corporeal, spiritual, divine) united by the incarnation of the one person of Christ: there is, then, a certain mirror- symmetry between these two ternaries, which Bonaventure describes by the metaphor of the “two trisagions”31.
The topological axis measures every hierarchy of the real. In its complete fulfilment (i.e. in Christ) it constyitutes the ladder with three rungs for accomplishing the ascent to God; this ladder repairs (after sin) and perfects the previous created ladder, that is, the threefold mode of existence in things (in matter, in the mind and in God, in virtue of- respectively- the seminal, intellectual and ideal reasons), extracted by man basically at the different levels of knowledge (the triple ‘eye’ of the flesh, the soul and the mind which is split in two at every step: sense towards the outside, imagination towards the inside; reason towards the low and understanding towards the high; the intelligence and the apex of the mind): as one climbs the ladder, God is re-cognisable in corporeal nature by the ‘vestige’, in spiritual nature by images and in likeness, in his own divine nature by natural manifestation (as Being) and by supernatural revelation (as Good, or love).32 When such a union happens, man is hierarchically ordered, that is, placed
31 Cf respectively Red 20; Hex 8.9. 32 Cf Itin 1.3 & 4.2; Brev 0.3.1 & 2.12.4; Itin 1.2-3 1.6 and the titles of the capitula.
72 in order in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in solidarity with the angelic hierarchy and united with the Trinitarian hierarchy.33 The topological axis gives us the reason for the structure of natural philosophy, but also of negative and ascending theology. The structural correspondence between the cosmological and topological axes and the spheres of knowledge and reality
TRIPLE EXISTENCE OF THINGS INTELLECT AFFECTION EFFECT Ideal reasons Intellectual reasons Language Behaviour Technique Seminal reasons
“natural” “rational” “moral” “artificial”
There remains for us to consider the axis of ‘temporal extension’, which we may call chronological. In our proposed visual reconstruction, it consists in the temporal circle which distinguishes the state of the ‘ladder’ at different moments, that is, the successive moments of formativity (the original formatio by nature at the beginning of time, the original deformatio by sin, the reformatio by grace in the fullness of time, conformatio in the sacraments of ecclesial time, dei-formatio by glory at the end of time).
Suggestively, Bonaventure attempts a translation of these theological categories in anthropological terms: “Examine what you are, what you were, what you should have been, what you may yet be”.34 The chronological axis gives us the reason not only of the structure of affirmative theology, but also that of the “double
33 Cf Hex 21 & 2.16 (the source of this doctrine is not Dionysius, but the commentary of Hugh of Dionysius). 34 De perfectione vitae 1.5.
73 plan” which unites philosophy (as natural knowledge) and theology (as supernatural knowledge or grace).
In this manner the neoplatonic circle of exitus and reditus is subordinated to the necessity of an a-temporal process without beginning or end, and is firmly articulated in the very limited times of history, to manifest the eternal circle of the immanent love of God; the chronological axis also structures the textual universe of the Bible, articulating its contents into the ‘lex naturae’ given in Genesis, the ‘lex scripta’ given to Moses and the ‘lex gratiae’ given by Christ.35
We arrive now at a capital point in our hermeneutical reconstruction. Although the intelligible cross has an intrinsically theological value, its conceptual structure is in itself logical and ontological.
When Bonaventure leads back natural philosophy (for example) to the person of the Father, and physics to the corporeal nature of Christ, we cannot attribute to him with much certainty the idea that such sciences actually study, even in a very general way, this or that (and it is quite true that he himself is happy to lead back physics to the person of the Holy Spirit too…); but we should not even charge him with causing confusion, or of just speaking poetically. What Bonaventure means to do is simply to note an isomoerphism between two different conceptual structures (in this case, between the structure of philosophical knowledge and the structure of Trinitarian and Christological theology). But a word of caution: the isomorphism works in two ways. If in fact the whole of reality can be thought of as isomorphic with the divine humanity, on the other hand the same divine humanity can be thought about man only insofar as it is isomorphic with the
35 Cf Sent 1.45.2.1 co; Itin 1.12.
74 ontological structure of reality: “The Father is in the order of the originating principle, the Son in the order of the exemplating centre, the Holy Spirit in the order of fulfilling end. […] Although the metaphysician […] attains knowledge of God as beginning, centre and final end, yet he does not attain the notions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” 36. Within the expression ‘in the order of’ (‘in ratione’ followed by the genitive) there is hidden the Bonaventurian sense of the ‘division’ and ‘leading back’ of the ‘number groups’. Therefore, where one has a systematic division, it is necessary for there to be an a priori criterion for the division. So two systematic homologous divisions should be able to be superimposed by isomorphism.
The following scheme tries to extrapolate the possible internal logical structure which unites all the other structures.
The archetypal structure
“cosmological” axis
“topological” Beginning Middle End axis ULTERIORITY of the hierarchical beginning of time INTERIORITY end of time disposition [= past at the origin]
EXTERIORITY decadence “present” time [= past from the origin] fullness of time [= centre] “cronological” axis of the course of time
36 Cf Hex 1.12-13. (Translation José de Vinck, altered slightly)
75 Certainly, for Bonaventure the intelligible cross is not an empty conceptual structure: the person of Christ is, so to speak, nailed upon it, filling it with meaning and reality. The logic of the Cross37 (expressed by the dialectical syllogism “Christ is immortal by nature; but Christ died for love; therefore Christ is risen again”), while closely following the neoplatonic dialectic of affirmation, negation and eminence, does not remain a merely conceptual procedure for saying the unsayable. It presents itself as an interpretation of the global historical process. From this perspective, theology makes explicit the christocentrism of all the sciences: not only because the individual sciences (if only in a general way) study Christ, but because “in omni ergo scientia sine Christo evanescit sciens”.38
37 Cf Hex 1.25-30, which I have analysed in this perspective in La logica della Croce in Bonaventura e Tommaso: il sillogismo di Cristo e il duplice medio, in T. P. ZECCA (ed), La Croce di Cristo, unica speranza. Atti del III Congresso internazionale “La sapienza della Croce oggi”. Roma, 9-13 gen- naio 1995, San Gabriele - Roma 1996, p. 373-398. 38 HexD 0.1.39.
76 77
DIACHRONIC
79
GENESIS: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOURCES, OR HYPERTEXTUALIZATION ‘A PARTE ANTE’
We have already noted, in the textual analysis, the various sources of the Bonaventurian division. We shall now try to reconstruct, layer by layer, the various classifications (which articulate and contain philosophy) inherited by Bonaventure 1. From a lexicographical point of view, this task consists in identifying the hypertextual links “a parte ante”, that is, the connections which the Bonaventurian texts have, explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, with those that went before. Our position here is that, through history, taxonomic concepts have changed in language (from Greek to Latin), giving rise to the curious phenomenon (already pointed out in the course of the synchronic linguistic analysis) of the specialization of foreign terms.
1 On the history of the division of knowledge in the Middle Ages, cf the clasical works J.A. Weisheipl, Classification of the Sciences in Mediaeval Thought, “Mediaeval Studies” (1965), p. 54-90; F. Van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIme siècle, Louvain 1966; and, among recent studies, J.R. Martínez (ed), Unità e autonomia del sapere. Il dibattito del XIII secolo, Ro- ma 1994 (Studi di filosofia) with contributions by J.R. Martínez, Unità e di- versità nelle scienze. Radici e prospettive di un dibattito, p. 7-19; A. Maierù, La concezione della scienza tra i secoli XII e XIII, p. 23-39; S.L. Brock, Au- tonomia e gerarchia delle scienze in Tommaso d’Aquino, p. 71-95; J.-I. Sara- nyana, Lo statuto epistemologico della teologia nell’Università di Parigi (sec. XIII), p. 135-56; and finally the papers prsented to the seventh meeting of the “Società Italiana per lo studio del Pensiero Medievale” (La divisione della fi- losofia e le sue ragioni – Assisi 1997), in course of publication (ed by G. d’Onofrio) on “Schola Salernitana”.
81 THE ‘PLATONIC’ THREE-FOLD VERTICAL DIVISION. The first division of philosophy is the ‘Platonic’ three- fold vertical division into Physics (seen as the science of the efficient causes of the world), Ethics (seen as the science of the final causes, especially of man),and Metaphysics in the sense of Dialectic (seen as the science of exemplar causes or ideas) and even of revealed Theology. This division, hidden in Bonaventure (probably because he did not know its origin), is indirectly reducible (as to the division itself, not as to the names of the parts) to the “change of course” 2 from the search for the causes of physical things and final causes to that specifically for ideas, provided that a divine revelation has not allowed a “safer course” (in a formulation ante litteram of the “double scheme” of a revealed theology and a natural theology, a concept which would, through Augustine,3 become wide-spread in the Middle Ages). The same division is echoed, in a slightly altered form, by Origen.4 He divides philosophy into ethical or moral, physical or natural, and ‘enoptic’ or contemplative (plus logical, which is really included in the foregoing). To these correspond, respectively, the three sapiential Biblical books attributed to Solomon (Proverbs to moral philosophy,
2 Which in the Phaedo [45-47 (96a-99d) and 35 (85c-d)] Plato attributes to Socrates, but which in reality is his own. For an unconscious echo in Bona- venture see Hex 1.13. 3 De civitate Dei 8. 4 In the Preface to the Commentary on the Canticles, known in the tran- slation of Rufinus; ed. W. A. Baehrens, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, vol. 33, 1925, p. 61-88. This divi- sion (mentioned also in Evagrius [Practicus, 1] which divides Christianity- “true philosophy”, practiced by monks- into practical, physical, theological), notwithstanding the condemnation of Origenism, entered the western mona- stic tradition (through monastic tradition, Bernard in particular).
82 Ecclesiastes to natural, and Canticles to contemplative). This is explicitly cited by Bonaventure.5
THE HELLENISTIC AND AUGUSTINIAN THREE-FOLD HO- RIZONTAL DIVISION The division which has enjoyed the greatest success is the horizontal three-fold division (apparently the same as the Platonic, and put forward as the view of Xenocrates, but reworked by hellenistic philosophy- academic, stoic and epicurean- and interpreted in a Christian way by Augustine6). In this, philosophy is divided into Logic (rational philosophy, for the Latins), Physics (or natural philosophy) and Ethics (or moral philosophy). In this re-working the three parts are not on three different levels, but all on the same plane, and ordered according to a purely methodological sequence which is therefore variable, though it usually begins with Logic (which, as for Aristotle, provides the criteria for knowing), and ends with Ethics (which in turn provides the criteria for the life of the savant). Augustine provides an ontological foundation7 for the three-fold division into natural, rational and moral in God, viewed as “cause of being, reason for knowing and order for living,” such that the classification is not historically contingent, but systematic and complete (even if the order of the parts is never entirely fixed). This three-fold division eventually comes, in Bonaventure, to have a Trinitarian connotation (and it is
5 In Hex 6.25 and 19.2. 6 Cf Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 7.39-41 and 55; Cicero, De finibus 4.4; in: Stoici Antichi, Tutti i frammenti collcted by H. von Armin (ed. R. Radice), Rusconi, Milano 1998, p. 26-29, 1483 and 1489); Augustine, Contra Acade- micos 3.11-13; De civitate 8.4; 11.25. 7 We should remember that, for Bonaventure, «Augustinus […] fuit altis- simus metaphysicus» [Sent 2.3a.1.2 co].
83 noteworthy that, with the exception of the De Reductione, natural philosophy, appropriated to the Father, comes before rational philosophy, appropriated to the Son).
THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEMATIZATION OF THE SCIENCES ACCORDING TO THEIR OBJECTS The most organic speculative division in antiquity (which although it came before the hellenistic was assimilated later in the Middle Ages) is the systematization by objects elaborated by Aristotle, reflecting the division of his esoteric writings and set out systematically in the Metaphysics8: after the “Organon” (corrsponding to Logic), prior to but outside the system, Philosophy is divided according to the three human aptitudes into theoretical philosophy (comprising, in ascending order, Physics, Mathematics and First Philosophy, also called Theology or Wisdom, and later on Metaphysics); practical philosophy (comprising, in order of complexity, Ethics, Economics and Politics); and poetic philosophy (comprising, besides Poetry, Rhetoric as well). The fact that in the thirteenth century University ‘to study philosophy’ meant, in parctice, to study the works of Aristotle gave rise to a curious situation9: the Aristotelian division was employed to characterise the individual sciences, but for their organization as “parts” of philosophy the traditional latinized hellenistic system prevailed. In particular, the use of foreign terms made it possible to combine the two schemes, which were otherwise incompatible (for instance, physics was situated within natural philosophy, which should have been the equivalent of physics!)
8 In Metaph. 6.1 (1025b-1026a). 9 Cf the student guide published by Grabmann and quoted in F. Van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIme siècle, Louvain 1966.
84 The division of philosophy into ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ is noted by Bonaventure 10, who refers to it in passing in the prologue to the Breviloquium 11 (by way of contrast, making the point that theology must be divided in a way not isomorphic with philosophy). But then in the construction of a system of knowledge, theoretical philosophy becomes identified with natural philosophy (joining the criterion of distinction by objects to that by aptitudes); practical philosophy coincides without difficulty with moral philosophy; and the Organon is no longer prior to the system, but part of it, usually in the second position (and characterised as “philosophy in the genitive”). Poetics is missing, in line with the scant knowledge and consideration of the works in the universtities of the period, and rhetoric comes to be inserted as the conclusion of rational philosophy (whether by the influence of the division of the Trivium, or by identification with the Topics on probable arguments, or by the new connotation of “logic of morality”). Moreover, as we know, the three theoretical sciences were repositioned in inverse order, and distinguished not on the basis of their material objects (all three study things), but on the basis of their formal objects (or rationes) and thus of the human faculties. Finally, Aristotle’s First Philosophy was divided into two (with a distinction that, despite some resemblances, does not anticipate that of Wolff, but reflects the Christian Socratism of Augustine and Bernard), i.e. into metaphysics (understood as ontology) and wisdom (understood as knowledge of self and of God).
10 Terms of the form ‘philosoph-’, i.e. ‘philosophia’, ‘philosophicus’, ‘philosophus’ (whether in the ordinary sense, or in the antonomastic usage to mean Aristotle), ‘philosophari’ – recur in the Bonaventurian works included on the CD-ROM of CLCLT-3 (cit. in the first part of the article) 197 times in 182 distinct phrases. 11 Cf Brev 0.1.2.
85 THE NEOPLATONIC CRITERION OF THE DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES ACCORDING TO THE FACULTIES Moreover, Bonaventure did not inherit from the neoplatonic tradition new divisions of knowledge, but new ways of understanding the Aristotelian classification. From Plotinus, through the eighth chapter of Macrobius’ commentary of the Somnium Scipionis12 Bonaventure took the doctrine of the four levels of the four philosophical virtues (relating to the active life, the contemplative life, the perfect or ‘pure’ life, and the divine life) and made of them a route-map to arrive at philosophical wisdom. The same four cardinal virtues exist in four different degrees: as civil virtue (politicae), that is, of the active life; as purifying (purgatoriae), that is, of the contemplative life; purely (animi iam purgati), that is, in the perfect life; and as exemplars (exemplares), that is, existing in God., from whom they flow down to men. The cardinal virtues are four in number, because they are the hinges for the proper exercise of the four human faculties: the intellect, or cognitive faculty (by prudence); the affection or affective faculty (by temperance and fortitude); the effective or operative faculty (by justice). Boethius’ system, mediated by Hugh of St Victor13, re- established the three-fold Aristotelian division of theoretical philosophy into physics, mathematics and theology, but re- interpreted it in a neoplatonic sense based not only on the distinction of classes of different objects, but even more on the cognitive faculties employed and their methods, reaching a distinction of three planes of knowledge (respectively the
12 Abundantly quoted in Hex 6. 13 Cf Boethius, De Trinitate 2 and the two commentaries In Porphyrium; Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 2.2.
86 sensible, the intelligible, and the ‘intellectualizable’)14. This structure approaches also the three-fold vertical division of the sciences of natural philosophy, in virtue of the three types of “rationes”, seminales, intellectuales and ideales, which partly echo Augustine, by the doctrine of the three- fold existence of things: the first (which we may call “transcendent”) is in the mind of the Creator, the second (which we may call “transcendental”) is in the created intelligence, and the third (which we may call “immanent”) is in their own nature, or in matter (which for Bonaventure is the potential receptivity in general, whether corporeal or spiritual). Such a three-fold existence is founded, creationally, on the original three-fold vision and action of God (“fiat, fecit, factum est”), and is known by man in virtue of the three levels of his cognitive ability (the “triple eye” of which Hugh speaks)15. First Boethius and then Hugh16 perceived the central taxonomic character of the concept of “nature”: the first by understanding the structural foundation of Christian teaching, which is the Incarnation, and the second by understanding the distribution of the sciences: thus both (and the second following the first) felt the need to clarify, linguistically, the meaning of the term ‘nature’, reviewing the usage traditional up to them, without in the end obtaining a definitive and complete clarification. Bonaventure had their definitions in mind, and quotes them17, but his considered doctrine of
14 Cf G. d’Onofrio, Severino Boezio: la philosophiae divisio tra essere e conoscere, relazione tenuta al VII convegno della Società Italiana per lo stu- dio del Pensiero Medievale (Assisi 1997), in course of publication for “Schola Salernitana”. 15 Cf Augustine, De genesi ad litteram 2.8.16-20 and passim; Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis 1.10.2; Brev 2.12.4 e Hex 5.24. 16 Respectively in De duabus naturis and in Didascalicon 1.10. 17 Cf Sent 3.5.2.1 sc 4, MyTrin 2.2 co.
87 “nature” (through articulating the usage of the linguistic family of the term “natura”) comes to be quite different, as we have seen in the course of the synchronic analysis.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES Finally, the systematization of the seven liberal arts in late antiquity18 and the high Middle Ages, surviving in the medieval University in the actual name of the faculty of philosophy (‘Facultas Artium’), was inherited by Bonaventure through Hugh of St Victor19, who had already begun to fuse it with the Aristotelian division: to the mechanical arts (‘mechanicae’ or servile, or really ‘moecanicae’ or adulterous) he opposes the liberal arts: the Trivium or Logic (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic: this last advances into second place), theoretical philosophy, comprising the Quadrivium or Mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), Physics and (natural) Theology; and finally practical philosophy. We should note that in Bonaventure’s time grammar was no longer the classic linguistic discipline, but something “speculative”.
THE BIBLICAL SCHEME OF THE “DOUBLE” KNOWLEDGE (NATURAL AND REVEALED) As we have already noted in the course of the synchronic analysis, the structure of the internal division of philosophy comes to be inserted (through the Judeo-Christian context) in a macrostructure which we may
18 Cf H.I. Marrou, Histoire de l’éducation dans l’antiquité, Paris 1948. 19 Cf Didascalicon 1-3; but especially 2.20 e 3.1.
88 call the “double scheme”, in common with confessional theology. Fleetingly outlined by Plato (it is said), this scheme is absent from classical philosophical thought, although it is implicitly constitutive of the Biblical message. In some Biblical texts (and in the interpretative tradition that follows) such a scheme is also explicitly expressed: in Psalm 61, «God has said only one thing: only two do I know», namely “power” and “grace”: the one divine Word is expressed in the economy as a twofold Word, Creator and Revealer. The first explicit text is Psalm 18, with the praise of the two-fold manifestation of God: in the created World («The heavens declare the glory of God […]; No utterance at all, no speech, no sound that anyone can hear») and in the revealed Law, or Torah («The Law of the Lord is perfect…»). Moreover, the redactor of the first chapter of Genesis had already inserted symbolically into his account of the creation “ten words” (“God said”). The Psalm does not specify whether the knowledge of God through creation is possible even outside the context of faith: it would be for the inter-testamental and deutero-canonical book of Wisdom to affirm it without any possible equivocation, in virtue of analogy. (One may discuss how a deutero-canonical book, received by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, but not by the Reformed tradition, can determine the different treatment of the theological and philosophical question in the different traditions).20
20 Cf Wisd 13,1-9 (Jerusalem Bible version): «Yes, naturally stupid are all men who have not known God and who, from the good things that are seen, have not been able to discover Him-who-is, or, by studying the works, have failed to recognise the Artificer. […] If, charmed by their beauty, they have taken things for gods, let them know how much the Lord of these excels them, since the very Author of beauty has created them. And if they have
89 This scheme was subjected to re-interpretation by St Paul, who applied it to the knowledge of God and of his Law as much in the theoretical as in the practical sphere21: the heathens who are entirely without revelation can know that there is a God, although they cannot know God.. If experience had made him conscious of the characteristic foolishness of preaching22, Paul did not, nevertheless, belittle the general importance of the “double doctrine”, as is shown a little later in his letter to the Romans. The procedure illustrated by Luke in his reconstruction of Paul’s discourse on the Areopagus23 consists in four been impressed by their power and energy, let them deduce from these how much mightier is he that has formed them, since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author. Small blame, however, attaches to these men, for perhaps they only go astray in their search for God and their eagerness to find him; living among his works, they strive to comprehend them and fall victim to appearances, seeing so much beauty. Even so, they are not to be excused: if they are capable of ac- quiring enough knowledge to be able to investigate the world, how have they been so slow to find its Master?». 21 Cf respectively Rom 1,19-21; 2,14-15 (Jerusalem Bible version): «For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them [= all men who have not known the Hebraic revelation], since God himself has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity- however invisi- ble- have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet refused to ho- nour him as God or to thank him »; «Pagans who never heard of the Law but are led by reason to do what the Law commands, may not actually ‘possess’ the Law, but they can be said to ‘be’ the Law. They can point to the substance of the Law engraved on their hearts- they can call a witness, that is, their own conscience- they have accusation and defence, that is, their own inner mental dialogue.». 22 Cf 1Cor 1-2. 23 Cf Acts 17,23-28 (Jerusalem Bible version): «
90 phases: an initial appreciation of the implicit religious sense in Greek religion (that is, a sense of the divine); a leading back, by a “philosophical” procedure, from such objects of worship to the author of the world; a consequent critique of that religion and a criterion for authentic religion; and finally, the announcement of faith in Christ. The not very enthusiastic response to the discourse must not deceive us about Luke’s intentions: even if the majority of listeners laughed at Paul, some were converted who, perhaps, would not have been converted but for this intercultural approach. But the most relevant formulation of the double scheme, ontologically, is the Johannine Prologue24, with its explicit affirmation that the one Word, both as co-Creator and the light which implicitly enlightens all men (who may not know, however, that they are enlightened by the Word), and
him, since he can never be in need of anything; on the contrary, it is he who gives everything- including life and breath- to everyone. From one single stock he not only created the whole human race so that they could occupy the entire earth, but he decreed how long each nation should flourish and what the boundaries of its territory should be. And he did this so that all nations might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and mo- ve, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: We are all his children.». 24 Cf John 1,1-18 (Jerusalem Bible version): «In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God [= the Father] and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men: […] The Word was the true light that enlightens all men: […] The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glo- ry, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. […] No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known ». The relevance of this prologue is emphasised by R. Imbach, La filosofia nel prologo di S. Giovanni secondo S. Agostino, S. Tommaso e Meister Eckhart, in “Studi. Istituto San Tommaso. Pontificia Universitas a S. Thoma Aq. in Urbe” 2 (1995), p. 161-82.
91 also as incarnate, is the fulness of revelation given explicitly to believers. Onto this doctrine there is grafted that of the inspired Word, or of the Word of God made present by faith, by means of the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of the faithful.25. As has already been emphasised, the source (often misunderstood) of this concept is probably the doctrine (contained in the first chapter of the second letter of Peter) of ‘epígnosis’, the intuition by faith that the Christian has of Christ “according to the Spirit”, and which is the foundation of every virtue and Christian ‘gnosis’. At the back of this doctrine was the problem of the disciples “of the second stage”, who like Paul himself26 had not known the historic Jesus (“according to the flesh”), but only the Christ of faith (“according to the Spirit”), which was essential, however. It was not by chance that Bonaventure associates the act of the Word sending forth the Holy Spirit with the incident of the risen Christ’s meeting– not recognised as such– with the two disciples at Emmaus, who felt precisely that “their hearts burned within them”27.
AFFIRMATIVE AND NEGATIVE THEOLOGY; DOGMATIC, MORAL AND SPIRITUAL At this point it is interesting to note also the sources for Bonaventure’s divisions of theology. To start with, Bonaventure drew on the monastic tradition in his initial project of articulating theology according to the books of the Bible, although he did not carry it out, or according to the three spiritual senses of Scripture28, and on the ancient and recent auctoritates referring to the reading of the Bible
25 Cf Hex 3 and 12. 26 Cf 2Cor 5,16; HexD 2.2.6-7. 27 Cf Lc 24 and In Lucam 24.39-40. 28 Cf respectively Brev 0; Red 5.
92 according to each sense: Augustine and Anselm for the allegorical sense (referring to faith, i.e. actual dogmatic theology); Gregory and Bernard for the moral sense (referring to behaviour, i.e. actual moral theology); Dionysius and Richard of St Victor for the anagogic sense (referring to the end, i.e. actual spiritual or mystical theology. The association of these last makes shows that Bonaventure’s ‘Dionysian’ approach was very ‘latinized’); and for every sense, Hugh of St Victor (who was for Bonaventure, at least at the time of the De reductione, the most relevant recent theological auctoritas. A contemporary source, but altered and undeclared, was the controversial Joachimite tradition for articulating the theology of history (developed above all in the collationes in Hexaëmeron). Fundamentally, however, Bonaventure adopted a two-fold way of doing theology: «vel per positionem, vel per ablationem. Primum ponit Augustinus, secundum Dionysius»29. The “Augustinian” affirmative theology is articulated by Bonaventure especially in the Breviloquium (strictly according to the order of the Lombard’s Sentences, which he had already commented upon). The “Dionysian” negative theology, much re-interpreted, is articulated in three parts, plus one (in the Itinerarium): symbolic theology, consisting in the recognition of God in his vestigia; the theology of the image (which Dionysius does not distinguish from the preceding, and which is not given a name by Bonaventure, but which we may call iconic), which consists in the recognition of God in his image; theology proper, consisting in the recognition of God in his names (reduced by Bonaventure to two, Being and Good, understood respectively as the Old and New Testament revelations); and
29 De Triplici Via 3.11.
93 mystical theology, understood by Bonaventure as ecstasy in Christ30.
UNIVERSITY STRUCTURE AT THE TIME OF BONAVENTURE, AND DOCTRINAL DISPUTES One last note: as well as of different sciences, Bonaventure speaks of different types of scientist (of medicine, politics, natural history, philosophy, law, theology…)31. The Bonaventurian division of the sciences does not, then, depend only upon the articulation of reality (as in Aristotle), but also on that of the cognitive faculty (as in the neoplatonic tradition) and even (probably for the first time in the history of western thought) on the internal divisions of the “scientific community”, which Bonaventure thought was already highly structured and even fragmented and in competition, through a “conflict of faculties”. As we have already been able to notice, Bonaventure took the idea of a metaphysic of sapiential and beatifying import from the Parisian artistae of the period. Although condemning it in the name of Christian faith, they did not underestimate the neo-Aristotelian ideal of a completely intellectual beatitude; (“intellectus adeptus” 32); but they used it to formulate a doctrine of the ‘chess-piece’ of a natural desire for the supernatural, opening onto grace. Unlike Thomas (who accused Averroes of being the Corruptor rather than the Commentator of Aristotle33), Bonaventure maintained that Aristotelianism led of necessity to Averroes’ conclusions. If there are not in fact exemplar causes, God can neither know nor will the world (if he did not know and
30 The parts correspond to Itin 1-2; 3-4; 5-6; 7. 31 Cf Hex 1.11-39; 5.14 and 21… 32 Hex 5.22 and 33. 33 Cf OCA 2.
94 will it from outside it, there would be an implied passivity in God with respect to the world that would be incompatible with his pure act). But if God does not know, still less can he will the world; hence the world derives automatically and eternally from God. In that case, one must postulate an infinite succession of men; and so, as regards their intellectual soul, one must posit one of the following alternatives: either it enjoys immortality and individuality, and hence there will be an actual infinity; or else it is individual but corruptible; or else it is immortal and ‘recyclable’ through metempsychosis (wholly inadmissible from an Aristotelian viewpoint); or else it has a separate identity and is therefore immortal. From the last there is ultimately implied the negation of individual freedom, and so also of a personal eternal destiny34.
34 Cf Hex 17.22-24 and 22.40.
95 ANALOGY: HYPERTEXTUALISATION “A LATERE”
To appreciate points of identity we must notice points of difference; and because these are innumerable, we must limit ourselves to considering a few, by way of example. By intense hermeneutical study, we shall also gain a better historical grasp, thanks to a focus on the contrasts. Therefore, as an example, it will be useful to compare the texts regarding Bonaventure’s division of knowledge with an analogous text of Thomas Aquinas.
ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND PROLOGUE OF THE “SUMMA” We cannot here go into the curious problem of the co-existence in Thomas (as it were in parallel) of two classifications of the philosophical sciences: one Aristotelian (which he follows strictly in his philosophical commentaries), and one Academic and Augustinian, adopted only “in passing”, it is true, but quite frequently35.
35 On a brief count (not including alternative readings, and without eli- minating concurrences which are not matters of syntax) based on the CD of the works of Thomas (cit. infra), the expression ‘philosophia rationalis’ occurs in Thomas 8 times; ‘philosophia naturalis’ 52; ‘philosophia moralis’ 23. But his fullest treatment of the Aristotelian division into theoretical (physics, mathe- matics and “theology”) and practical is found in his commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius [CBT]. In two texts Thomas seeks to integrate the three- fold division into natural, rational and moral (evidently current at his time) into the classical Aristotelian division: «scientiae speculativae, ut patet in principio metaphysicae, sunt de illis quorum cognitio quaeritur propter se ip- sa. res autem, de quibus est logica, non quaeruntur ad cognoscendum propter se ipsas, sed ut adminiculum quoddam ad alias scientias. et ideo logica non continetur sub speculativa philosophia quasi principalis pars, sed sicut quid-
96 And so, to give a contrasting hermeneutical focus, I think it will be useful to put forward a text at first sight unlikely for our theme: the specific Prologue to the First Part of the Summa Theologiae (written by Thomas at Rome in about 1267). There have already been proposed various interpretations of this prologue (and consequently of the structure of the entire Summa), amongst which are the classical ones of Chenu and Lafont, and the historical reconstruction of Torrell 36; but I want to emphasise here a particular structural theory based on the dam reductum ad philosophiam speculativam, prout ministrat speculationi sua instrumenta, scilicet syllogismos et diffinitiones et alia huiusmodi, quibus in scientiis speculativis indigemus» [CBT# 3.5.1 ra 2]; «ad philosophiam natu- ralem pertinet considerare ordinem rerum quem ratio humana considerat sed non facit; ita quod sub naturali philosophia comprehendamus et mathemati- cam et metaphysicam. ordo autem quem ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad rationalem philosophiam, cuius est considerare ordinem par- tium orationis adinvicem, et ordinem principiorum in conclusiones; ordo au- tem actionum voluntariarum pertinet ad considerationem moralis philosophi- ae» [CTC# 1.1.2]. 36 Cf M.-D. Chenu, Le plan de la Somme Theologique de st. Thomas, in “Revue Thomiste” 47 (1939), 93-107 (reprinted in Id., Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Montréal - Paris 21954, p. 255-276); Gh. Lafont, Structure et méthode dans la Somme Théologique de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Paris 1961, 21996. A brief exposition of various tentative explanations of the plan of the Summa (by Chenu, Hayen, Guindon, Persson, Lafont, Corbin, Ab- bà) and a complete proposal (based on the knowledge of God as the principle of the operation of God, the operation of man, and revealed in Christ) is found in the second chapter of A. Vendemiati, La legge naturale nella «Summa theologiae» di san Tommaso d’Aquino, Roma 1995, p. 35-60. A fundamental historical reconstruction of the problem of the division of the Summa (in criti- cal discussion with some of the preceding interpretative proposals) with a de- monstration of its fundamentally Christocentric character is found in chapter VIII of J.-P. Torrell, Initiation à Saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son o- euvre, Fribourg - Paris 1993; Italian translation by P. Giustiniani e G. Matera, Tommaso d’Aquino. L’uomo e il teologo, Casale Monferrato 1994, p. 169- 183. Among recent studies, I will just mention W. Metz, «Aufgehobene» Mündlichkeit. Artikel-Struktur und «ordo disciplinae» der Thomasischen «Summa Theologiae», in “Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft” 103 (1996), p. 48-61.
97 lexicographical analysis of the text and of a disconcerting an-isomorphism of the two classifications (through which a paradoxical assymetry is achieved).
«Quia igitur principalis intentio huius sacrae doctrinae est Dei cognitionem tradere, et non solum secundum quod in se est, sed etiam secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum, et specialiter rationalis creaturae, ut ex dictis est manifestum; ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes, primo tractabimus de Deo; secundo, de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum; tertio, de Christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in Deum. Consideratio autem de Deo tripartita erit. Primo namque considerabimus ea quae ad essentiam divinam pertinent; secundo, ea quae pertinent ad distinctionem personarum; tertio, ea quae pertinent ad processum crea- turarum ab ipso. Circa essentiam vero divinam, primo considerandum est an Deus sit; secundo, quomodo sit, vel potius quomodo non sit; tertio considerandum erit de his quae ad operationem ipsius pertinent, scilicet de scientia et de voluntate et potentia» 37. The text, very well-known, seems clear (through a well-known phenomenon of hermeneutic projection, whereby the reader over-interprets – or in this case under- interprets the text). But the reader must be on guard: in the general prologue Thomas has promised to lay out the work according to a pedagogical order “within the accepted limits of the matter treated” (and so not in a system, in a strong
37 ST1 2 pr. The text is taken from the CD: R. Busa, Sancti Thomae Aqui- 2 natis opera omnia cum hypertextibus in CD-ROM, Milano 1992; 1996. All the graphical devices are editorial. The references are given according to the met- hod of the CD itself (and so of the Index Thomisticus).
98 sense); moreover, in his lifetime Thomas elaborated various syntheses of Christianity (such as the Contra Gentes, the De articulis fidei, the Compendium Theologiae, the Collationes on the Credo, Pater and commandments) changing the scheme every time, and always leaving the systematization practically incomplete: either because he did not carry the work through to the end, or through having left on one side certain theological themes. In fact, for a taxonomic systematization, the problems are clear.
99 FIRST CLASSIFICATION […] principalis intentio huius sacrae doctrinae est Dei cognitionem tradere, [A] et non solum secundum quod in se est, [B] sed etiam secundum quod est [Ba] principium rerum [= EXITUS] [Bb] et finis earum, et specialiter rationalis creaturae [= REDITUS]
SECOND CLASSIFICATION ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes, 1 primo tractabimus de Deo; [= VERITAS] 2 secundo, de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum; [= VITA] 3 tertio, de Christo, qui, secundum quod homo, VIA est nobis tendendi in Deum.
THIRD CLASSIFICATION 1 Consideratio autem de Deo tripartita erit. 1.1 Primo namque considerabimus ea quae ad essentiam divinam pertinent; 1.2 secundo, ea quae pertinent ad distinctionem personarum; 1.3 tertio, ea quae pertinent ad processum creaturarum ab ipso.
FOURTH CLASSIFICATION 1.1 Circa essentiam vero divinam, 1.1.1 primo considerandum est an Deus sit; [quoad esse] 1.1.2 secundo, quomodo sit, vel potius quomodo non sit; [quoad essentiam] 1.1.3 tertio considerandum erit de his quae ad operationem ipsius pertinent, – scilicet de scientia – et de voluntate – et potentia» [ST1 2 pr].
So, while it is clear that the fourth classification is developed from the first element of the third, and the latter is in its turn developed from the first element of the second, it
100 remains quite impossible to connect the second (and so the third and fourth) with the first. If at first sight it is possible for the inexperienced reader to understand the two classifications as homologous (the treatment of “God in himself” is spontaneously identified with the treatment of God in general, and so on…), an attentive reader will notice some confusion and non-equivalence of the two classifications. A second problem appears in the very order of the treatises: how can one talk about theological ethics before talking about Christ? Where is the treatment of the mission of the Holy Spirit? And why ever is true and proper Christology combined with the sacraments and eschatology in the treatise on Christ? On reflection, the first classification sets out in general the “knowledge of God” (which, playing on the ambivalence of the genitive, subjective and objective, indicates first “the knowledge that God has of himself by nature”, and then “the knowledge that men have of God by natural manifestation and supernatural revelation”); the other classifications in turn set out the concrete treatment of this knowledge.
101 First classification: cognitio Dei Alternative articulated classification: tractatio [de divinis]
A Deus in se [immanent theology: permanence] 1 de Deo [prima pars] 1.1 de essentia [= de Deo uno] 1.2 de distinctione personarum [= de Deo trino]
B Deus (in alio) ––– [economy] Ba ut principium ––––– [exitus] 1.3 de processu creaturarum a Deo
Bb ut finis –––––––––– [reditus] 2 de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum [secunda pars]
…… 3 de Christo via [tertia pars]
To start with, we notice a lack of correspondence with the circular scheme (neoplatonic, but also Biblical) of the treatment of Christ as “way”. In effect, for Thomas the Word becomes incarnate because of sin, that is, the “reditus interruptus”, which requires precisely a “way”. The secunda pars, then, outlines the general project of what the human reditus to God has to be (in short, what God had proposed to man in the state of grace in Eden), and, significantly, the prima secundae closes with the consideration of sin (the secunda secundae is not relevant to the classification, inasmuch as it is a particularised treatment, in an eminently practical order, of the matter of the prima secundae); the tertia however is the treatment of the way, and the following of that way, up to the fulfilment of the reditus which had been interrupted. We should not be surprised that the tertia pars goes outside all the schemes, neoplatonic or Aristotelian or Hebrew: the
102 taxonomic notion of “way” is in faxt typically Christian. Moreover, Augustine had already, in a famous opposition38, contrasted on the one hand the Platonicorum libri (i.e. philosophy), in which one reaches a knowledge, at least implicit, of the uncreated Word and Creator, but not the incarnate Word and Mediator (“ibi legi…; ibi non legi”), and on the other hand the Holy Scriptures (i.e. revelation) which precisely through humble faith in the uncreated and incarnate Word show the way to complete the journey of seeking. Continuing with our comparison of the classifications, we note the curious linking of immanent theology (of God in himself) and the theology of creation in the prima pars. What at first sight might seem an odd and arbitrary choice, appears instead as a clear strategy if we reflect on the fact that (if not chronologically simultaneous, nevertheless as it were ideally in parallel with the drafting of the Summa), Thomas had undertaken a systematic commentary on the Aristotelian works39; the correspondence between the parts of the Summa and parts of the Aristotelian works can be noticed also in the systematic quotation of the latter in the former40.
38 Augustine, Confessionum libri tredecim, 7.9 (13-15) and in general all the remaining chapters of Book VII, and in particular (for the notion of Christ the Way) 7.18 (24). 39 Cf Torrell, Initiation…, op. cit., chap. VIII and XII; in particular (Ita- lian translation) p. 169-172 and 257-263; which refer back to the fundamental studies of R. A. Gauthier. 40 Counting roughly (i.e. without eliminating potential repetitions) the brief references to the Aristotelian works in the CD-ROM of Thomas’s works (cit.), we find in the Prima Pars the Metaphysics is quoted (as ‘Metaphysic.’) 143 times, the Physics is quoted (as ‘Physic.’) 122 times (more concentrated in the section de processu creaturarum), the Ethics is quoted (as ‘Ethic.’) 63 times; in the Prima Secundae the Metaphysics is quoted (this time as ‘Metaph.’ or ‘Metaphysic.’) 92 times, the Physics (as ‘Physic.’) 97 times, the Ethics (as ‘Ethic.’) a good 458 times (to which are added at least eighty refe- rences to the Rhetoric, here considered as belonging to the practical); in the Tertia Pars, finally, Metaphysics, Physics and Ehtics are quoted, usually brie- fly, respectively 1, 30 and 45 times.
103 So: the division of the treatment of theology into three parts corrsponds perfectly, for the first two, to the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical. Briefly (and only anticipating some results of research which will appear in a book I am preparing on the communication of wisdom in Thomas), the schemes underlying the division of the Summa are many, and they are in agreement with one another, but not by homology, that is, by a one-to-one correspondence between each element of each partition.
104 EXPLICIT EXPLICIT CHRISTO- IMPLICIT IMPLICIT CIRCULAR ORGANIC AND LOGIC EPISTEMO- HISTORICO- THEOLOGICA PEDAGOGIC SCHEME LOGICAL SALVIFIC L SCHEME SCHEME (Thomist) ALLUDED SCHEME SCHEME (Biblical and effectively TO (Aristotelian), (Biblical-patristi neoplatonic) developed in the (“Johannin traced in the c), traced in the recalled most Summa Theologiae e”) philosophical Biblical lecturae often by lecturae for the for the Thomas determination of determination of Ratio Auctoritas Quaestio Theological Sacred Scripture introductoria Organon in general De sacra doctrina Deus in se Prima Pars Veritas Theoretical De Deo – ut theology: exemplar – theological [“theology” in the metaphysics strict sense] Old Testament [in himself, and in general known by us via his self- communication] – De essentia [= de Deo Uno] – Esse – essentia [quomodo non sit] – operatione
– De personis [= de New Testament Deo Trino] in general
Deus ut [in his effects] Genesis: principium: – De processu – theological Hexemeron exitus creaturarum physics – de mundo – creation of the angels – de anima – creatione of the world – creatione of man – God’s rest = delegated
105 action
Deus ut finis: Secunda Pars Vita Practical Genesis: Edenic reditus [Prima secundae] theology state – inchoatus De motu rationalis – theological creaturae in Deum ethics = De Homine ut – theological Imago politics [“anthropology” in the proper sense, i.e. ethics] – interruptus theology of sin Genesis: original sin
Old Testament = Mosaic Law
[via redeundi] Tertia Pars Via “Poetic” Gospel De Christo Via – theology; Salvator theological [“Christology”] “Methodology”
– De Christo [capite]
– [De Christi Acts; Epistles membris] – in via = de sacramentis
– in fine = de Apocalypse resurrectione
106 This plurality of latent schemes (elaborated and as it were experimented with by Thomas in his other syntheses of Christian doctrine) must surely have been hard for Thomas himself to handle. In fact, Thomas left significantly incomplete both the Compendium (in which sacramental theology is hard to find), and the Summa itself. Symbolically, in one of its final pages (not long before the mysterious experience which would hinder- as though by an apophatic revenge- his cataphatic work as an author) Thomas states “in passing” that «una pars integralis potest continere totum, licet non secundum essentiam: fundamentum enim quodammodo virtute continet totum aedificium» 41.
41 ST4 90.3 ra 2.
107 CONCLUSIONS
HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS At the end of this excursus, even if we can appreciate better the value of the great cultural synthesis of Bonaventure (which faced with various contributions from tradition opted for an integrating solution, “et et”), we must all the same admit, too, that its complexity is a bit muddled and makes one wonder about the coherence of the system. Furthermore, to have reconstructed the sources of the system does not mean that we have understood it as well (rather as knowing the ingredients of a pudding is not the same as tasting them). We must go back, then, to the deeper level of interpretation, traced in the synchronic systematization. On the historiographic plane, the comparison between the texts of Bonaventure and those of Thomas relates to the stucturing of knowledge, showing their common and their divergent features. Both share a mission to communicate the “knowledge of God” (Thomas with a particular attention to the incipientes and to unbelievers; Bonaventure with a particular attention to the fratres who wish to progress in the Church): to this end both seek to elaborate an articulation of knowledge; but for Thomas it had an eminently pedagogic function, and so was conventional though not arbitrary: it is the necessary “order whereby understanding is made easier”42. For Bonaventure, however, (possessed of an “architectonic” taste, maybe
42 ST1 pr; but cf. also OEE pr and CDC pr.
108 excessive, for articulation and enumeration) the division had a profoundly systematic rationale (theological and metaphysical): everything is ordered because Christ is the key to everything. Both, then, are “scholastics” in the elaboration of their sources, in that they do not select just some of the contents of tradition ( “aut aut”), but seek in different ways to take on and synthesise in a coherent way the whole of the tradition known to them (“et et”). Bonaventure, (who expressly intended “not to invent new opinions, but to weave anew those that are common and approved” 43) took the road of extracting individual items from their original context and inserting them into a scheme which was entirely traditional as to its contents, but entirely new as to its structure (he seems to have been attached to this scheme, already sketched out in the Reductio, all his life). Thomas, on the other hand, took the road of combining items through a concordance and hierarchy of schemes (which do not all have the same “weight”, and play different parts), clearly giving the epistemological primacy to the Aristotelian system, but without ever showing that he was entirely satisfied with the schemes obtained. Further, in articulating philosophy and theology both Thomas and Bonaventure share the (Biblical and Augustinian) paradigm of “parallel doublets”, carrying it out with perhaps extreme rigour, though with different shades of meaning: Thomas shows the natural basis of supernatural perfection, and Bonaventure shows the necessity and natural impossibility of such perfection. To reach an alternative paradigm (that of “vertical doublets”) one must look in the end to Ockham and Luther, for whom the two spheres do not touch one another: the
43 Sent 2 pr.
109 supernatural sphere is in fact withdrawn from reason by the freedom of divine choice. (To use a metaphor, it is impossible to predict the course of a vehicle from its departure point to a point of arrival if it does not run on fixed rails, but freely on tyres…). By contrast, a way to overcome the double scheme for unifying the two planes (that is, by eliminating divine freedom, and so supernaturality) is the dialectic of Hegel. In general, we may say that the structured philosophy of Bonaventure is the philosophy of a theologian, while the structured theology of Thomas is the theology of a philosopher. While Bonaventure often underlines the non- isomorphism between philosophy and theology (the latter, i.e. Sacred Scripture, “is not divided into theoretical and practical”, but is entirely practical, “so that we may become good”), and really seems to place philosophy as a development of a particular sort of theology (i.e. it is part of the theology of creation);44 Thomas, by contrast, adopts as it were by stealth an epistemological scheme drawn from Aristotelian philosophy, bringing it into agreement with other schemes drawn either from philosophy (neoplatonic, this time) or from the Bible. Yet, in the double scheme, Bonaventure is seeking to put forward a new philosophy, of a “Christian quality”; Thomas is seeking to bring it into agreement with Greek philosophy, and in fact has a more marked philosophical sensibility than Bonaventure (though in the end he too is putting forward something new). At bottom, when he attributes creation to Aristotle, or accuses Averroes of anti-Aristotelianism, does he not run the risk of pulling the dogmatic “rabbit” out of the rational “top hat”, having first hidden it inside? And is Bonaventure
44 Cf respectively Brev 0.1.2; Sent 0.3; Hex 1.37.
110 blameworthy when he shows45 the newness Christianity has brought even in philosophy? From the textual comparison we also shed new light on the so-called Bonaventurian question. In the end, Bonaventure has not fully developed a philosophy (and here Van Steenberghen was right), and yet he has not rigorously elaborated a programme, alternative to- but not incompatible with- that of Thomas (and here Gilson was right); furthermore, if only implicitly- inasmuch as it is implied in his theological discourse- he has refined the conceptual armoury (as, for example, the concept of natura). Unfortunately, however, in the immediately following tradition (if one excludes some influence on Matthew of Acquasparta) this philosophical programme was not effectively picked up and realised, until a partial recovery by Antonio Rosmini and his school. (In his theory of the three forms of being, “ideal, real, and moral”, the order of the three is newly changed, to meet the demands of modern transcendentalism).
METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL CONCLUSIONS On the methodological plane, we have tried to show how to read «non multa, sed multum», and to seek to locate the part in the whole, and to grasp “the whole in the part”, if possible, through suitable and conventional projections, so as to make a geographical map with which to “navigate” better an author’s entire body of writings (and so of his thought as a whole). On the hermeneutical and doctrinal plane, we have verified that the divisions and treatments of philosophy in Bonaventure are all in a theological context, but also have a
45 Cf Sermo 5.4 and 10.5.
111 philosophical validity. These divisions are “systematic”; the key to the system is the incarnation of the Word, and hence the concept of nature articulated according to the Christian vision of the world. The three “axes” which structure this system are the topological, the chronological and the ontological. On the systematic plane, we may note that the properly theological character of the Bonaventurian division has not hindered a profoundly philosophical kind of consideration. It would be interesting, then, to try to “secularize” his doctrine of reductio, showing its philosophical inner structure (such as the “division into three, plus a fourth”, typical of European culture, according to the brilliant recent exposition by Reinhard Brandt 46). The philosophia essentialiter Christiana, which is given only conditionally, that is “supposita veritate revelationis”, but which remains philosophically thinkable, in the dialectic space of probable argument. If Christ is indeed and truly the Word “which enlightens every man”, then in every philosophical system there is hidden a philosophia naturaliter Christiana, which philosophers, as philosophers, cannot attain without presupposing faith. In that sense non-Christian philosophy can be “revealed in itself”, as “preparation for the Gospel”. If Christ, then, by becoming incarnate has truly become the “centre of recapitulation for all things”, “in which are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”, then he also gives a phi-
46 Cf R. Brandt, D’Artagnan und die Urteilstafel: über ein Ordnung- sprinzip der europäischen Kulturgeschichte (1, 2, 3-4), Stuttgart 1991; Italian trans.: D’Artagnan o il quarto escluso. Su un principio d’ordine della storia culturale europea 1, 2, 3 / 4, Milan 1998; see in particular parts A/1-2 (on the three-fold scheme in general, with the fourth element “excluded”); part B/I/3 (on the kinds of life within the social organization); the whole of part B/II (on the organization of knowledge and of the University); part B/III/1 (on the Tri- nity).
112 losophia supernaturaliter Christiana, that is, a philosophising internal to faith and a Christian re-reading of philosophy, and, in general, of all human culture and science (which is called Christian inasmuch as it gives a Christian sense of it). In this consists Christian philosophy in a fuller sense; it is based on a «certainty that cannot be
113 TRANSLATOR’S NOTES
I have included translations of the Bonaventurian texts quoted; where available, I have used published translations, but in other cases I have translated them myself.
A note on my use of ‘quotes’. Since I do not have the « » except when imported from the original, I have adopted the following convention:
I use double quotes “ ” for actual quotations from other authors, and these are usually referenced in the footnotes. I use single quotes ‘’ for quotations within quotations (these are rare) to indicate that it is the word itself which is being discussed rather than the thing the word refers to (so: ‘bean’ is a noun, but a bean is a vegetable) to indicate that the word or phrase is being used in a sense that is technical (or semi-technical) rather than its common sense.
I am not quite sure if my rendering of “ennari” as “number-groups” is accurate- I had particular difficulty with “polinomi perionimici in un numero fisso ‘n’- which I have rendered as “grouped in sets- ‘number groups’- having in common a fixed number ‘n’”. I hope this is not too far out!
PAUL SPILSBURY
114