Aristotelianism, medieval
Publié le 20/01/2010
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Although there are many possible definitions, 'medieval Aristotelianism' is here taken to mean explicit receptions of Aristotle's texts or teachings by Latin-speaking writers from about AD 500 to about AD 1450. This roundabout, material definition avoids several common mistakes. First, it does not assert that there was a unified Aristotelian doctrine across the centuries. There was no such unity, and much of the engagement with Aristotle during the Middle Ages took the form of controversies over what was and was not Aristotelian. Second, the definition does not attempt to distinguish beforehand between philosophical and theological receptions of Aristotle. If it is important to pay attention to the varying and sometimes difficult relations of Aristotelian thought to Christian theology, it is just as important not to project an autonomous discipline of philosophy along contemporary lines back into medieval texts. The most important fact about the medieval reception of Aristotle is in many ways the most elementary: Aristotle wrote in Greek, a language unavailable to most educated Europeans from 500 to 1450. Aristotle's fate in medieval Europe was largely determined by his fate in Latin. Early on, Boethius undertook to translate Aristotle and to write Latin commentaries upon him in order to show the agreement of Aristotle with Plato, and also presumably to make Aristotle available to readers increasingly unable to construe Greek. He was able to finish translations only of the logical works, and to write commentaries on a few of them and some related treatises. Even this small selection from Aristotle was not received entire in the early Middle Ages. Of the surviving pieces, only the translations of the Categories and De interpretatione were widely studied before the twelfth century, though not in the same way or for the same purposes. Before the twelfth century, Aristotelian teaching meant what could be reconstructed or imagined from a slim selection of the Organon and paraphrases or mentions by other authors. The cultural reinvigoration of the twelfth century was due in large part to new translations of Greek and Arabic works, including works of Aristotle. Some translators worked directly from the Greek, among whom the best known is James of Venice. Other translators based themselves on intermediary Arabic translations; the best known of these is Gerard of Cremona. Although the translations from Greek were often the more fluent, translations from the Arabic predominated because they were accompanied by expositions and applications of the Aristotelian texts. To have a Latin Aristotle was not enough; Latin readers also needed help in understanding him and in connecting him with other authors or bodies of knowledge. Hence they relied on explanations or uses of Aristotle in Islamic authors, chiefly Avicenna. The thirteenth century witnesses some of the most important and energetic efforts at understanding Aristotle, together with reactions against him. The reactions begin early in the century and continue throughout it. The teaching of Aristotelian books was condemned or restricted at Paris in 1210, 1215 and 1231, and lists of propositions inspired by certain interpretations of Aristotle were condemned at Paris and Oxford in 1270 and 1277. However, interest in Aristotle continued to grow, fuelled first by the translation of Averroes' detailed commentaries, then by new translations from Greek. At the same time, some of the most powerful Christian theologians were engaged in large-scale efforts to appropriate Aristotle in ways that would be both intelligible and congenial to Christian readers. Albert the Great composed comprehensive paraphrases of the whole Aristotelian corpus, while his pupil Thomas Aquinas undertook to expound central Aristotelian texts so as to make them clear, coherent, and mostly concordant with Christianity. Very different projects predominate in the fourteenth century. For John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, the texts of Aristotle serve as distant ground against which to elaborate philosophical and theological teachings often radically anti-Peripatetic. If they are fully conversant with Aristotle, if they speak technical languages indebted to him, they are in no way constrained by what they take his teaching to be. Other fourteenth-century projects include the application of procedures of mathematical reasoning to problems outstanding in Aristotelian physics, the elaboration of Averroistic positions, and the rehabilitation of Albert's Peripateticism as both faithful and true to reality. By the end of the Middle Ages, then, there is anything but consensus about how Aristotle is to be interpreted or judged. There is instead the active rivalry of a number of schools, each dependent in some way on Aristotle and some claiming to be his unique interpreters.
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are introduced by the interaction of Aristotle with Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious thinking.
The Christianambiguities are perhaps the most familiar.
Almost all of the Christian Aristotelians in the Latin West were members ofthe clergy.
Most spent their professional lives teaching and writing, not the liberal arts or philosophy, but Christiantheology.
It remains controversial whether or to what extent we can find an autonomous or even a textuallydistinguishable Aristotelian philosophy among them.
Similar difficulties arise in trying to distinguish philosophy fromother learned disciplines.
Medieval students of Aristotle followed him through the host of topics that he broaches inhis writings, from logic to poetics, from the physics of moving bodies through the species of fish to the motions ofcelestial spheres.
We tend to divide these topics according to modern disciplinary divisions, but historically it is all'Aristotelianism' and, in many ways important to medieval writers, all equally 'philosophy'.
A final set of ambiguitieslies around the term 'medieval'.
It is notorious that the 'Middle Ages' cannot be cut off neatly, either at theirbeginning or their end.
Many learned medieval people considered themselves direct heirs and successors to paganantiquity and the early centuries of the Christian churches.
They admitted no chronological divide.
At the other end,the 'Renaissance' is a slogan as much as a fact; there are as many continuities as discontinuities betweenphilosophical thinkers of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries (see Aristotelianism, Renaissance ).
Similar uncertainties affect geographical or cultural boundaries.
Any span of time appropriately called medieval will include,in territories we now consider European, segments of both the Byzantine and Islamic traditions of Aristotle.
Althoughthese traditions figure prominently in any retelling of Latin receptions of Aristotle, they are separate and quitecomplex traditions that would require separate and substantial treatment (see Byzantine philosophy ; Aristotelianism in Islamic philosophy ).
Faced with these difficulties of matter, discipline, chronology and geography, the most prudent position is the most modest.
Within this article, 'medieval Aristotelianism' will be restricted to explicitreceptions and examinations of Aristotle's texts or teachings by Latin-speaking writers from about AD 500 to about1450.
The emphasis throughout will be on explicit relations to Aristotle rather than on diffuse transformations orabsorptions of him.
No attempt will be made to distinguish beforehand between philosophers and theologians,though much attention will be paid to the varying and sometimes difficult relations of Aristotelian thought toChristian theology.
The arrangement will be according to traditional chronological divisions, though the chronologicalorder is not mean to suggest that the topics or figures discussed can be subsumed under a single history.
Whatfollows are not incidents in a single narrative plot, but examples of the diversity of explicit receptions of Aristotle.
2 Boethius and the earlier Middle Ages As Aristotle wrote in Greek, a language unknown to most educated Europeans from AD 500 to 1450, knowledge of his works in medieval Europe is largely determined by the extent towhich they had been translated into Latin.
The first important translator was Boethius in the sixth century.
Before him, Aristotle seems not to have been translated into Latin in any systematic way.
There certainly were Latinsummaries of Aristotelian doctrine: one of these, a fourth-century outline of basic logic called Categoriae decem(Ten Categories), was widely studied in the earlier Middle Ages on the assumption that it had been written byAugustine .
There were also paraphrases or criticisms of Aristotelian doctrine in Latin works, both pagan and Christian.
However, these traces are slight, and for good reason.
Well into the fifth century, the Roman empireconducted its philosophy in Greek.
Citizens even of the westernmost provinces were taught Greek as the languagenot only of philosophy but also of medicine, natural science and, to some extent, of belles lettres.
Boethius mayhave suspected that this erudite bilingualism would not continue past his own lifetime.
More importantly, he himselfmay have suffered from the increasing inaccessibility of Greek learning.
His references to Aristotelian texts outsidethe Organon appear to derive from notations in the manuscripts he used or from Greek commentators on the logicalworks (see Aristotle Commentators ).
It may be that Boethius translated only the logical works of Aristotle because these were the only works he had at hand in Italy.
Whatever the problems of decline in the Latin West, Boethius'stated reasons for undertaking the translations would have been recognized by any Greek-speaking student ofphilosophy.
Boethius translated Aristotle and wrote Latin commentaries on him in order to show the agreement ofAristotle with Plato.
The project of reconciliation was already an old one, with multiple sources.
Latin philosophy hadbeen eclectic in its borrowing from Greek since Cicero .
It was part of Cicero's philosophic identity to take what was best from every philosophic school.
This tendency was reinforced and given grander theoretical justification inNeoplatonism from Porphyry on.
If there was disagreement among Neoplatonists about the extent to which Aristotle had dissented from Plato, there was unanimity in thinking that Aristotle had accepted much from his teacher andthat he had gone on to treat certain subjects with richer detail.
Thus almost all of the Neoplatonists, beginning withPorphyry, wrote commentaries on Aristotle (see Neoplatonism ).
The appearance of these commentaries in Latin during the later Middle Ages influenced scholastic discussions at many points, but they also show that Boethius'project of translation and commentary had a long pedigree.
The reconciliation of Aristotle and Plato, which meantmost often the subordination of Aristotle to Plato, was a familiar programme by which Boethius could justify hisproject of translation and commentary.
In the end, Boethius translated the Categories, De interpretatione, Prior andPosterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations - in short, all of the logical works of the Organon.
Hecertainly wrote both rudimentary and advanced commentaries for De interpretatione and Porphyry'sIsagōgē (Introduction) to the Categories and single commentaries on the Categories and Topics, as well as the Topics of Cicero.
Even this small selection from Aristotle was not received entire in the early Middle Ages.
Thetranslation of the Posterior Analytics was lost early, as was the commentary on the Topics.
Of the surviving pieces,only the translations of the Categories and De interpretatione were widely studied before the twelfth century,though not in the same way or for the same purposes.
For example, Boethius' first commentary on Deinterpretatione, the more rudimentary one, predominated in the ninth and tenth centuries while the secondcommentary received much more attention in the eleventh century.
With Boethius as in so many later cases, therule is evident: translation is not the same as reception.
Something can exist and even circulate in translation, butnot yet be appropriated for speculative use.
The reception can be limited for any number of reasons: becausecopies are scarce, because the work is too difficult, or because learned taste has turned to other topics.
TheAristotelian logic that Boethius had made available passed down to later readers in company with other works,among them the anonymous Categoriae decem.
Together, these works constituted the curriculum not only in logic.
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