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Andrea Di Maio SAINT BONAVENTURE's DIVISION OF 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
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