God and Individuals: The Porphyrian Tree in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
[In Italian in Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 91 (1999) 18-49 - plates are missing.]
Introduction[1]
One famous problem of so called possible worlds is that of Transworld Identity: Is an individual identical with itself in different possible worlds? I will not discuss the various solutions to this problem[2] but just hint at a methodological implication. The question of theodicy, i.e. whether God could have created a world in which there is no (physical or moral) evil, makes sense only 'all other things being equal': Hitler and Mother Teresa, natural disasters and any vacation resort should be the same, just without murder and hurricane, ranging from the highest ideals of humanity down to the trifles. Otherwise, knowing or not knowing whether God could or couldn't have created a world different from the actual world, would tell us nothing about this actual world nor about God (e.g. divine and human freedom, evil).[3] Making the argument in the framework of possible worlds, thus, makes it necessary to assume that "essential properties and essence" make up the individual and that this and only this individual instantiates its essence.[4]
On the other hand metaphysics deals with something general. A statement is a metaphysical one
1. if it has "no restrictions of intended reference (...) in force",
2. if the author takes "responsibility for the strict and literal consequences of the words (...) used to make this statement", and
3. if this statement is "(...) 'sufficiently general'(...)".[5]
The first requirement is meant to guarantee that such statements extend to real, actual, possible, and mental objects, if they are to be taken as metaphysical, since "metaphysics is an attempt to get at how things really are"[6]. The second requirement lays the burden of non-restriction and of awareness about the extension on the speaker or the analyst of that intentionally or supposedly metaphysical statement. But why is, in the third condition, the attribute of being sufficiently general put between quotation marks (scare quotes as they are termed colloquially)? Since "sufficiently general" is no quotation within the text, is it used in an improper, oblique way? In metaphysics? Well, because it is, indeed, about metaphysics, which is nothing but an "attempt" at reality with some claim for generality.
Metaphysics is reality wrapped in language. Furthermore, generality has degrees, some of them are "sufficient" for qualifying to be metaphysical. Actually there is (or at least historically was) a way of describing reality in a scale of generalities; I am referring to the differentiation of 'substances' and 'species'. Michael Loux, following Aristotle, presents these differences as the most promising philosophical tool for explaining individuation. But he has to admit by the very end that the "content [claimed for essences] is hidden from us as the consequence that reflection on individual essences will not contribute much to the ontologist's understanding of substance."[7] Loux also shows that in this terminology 'substance' is the highest 'substance kind' which exists never apart but - as a genus and like all intermediary substance kinds or genera - only as infima species and not as individual. The problem of the individual persists, but this approach seems to open a way to attaining sufficient generality in metaphysical statements. The opposite approach, viz. taking substance exclusively as 'individual essence', is branded by him "Leibnitian essentialism". It is true that Leibniz does not accept any species which extends over more than one individual and hence the "specific difference" cannot work. Leibniz rejects the concept that substances are individuated numerically,[8] and therefore he has no use for the hierarchy of genera and species, which is traditionally known as Arbor Porphyriana. Leibniz's opposition to generalization through a hierarchy of universals goes along with his idea that "every individual substance expresses the whole universe in its own manner" such that it entails "all its experiences together with all the attendant circumstances and the whole sequence of exterior events".[9] We are evidently at the origins of the 'possible worlds' as one can see in parallel writings to that just quoted where Leibniz states: "We must, therefore, not conceive of a vague Adam (...) but we must attribute to him a concept so complete that all which can be attributed to him may be derived from this. Now, there is no ground for doubting that God can form such a concept or, rather, that he finds it already formed in the region of possibilities [dans le pays des possibles], that is to say, in his understanding [entendement]."[10] This 'complete concept of Adam' in God's mind is called by Leibniz "conceived sub specie generalitatis",[11] that is to say the whole of the individual as a general concept. This probably meets the requirements for a metaphysical statement, but its meaning nevertheless needs to be spelled out. This, however, is not my aim at present.
What is evident from these observations and what I want to show in the rest of the paper is that treating metaphysics as bringing about statements together with the claim of generalization on the one hand, and on the other hand of treating metaphysical problems with the tool of 'possible worlds' are conflicting philosophical languages. I will, however, not deal with modal logic because my sources don't do so. But I will show that the strain between different philosophical languages is an inherent conflict in the hierarchy of substances which became open in the 17th and 18th century. One key problem treated then was whether or not to include God into the hierarchy of genera, and it might be (but I am not competent to develop this idea) that closer consideration of this problem could help shaping the debate about the role of God in modal logic.[12]While tracing the problem of present day metaphysics back to the Porphyrian Tree I have no intention to make old philosophers appear new or, vice versa, contemporary thinkers look old, nor am I just 'telling a story'; rather I hope to show – as I frequently hope – that facts of intellectual history do enlighten the ramifications of a current strain in philosophy.
The Aquinas' approach in De ente et essentia
The history of the Arbor Porphyriana from Thomas Aquinas to scholastic philosophers in the 17th/18th century is an interesting touch-stone for the development of basic philosophical assumptions. It has to do with ontological realism and gnoseology[13]. Likewise it shows the power of schemes in philosophy. Representing philosophical concepts in graphical schemes can seduce to realist or conceptualist interpretations of an ontological problem[14] - according to apparently slight changes in the presentation. Now, whatever the positions in philosophy might be at stake, realism is always to some extent a matter of decision as to how philosophical correctness can be achieved. If one assumes that ontology is a major field of philosophy, realism is its major challenge, supposed that 'reality' is what ontology is about. One can assume the position, however, that ontology is beyond the competence of philosophy, in this case 'reality' becomes an indifferent matter, but one has to admit that such a position can be the result of ontological questions. That is what can be shown by the career of the Arbor Porphyriana. I will start from some remarks on Thomas' De ente et essentia, relating it back to Boethius' interpretation of Porphyry's Isagoge. Then I will present a number of interpretations and representations of the Arbor (without any claim for completeness) in philosophy text books of the centuries around and after Descartes' metaphysics and gnoseology. It will turn out that the Arbor both underscores and simplifies the antagonism of realism and gnoseology.
In chapter 2 of his De ente et essentia, Thomas Aquinas says: "Similarly, the essence of a genus and the essence of a species differ as signate from non-signate, although in the case of genus and species a different mode of designation is used with respect to both. For, the designation of the individual with respect to the species is through matter determined by dimensions, while the designation of the species with respect to the genus is through the constitutive difference, which is taken from the form of the thing."[15] It is worth noting the expression "per differentiam constitutivam" (through the constitutive difference), because we will have to ask in which way difference 'constitutes' the species. For he continues: "quidquid est in specie est etiam in genere ut non determinatum" ("whatever is in the species is also in the genus as undetermined"). What does 'being' ("est") mean in this case? Thomas' example is body which has different meanings if taken as part of the animal or if taken as genus. Here, "genus significat indeterminate totum id quod est in specie" (p. 8; "the genus signifies indeterminately the whole that is in the species "). Hence, the meaning of 'constitution' or 'being' depends on the question, whether genus is 'something' or just a concept: does genus signify a reality inherent in individual things, or does it refer to a concept which can be analyzed in a way that it leads to an understanding of things? Taking "indeterminate" ("indeterminately"; in ordinary language: 'indifferently') as a key, genus is indifferent to species. But can there be a thing which is indifferent? If genus is taken as identical in various species then it seems that there must be something identical, which stands in itself. These questions may sound naive to specialists of scholastic philosophy. But the problem arises in the concept of Being when applied to God and to spiritual beings, as we will see now.
The aim of the De ente et essentia is to clarify the modes of speaking about essence.[16] Applying this concept to God Thomas says that "ipse non sit in genere" (5, p. 14; "he is not in a genus"). The difference of genus and species does not apply to God, because He is not included in the scale of perfections. The difference between esse and essentia does not apply in this special case, while it applies to all other cases of being. In God, Thomas goes on, all perfections are included "modo exellentiori omnibus rebus" (p. 15; "God has these pervections in a more excellent way than all other things have them"). And in created spiritual substances the difference between essence and being does apply but without going down from species to individuals, except for the human soul, due to its body. In this way the scale of individual, species and genus is referring to realities; they do not only signify ways of understanding but denote differences in real being. Furthermore, the De ente et essentia would be a mere logical treatise if it would not imply its value in determining the understanding of divine and spiritual beings. On the other hand, Thomas states that exactly the difference of esse and essentia are the precondition for reasoning about things at all, when he says: "Since in these [created intellectual] substances the quiddity is not the same as existence, these subtances can be ordered in a predicament".[17] The other finite beings are composed of matter and form, and therefore their essence can be individualized in individuals, due to matter (p. 16); the form, which is both connected with essence and the higher grades of being, is not involved as itself in the individualization. One consequence of this approach is that both God and individuals are not objects of argumentation because in them the scale of differences has come to an end.
In the background of these arguments is the Arbor Porphyriana, even though Thomas doesn't mention it literally.[18] The Isagoge, that is the introduction into Aristotle's Categories by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyrios, has been commented on by Boethius and then has influenced scholastic teaching. Porphyry insists that the scale of genus, species and individuum is a means that works only on those levels where a genus can be specified, and Boethius, too, speaks of the intermediary levels when a species can be a genus of a lower level or a genus can be species when referred to the next higher level. Species specialissima, hence, is that species which has only individuals coming after it.[19] Boethius continues saying that this series of genus and species has been developed by Porphyry only in the category of substance, and he puts substantia as "genus generalissimum" (103 A). Then he follows the well known divisions. Interestingly he divides animal rationale in immortale and mortale, i.e. "God and man". He justifies this by reminding that the pagans held God, as well as the heavenly bodies, to be corporeal. (103 B) This seemingly ephemeral occurrence will return in the 17th century in the form that Deus will occupy the same rank as Coelum (s. Plate 8).
In the traditional presentation of the Arbor Porphyriana in graphical form, as reproduced in a philosophy text book (Plate 1), we note that the genera and species are put in a sequence which is named "linea directa". This suggests that there is an order of beings ending in the individuals like Petrus and Paulus. The next observation to be made is: the difference is said "constituit" - and we have to ask if it constitutes in the sense of Thomas Aquinas. But the most striking feature should be that above "Substantia" there has been added "Ens". No doubt, the division of ens into substance and accidens is much different from that of e.g. corporeum and incorporeum: it doesn't make up a direct line, and the main feature of accidens is exactly that ens cannot be predicated of it in the same way as it can be of substance. This indicates clearly that the Arbor, stemming from a comment on a logical treatise, has developed into an ontological interpretation of the divisions. It now seems to represent realities such as Body, Animal, Man, etc. The fact that Thomas didn't mention the Tree suggests that he was aware of the shift, the Tree could work in his discussion of differences because the model would fade on the extremes: God and Individual.
One of the strictest critics of the Porphyrian Tree was the humanist Lorenzo Valla. In his Dialectica[20] he confirms that the Tree as a model for genus and species comes to a logical end in the supreme being and the individual. But he criticizes the contraries of 'corporeal' and 'non corporeal' in the first division of substance, postulating that it had to be 'body' and 'spirit or soul'.[21] This proposal comes from Valla's specific analysis of the modes of speaking, in which a concept (such as 'incorporeal substance') has to have a referent, i.e. a 'thing' (res) to which the concept refers. Consequently he suggests to put on the top of the scale "res" instead of "substantia". Hence follows that also 'incorporeal substance', spirit, has to be divided further, into "creantem" (God) and "creatum" such as angels and devils. He even considers Christ, stating that he – being God and human at the same time – does not fit into the scheme, too.[22] This criticism is to a great part due to Valla's spirit of polemics against scholastic Aristotelianism and his humanist and philological approach to language, therefore he raises the question of whether the categories have a meaning with regard to reality or but to the ways of speaking. Even though his remarks are valuable, because most of the issues will return in the authors which will be discussed in the following paragraphs, I have no evidence so far that his Dialectics had any impact on them.
17th century scholasticism
But the Porphyrian Tree had a reappraisal in the 17th century among the Aristotelians,[23] even though extensive commentaries on the Isagoge were rarely published,[24] and as one can see from Thomas Aquinas and is confirmed by Cardinal Cajetan[25], commenting on Porphyry did not always include appreciation for the Tree as a scheme. The Dominican scholar Johannes a S. Thoma included a commentary on the Isagoge in his exposition of Aristotle's logic,[26] but only summarizes the Tree with regard to substance without dignifying it a picture nor a comment.[27] However, he bases his treatment of categorial being ("De ente praediamentali") on the subdivision of genus and species, an he gives five conditions for considering 'being' as category: "It has to be (1) in itself and not accidentally; (2) complete, (3) finite; (4) non-complex, and (5) univocal."[28] The third condition excludes God from 'predicamental being'.
Franciscus Toletus, one of the earliest authors of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle, mentions the habit of putting substances into tables and then enumerates the division of finite substance into corporeal and incorporeal and so on. From his wording: "De divisione seu coordinatione eorum, quae in praedicamento Substantiae continentur", and: "Pro cognitione harum substantiarum, solent aliquot tabellas assignare", we can gather that he takes the division of the concept of substance as an ontological and real division into different substances, such as angels, plants, stones etc., and consequently he excuses himself for presenting this in his commentary on logic, because these tables belong properly to "other sciences".[29] This is also why he has to take precautions by excluding the concept of God from substance and from predicaments in general. As S. Thomas had said (e.g. Summa Theologiae I q. 3 a. 5) – and he is quoted duly – God as supreme being and source of being is not predicable, and if God is to be called substance then in a different way than all other beings.[30]
An important step towards a revival of the Porphyrian Tree was made by the Spanish Jesuit Rodericus de Arriaga, who taught in Prague and published his Cursus philosophicus in 1632. He agrees with Toletus that the categories as a part of philosophical teaching do not belong to logic but rather to metaphysics,[31] because logic is only concerned with the operations of the mind, while metaphysics deals with the things: "I stated earlier that the categories belong for the most part to metaphysics and in no way to logic, since logic deals only with the operations of the mind and not with things themselves."[32] But Arriaga thinks there is no problem to include God in the category of substance, provided God obtains the top place: "Supposed these categories are so much ecclesiastical [i.e. widely accepted] (...) God may well obtain in them a place as supreme head."[33] In order to justify this operation he has to stretch the concept of substance: "The concept of substance is, whatever constitutes a 'first thing' internally. By 'first thing' I mean, what first and in itself is intended by nature, viz. what exists first and in itself, or that which is the first root of what follows."[34] First, substance is now realistically constituting things in the sense of a 'first intention', i.e., what something is as it is. Second, it is conceived as an inner principle. Third, it has its existence in itself - this is an ambiguous definition because in the creational and theological sense of the word, only God is per se existing, while in the logical sense of first intentions only individuals are existing "per se" whereas all other intentions depend gnoseologically from the perceived thing. Forth, existing beforehand ("primo") and "per se" is rendered additionally as being the first root of the following. This again has an ambiguous meaning as Albert the Great had pointed out: also the individuals are the 'roots' of all higher concepts in terms of species and genus, such as they are placed as 'roots' of the "tree".[35]
From a medieval point of view Arriaga is two times confounding necessary distinctions: First he is combining the meaning of substance as (1) "ens per se existens" and as (2) "primum commune praedicabile"; in the first sense it belongs to the realm of metaphysics, in the second sense it is the object of logic.[36] Second he is confounding "universale in essendo" with "universale in causando".[37] To include God in the categories as the highest substance is justified only by assigning Him the function of creator and of the ontological root of all beings. But Albert had clearly assigned God a role outside the scale of beings, since God is "neither matter, nor form, nor the composite, nor universal, nor particular, nor individual, nor difference (...) but before any genus and above any genus".[38] Thomas had even taken causality as the main reason to exclude God from the categories, because, as he says, genus extends only to the species the genus of which it is, while God as the cause of everything 'extends' over every being.[39] Arriaga's identifying causation with being has a Neoplatonic ring which, however, cannot be confirmed by his text in the form of clear quotations. Nevertheless he eventually introduces into the hierarchy of being the theological notion of creation that is much akin to the Neoplatonic idea of the order of beings. It is Plotinus who describes the ascending from the species to the One which, as he says, then "spreads [skidnamenon] and extends [phthanein] to all things and comprises everything into one order [syntaxei mia]" (Enn. III 3, 1). But the Jesuit's strategy is certainly connected with Scotist influences, in as much as he adopts the univocation of the term 'being'. In his Theology he defends the inclusion of God in the categories by stating that the concept of being is uniform with respect to God and creation; therefore, he thinks, God might be considered the genus without eliminating His infinitude in comparison to created beings.[40] Arriaga relies on the metaphysics of Francisco Suárez who defended the univocation of 'being' and expressly declared universal 'in essendo' and universal 'in causando' to be identical and even held that every 'universale in causando' in as much as it is the cause of more than one effect is "a single thing such as God, heaven etc."[41]
Arriaga's policy in transforming the discussion seems to be, on the one hand, to separate strictly the realm of logic and metaphysics, and in doing so he has to assign the categories to metaphysics while logic is restricted to the operations of mind. As we have seen, traditionally these fields where not methodically separated, but it had to be clarified in every case whether one was speaking in terms of logic or of ontology; this was one of the aims of Thomas' De ente et essentia. But by separating logic from metaphysics, Arriaga had to assign parts of logic to ontology, thus giving the categories more ontological weight than they had traditionally had. On the other hand, Arriaga's strategy aimed at a full description of reality, taking into account all levels and all details of what was to be said 'real'. Therefore he could not exclude God from categories, because otherwise they wouldn't have competence for all things which can be spoken about. In separating the philosophical disciplines Arriaga practically divides the world of philosophy into a realm of mind (logic) and a realm of being (metaphysics). From this point of view it is interesting to note how he deals with the possible divisions of substance. One possibility he offers is the distinction into created and uncreated, and furthermore into complete and incomplete substance; but he is not happy with this because evidently some of the branches would overlap.[42] And now he offers the Porphyrian Tree: "Third, substance is divided into material and spiritual, living and non-living, and so on along all those differences which commonly are given in the 'predicamental tree', down to Petrus, for example, a division which is peculiar for 'being'."[43]
The change is really drastic. The Tree is not anymore a line constituting predicable substances according a conceptual hierarchy but it is a series of beings, as it had been presented by Toletus, and the dividing side lines are not anymore made up of negative and positive distinctions (e.g. incorporeal vs. corporeal). The basic distinction into material and spiritual mirrors the separation of philosophical disciplines. But the most important reinterpretation is Arriaga's identifying substance with being: "Substantia potest dividi, sicut et ens", and "quae divisio etiam est propria entis". Identifying substance and being is possible only if the strategy of differentiating essence and existence as proposed by Thomas Aquinas is abandoned. This becomes clear in Albert the Great's commentary on the Isagoge, where he states, that substantia and ens are only identifiable if the mode of potentiality is disregarded, thus taking 'being' as "ens actu existens".[44]
Even though Arriaga does not depict the Tree, we will see how his presentation leads towards the Cartesian interpretation of substance, and he comes very close to what Lorenzo Valla had purported as criticism to the scholastic teaching, namely the division of substance into spirit and body and the abolishment of the concept of substance. It should also be noted, that both Valla and Arriaga are prior in the order of time to any of Descartes' published writings.
There were plenty of philosophy texts books defending the traditional view. The Franciscan Johannes Poncius defends the impossibility of including God in the Categories. He also takes the categories as ordinating beings, but God, he says, cannot be "genus generalissimum" because this would include an imperfection, since by definition all grades of being mark an ability of further perfection.[45] He subtly explains the major difficulty which arises if one tries to assign the concept of substance to God and finite beings: Applying the category of substance to God would affirm a difference in God, because grades of substances are made up by differences, which constitute finite beings. The only solution could be to oppose finite being to God by way of "modus", which, as he admits, is a well known approach with the Scotists, but he is afraid that such subtlety would not hold because then the category of "relatio" would interfere.[46]
Only as an additional information ("Pro complemento" n. 30, p. 475) Poncius presents the Tree of Categories, insisting that this never can be complete because of the multiplicity of existing substances. His Tree presents only the series going down from "genus generalissimum ad individua humana", and he describes the lateral series, the differences, as "differentiae divisivae superioris, et constitutivae inferioris". His Tree however marks the differences as abstraction, such as "Incorporeitas/Corporeitas", and the individual "Petrus" does not stem immediately from "Homo", as we are used to see, but is mediated by "Petreitas" as distinguished from "Pauleitas" (p. 476).[47]
A slightly different emphasis is given in the textbook of the Franciscan Scotists Bartholomaeus Mastrius and Bonaventura Bellutus. As is their habit they discuss the variety of opinions on this matter.[48] For our purpose it is relevant that they divide the concept of substance into: "communissime" which includes God, "communiter" which refers to every created being including accidents, and "stricte" which excludes accidents and parts (n. 2, p. 215). These three meanings of substance represent also the possible interpretations of the genus generalissimum to the effect that those who take substance in the first sense include God in the categories, and this opinion is attributed to the nominalists ("Nominales omnes"; n. 5, p. 215) naming a.o. Arriaga. This text book prefers the 'strict' interpretation of substance; and in a concluding paragraph of the quaestio on substance it describes the Tree (n. 13, p. 217; without picture) starting with the finite substance. This is then divided into "spiritualem et corporalem" out of which the spiritual substance branches into the various species of angels, the corporeal substance ("corpus") into "corruptibile et incorruptibile". The non perishable substance denotes the celestial bodies while the perishable bodies are further split into living and non living etc. Even though these Scotists exclude God from the Tree they understand it - contrary to Poncius - as a complete division of what there is[49] and consequently assign real beings to the negative branch of the incorporeal substance.
One of the most successful text books of the Thomist school was that of the Dominican Antonius Goudin, which he himself revised in 1692 and which was very frequently reprinted.[50] He is well aware that substance has a logical and a physical meaning: "A physical subject is to which inheres any accidens (...). A logical subject is about which anything is being asserted, in the way as Petrus is the logical subject of man (...)."[51] Repeating the loci classici in Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and others, he asserts that God is not included in the predicament of substance (p. 285). Finally Goudin presents a number of classifications of substances, warning the reader that "those are no physical but only attributive properties, that is, nothing really distinct from the substance but only kinds of second notions which one attributes to substance".[52] He also closes his paragraph with the Porphyrian Tree, the function of which he calls "ordinare". His first distinction is "created substance in general as divided into spiritual and corporeal" ("substantia creata in communi, quae dividitur in spiritualem et corpoream"). Having excluded God from the category of substance, the division starts from finite created beings as in Poncius. In the 1686 edition Goudin's Tree ends with the individuals: "Man is divided into various individuals which cannot be divided further and serve in a way as basis of all degrees of predicates." ("Homo dividitur in varia individua, quae sunt ulterius indivisibilia, et veluti bases omnium graduum praedicamentalium.") The revised edition is more cautious in terms of logic, ending the Tree one degree earlier, without justification, but it is evident that Petrus and Paulus are not to be understood as logical 'divisions' of "homo" in the way in which every lower grade is a division of the superior grade. It was Pierre Gassendi who had explained why one could refrain from including individuals in the scale, namely according to Porphyry a species is always related to a genus, but "homo" is not the genus of individuals.[53] Gassendi refers evidently to the text of the Isagoge itself, where the example of Socrates the son of Sophroniscus occurs, but the question of how to include individuals in the scale of genus and species has been rarely debated in the 17th century text books.
The Tree is presented as a mere logical tool in the Jesuit Melchior Cornaeus, who treats the categories in his Summula, where he offers a woodcut of the Tree (Plate 2).[54] His Tree illustrates the logical divisions of genus and species in close reference to Porphyry's Isagoge. When discussing the categories, Cornaeus not only presents a new scheme "Paradigma praedicamenti substantiae" (Plate 4), he also follows the original intention of Porphyry and gives samples of all categories[55], which are divided from genus generalissimum down to individual things, marked as "hoc, illud", "hic, ille" and similar. To give an example[56] he divides the category of quantum/quantitas into: continua--discreta, the continua into permanens--successiva, permanens into corpus--linea, and finally corpus into hoc--illud. In the text the author mentions even more divisions than given in that scheme, and he defines "quantitas continua permanens" as: "to which it is not repugnant that it has all parts really at the same time, as the line, surface or body (...)" ("cui non repugnat omnes partes habere simul existentes. Ut linea, superficies, corpus (...).") We may note in passing that he admits here to conceive body as defined by quantitative extension, as Cartesian physics would do.[57] Coming back to substance, his new paradigm of dividing substance gives as a first distinction spiritus--corpus, and develops only corpus which finishes on one branch in Homo and Petrus--Paulus but also includes bees, lions, the four elements, the stars, and metals, which all is summed up as hic--haec--hoc ( 4 p. 17). But then we discover that he returns to the subject in his logic,[58] and when discussing the question, whether God has to be included in the categories, he presents us with one more Tree, which starts from Ens, where on the division branch increatum hangs a leaf tagged: Deus (Plate 3). Now, this tree resembles again the Porphyrian shape, and goes down to "corpus etc.", indicating thus that this tree has to be planted on top of the traditional Arbor.[59]
So far the general approach to the division of substance is no more controversial, the first division being now body and spirit even though the authors underline that this is to be seen as a logical and not 'substantial', or realist ontological resp. factual division of things. Also the protestant teacher Jacob Thomasius will follow that line, taking for granted that God is "superpraedicamentalis".[60]
But Cornaeus' "paradigm of substance" makes use of a different pattern of division, which is historically derived from the Platonic dialectics (as Porphyry's Tree was,[61] though independently from that), but was largely developed by Petrus Ramus and his followers.[62] The most influential of these was Johann Heinrich Alsted who in his Encyclopedia summarizes every chapter with his system of dichotomies. There substance[63] is to be divided into "Increata: Deus" and "Partim increata, partim creata: Christus",[64] and "creata", which then splits into Corpus and Spiritus (Plate 5). Again this author opts for including God in the substance. What is interesting for the further development is that "spiritus conjunctus" denotes "Anima humana" while "Corpus completum mixtum perfecte animatum" leads to "animal" which is subdivided into bestia--homo. That is to say that human being appears three times: 1. in Christ, as partly created substance, 2. as a derivative of spirit, and 3. as derivative of body. The soul in the finite form of "animatum" finds a second place in addition to its proper place under spirit. This obvious inconsistency is not justified but explicable by Alsted's assumption that categories divide beings into substances and accidents, and that substance is divided both in 'degrees' and in things: "The category shows specifically the division of being into substance and accidens. (...) Substance is the thing subsisting in itself; the division of it is derived from different degrees and different things."[65] Alsted turns back to a mixture of logical and ontological understanding of the categories, and we will see that his line was to be successful in the future.
Another author who was influenced by Ramism was the Cistersian Eustachius a Sancto Paulo,[66] known since Étienne Gilson's studies on his influence on Descartes.[67] Ramist dichotomies make up the whole Summa, and are also applied to all ten categories, not much different from Cornaeus, even though a direct influence on him is still to be sought for.[68] He also shows an engraving of the traditional Arbor Porphyriana, called "paradigma".[69] The series of substances (corpus, vivens, animal, homo, Petrus-Paulus) is marked as "genera intellecta". Consequently the logical-ontological uncertainty is resolved by defining category as "appropriate disposition of the nature of things" ("naturae rerum apta dispositio", p. 51), a wording that sounds like humanist dialectics on the traces of Rudolph Agricola. In addition to that, he interprets the 'constitutive' power of the series of genus and species in the terms of analysis and synthesis: "Moreover the direct line [of the Tree] is constituted in two ways: (1) upwards by synthesis or composition, (2) downwards by analysis."[70] While the text of Porphyry uses the metaphor of descending with respect to the genera and species,[71] it is unusual to connect this with the method of analysis and synthesis. We cannot trace back the humanist sources of this interpretation of the categories, but rather should have a look at the category of substance itself.
After having dichotomized ens into "Subsistit, diciturque Substantia" and "Non subsistit, diciturque accidens" (q. 2, p. 56), Eustachius makes sure that God is not included in the categories basing himself, without naming sources,[72] on the argument, which we found in Thomas' De ente et essentia that all perfections are in God "nobiliore modo" (q. 3, p. 57). Thus the way is open to enumerate the divisions of substance into "spiritualis seu incorporea" and "corporea" etc. (q. 5, p. 64 sq.). In a very similar way like Cornaeus he tries to give a full account of all existing substances which include not only in the branch of bodies the stars, or gems, and not only individual angels (in Cornaeus it was Michael and Gabriel) but even the celestial hierarchies of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones etc. and "spiritus mali" such as "Lucifer, Beelzebub et alij". The most general differentiation in Eustachius is substantia finita/infinita, which includes - contrary to what he himself had said - God (p. 66). He also adds a division of the "substantia finita incompleta" (Plate 6). This dichotomy is extraordinary because it presents the well known features of the series of Porphyrian substances as incomplete parts of the substances: Since all corporeal beings are composed of matter and form, the soul is classified as the incomplete essential physical form of animated beings, as in plants, animals and humans. On an other branch animal and rationale in human beings is classified as the incomplete essential metaphysical part, which is said to be equivalent to genus and differentia. Even though Eustachius, who as we have seen is well aware of the logical problem, does not discuss it, we have to state that he returns to an ontological interpretation of the categories, when he classifies genus and difference as 'metaphysical'; the only way out of this surprising turn would be that Eustachius takes 'metaphysical' in a strict nominalist sense. His metaphysics seems indeed to have some nominalist inclinations, but this would deserve further study.[73]
For the present study we may conclude that in the first half of the 17th century the Arbor Porphyriana had a revival thanks to a variety of interpretations of the realm of logic and ontology and served rather to show the intertwining of logical and ontological problems than to solve them. This uncertainty was to change under the influence of Descartes.
Descartes and Cartesianism
René Descartes did not appreciate the Aristotelian categories and he intended to replace them in logic with his rules of inference.[74] Consequently he mocks about the Porphyrian Tree. In his Recherche de la verité‚ one speaker calls the "gradus metaphysici" a labyrinth and full of obscurity, because they create more problems than they can solve and lead form one statement to another "like the branches of a genealogical tree": What is at stake is the methodical and gnoseological service to be obtained from the scheme. The defender of scholasticism responds that the Tree presents successively "ante oculos" the grades which constitute individual being and knowledge of this depends on knowing what is common and what is different.[75] The dialogue reveals that Descartes takes the Tree as a mechanical device to generate knowledge. The ironic reply by Descartes' spokesman is that he owes his conviction about the uncertainty of knowledge to his school masters, and this uncertainty is due to the general lack of precision in the meaning of words; consequently the author opts for a reduction and clarification of basic and experience related words the meaning of which is both evident and common to all, such as: "when I said I am a man, I spoke about those things the most simple man and the greatest philosopher know likewise."[76]
As is well known Descartes reduces all divisions of substance to res cogitans and res extensa. Nevertheless in his Principia Philosophiae one can trace the Arbor Porphyriana. When speaking about substance Descartes, too, starts from the supreme being, God. So in a first approach substance, understood as something that "nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum", is identified with God; but with explicit reference to scholasticism it is made clear that in this concept substance is not univocal, since there is no meaning of substance which covers both God and creature.[77] Only after having laid this ground Descartes introduces the two all-inclusive substances "substantia corporea et mens, sive substantia cogitans, creata" ( 52, p. 24 sq.). For any reader raised like Descartes in scholasticism the following "modi" ( 55, p. 26): duration, order, and number, are introduced in order to replace categories. And whoever intended to reconcile Cartesianism and scholasticism could find a good starting point here.
The most influential book of logic of Cartesian setting was the so called Logic of Port Royal by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole.[78] The authors abolish the dialectics of negative distinctions (such as: incorporeal) and expressly favor classifications through direct positive oppositions referring to Descartes' "division de la substance en celle qui pense, et celle qui est étendue" (II 15, p. 163). Substance is treated here in the chapter on the five "idées universelles", i.e. genus, species, differentia, proprium and accidens (I 7, p. 59). Their definition (p. 60) is: "On appelle genre, quand elles sont tellement communes qu'elles s'‚tendent … d'autres id‚es qui sont encore universelles (...): la substance est genre … l'‚gard de la substance ‚tendue qu'on appelle corps, et de la substance qui pense qu'on appelle esprit." In accordance to the rationalist or conceptualist approach genus is a special case of the idea of species, which is defined as: "idées communes qui sont sous une plus commune et plus generale" (I 7, p. 60). Now the universals are discussed as ideas and mere ideas. Truth is consequently defined (I 2, p. 49) as a correct relationship between ideas and the objects they represent: "Que si les objets représentés par ces idées, soit de substances, soit de modes, sont en effet tels qu'ils nous sont représentés, on les appelle veritables (...)"; and Aristotle's categories are but some of them (I 2, p. 49).
This solution to the ambiguity in the universals between logic and ontology was still perceived by the scholastics as a problem. And it seems that in this atmosphere which shows its symptoms in the various and sometimes contradictory presentations discussed above the Porphyrian Tree was rediscovered in order to come to grips with it. Taking it as describing reality some scholastics[79] criticized - like the Cartesians Arnauld/Nicole - that in the linea indirecta there are only negative statements, but they demanded that God as the highest substance should be included. While the original scholastic concept had to exclude God for theological as well as logical reasons, from a realist point of view they now felt themselves encouraged to search for a place within the scheme. On the other hand, for Arriaga, Eustachius, to some extent for Cornaeus and definitely for the Cartesians of Port Royal the difference between being, substance, and thing tended to vanish.[80] This perspective had probably been opened by Renaissance-Aristotelians like Lorenzo Valla, who had said that substance and being are no operable concepts because all thought and knowledge is about "res". Probably the univocal concept of being in the Scotist school helped to identify substance and being, too, because as soon as there is no difference in the concept of being between God and created beings, the major barrier against including God in the scale of being was removed, this is also evident in Poncius who can exclude God from the categories only by subtlety, admitting that in an ontology of "modes of being" this would not hold any more, as it also happened in Arriaga.
Another scale of beings was popularized in the Renaissance through Neoplatonism and Lullism. In a 1512 edition of a book of Raymond Lull a wood cut shows a ladder on which the intellect steps up from stones over animals, Man, etc. to God and down again (Plate 7).[81] There is no evident border between individuals and genera and universals and God. Regardless of the peculiarities of Lull's art, for a real order of beings which is mirrored in the intellect this scale is as suggestive as the Arbor.
It was the Paris Professor Edmund Pourchot (Purchotius), who first designed a Tree of Categories according to Descartes in a school book (Plate 8).[82] His Arbor Purchotiana or Cartesiana had a remarkable career in catholic philosophy text books of the 18th century. As we see immediately, God has found his place in a dead end of spirit. One finds him on the same level as the earth and the stars. Further more, the logical differences of the traditional Arbor have been turned into powers and chances (vim habens, praeditum, destinatus). And after having seen the discussion in Arriaga and in Descartes, we are not surprised to find ens, res, and substantia identified.[83] One feature Pourchot is most proud of is the new position of Man in the middle of the order of beings. The human soul - which was a special case also in Thomas - is now one item joined with corporeality and constitutes the particular human place in the world. Pourchot manages to avoid the double identity of human soul and human body as it happened to appear in Alsted's scheme. The philosophical background is obviously the Cartesian distinction of 'extended thing' and 'thinking thing'. Therefore one can find the first distinction of "being, thing, or substance" marked as extensa vs. cogitans.[84] The ideological background of this solution is certainly the Renaissance speculation on the dignity of man, which of course was foreign to scholastic logic. What is also striking is the absence of the individuals. We had observed the same absence in the second version of Goudin's order of categories, who did not explain why he omitted the usual Petrus and Paulus. In Pourchot it is evident that if the substances are taken to be ideas (as in the Logic of Port Royal, and Pourchot expressly refers to it), individuals are not to be included in such a table. In this respect they all return - paradoxically enough - to the Thomist way.
Given the authority of scholastic thought one can expect an attempt to reconcile the old and the new Tree, and we find it in the Piarist Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini.[85] In his Arbor Porphyriana accuratius disposita (Plate 10) the linea directa that represents the degrees of substances is split into two lines, the upper divisions forming with Homo below the shape of a heart. These two lines represent two parallel scales of beings on each side outside the heart shaped lines: Deus-Angelus-Anima post mortem and: Lapis-Planta-Brutum which join again in Homo. On contemplating the two lines it is evident that the line Homo-Animal-Vivens Corpus represents the old linea directa in which the superior grade can be predicated of the lower, while the line Homo-Anima rationalis-Mens angelica vel humana-Spiritus is made up of spiritual substances. Looking at the horizontal levels the inconsistency of this solution is evident, because – if the items were realities - stone and God were of the same rank. The conceptualist and the realist reading of the Tree are fused again. The pretended 'accuracy' consists in displaying the problem, not in solving it.
At the same time a Jesuit teacher in Dillingen, Berthold Hauser[86], reproduces the two trees with the same arguments as Pourchot (Plate 11). Yet he added his own new tree which he calls "analysis idearum" (Plate 12).[87] Needless to say that his logic adapts as much as possible from the Logic of Port Royal. The linea directa consists now of inferences: "Plato est homo ergo animal ergo vivens (...) ergo ens." The side branches which are almost all truncated represent distinctions and arguments which repeat one another. Albert the Great had also meditated the possibility of reading the line from the individual up to substance as a series of inferences, but he warned not to go on from substance to 'being': "It follows: if it is a man it is an animal, if an animal it is a living body, if a living body it is a body, of a body a substance - because of the inclusion of the genus in [the concept of] species. But it doesn't follow: if it is a substance it is a being, because the genus - regardles whether it is something or not - follows always if a species is postited."[88] Genus can refer to non-existing merely possible or mental 'things' and therefore does not necessarily include actual being. It seems this distinction ceased to work with Cartesianism to which every concept is just an idea.
Thus finally the Arbor has been set back to a logical instrument, but to the logic of Descartes. And the whole sequence is turned upside down: Being is now at the lower end and the individual is on the top. This is paradoxical again, because traditionally the individuals marked the root because the scale of genera started from there by way of abstraction. On the other hand, an ontological interpretation could have marked being as the root. Right now, when the series is turned into method, the inference runs from top to bottom. Reality is not anymore a question since the philosophy of reality is conceived as the analysis of ideas; ontology has become gnoseology. We are on the threshold of Kant.
Conclusion
To conclude this survey of several variations on the theme of the Tree: From a Thomist point of view this presentation should assume a polemic tone, since it shows that the development of philosophy was achieved at the price of reducing and simplifying the problem. In Thomas Aquinas God was the major problem of metaphysics because God escapes linguistic and semantic as well as logical solutions to the philosophy of being. Early modern philosophy also was not free to chose a solution without God, since philosophy would have been poor without a supreme being that is at the same time the most exceptional case of being and its source or creator. But in Thomas God is also the opposite extreme to the individual being, therefore without God - in natural theology and apart from revelation - the table of beings or the order of the substances would not be complete if on the end opposite to the individuals there would not be one being that exceeds the entire scale. This is proven by Thomas' argument[89] that God is not to be conceived as that universal that comprises formaliter all things, because this solution would not comply with the logical line of the order of being in which individuation is the ultimate perfection: pantheism excludes God's excellent way of being a person. Thomas refers to the theology of Amalrich of Bena which has been repeated by Spinoza - following and transforming Descartes -, who held that there is only one substance, God, and that all other beings are but accidentals. This was, of course, a further step towards unification at the price of simplification, at least from the point of view of the early and the late scholastics who didn't think that philosophy was called upon making things easy. The Arbor Porphyriana as it was received in the 17th and 18th century was partly used to keep the standard of complexity and partly to reduce it.
From the perspective of the history of Cartesianism, we discover once again that Descartes' theory of substance and his method had its preparations in both scholasticism and Ramism, and that even these two early modern strains could be intertwined in thinkers like Arriaga or Cornaeus. If one dares to say that Arriaga and Eustachius were Cartesians ante Descartes, then only on the basis of the philosophical problem carried forward from Aristotle's Categories through their ancient and medieval interpretation. On the other hand philosophers could be non-Cartesian after Descartes without losing any contact to the debates of early modern philosophy exactly because, from the scholastic perspective, Descartes' was just one solution of the persistent problem of realism and gnoseology that can also be paraphrased as the problem of essence and individuals.
The graphical representation was revived in order to ban the complexity of the problem and eventually it was dissolved it into an plausible scheme. The Arbor Cartesiana is an indicator of the problem that was at the origins of modern philosophy of mind and substance. The last example in this paper shows that the inference of universals from individuals has an epistemic status only if we bear in mind the Porphyrian Tree in its double meaning as ontological hierarchy and gnoseological tool. Hauser's Tree tries to present the individual as the complexion of higher ideas or concepts. The problem is that these 'superior' or 'more basic' levels lack a specific ontological status - and this is one reason why (as shown in the introduction) modern metaphysics wrestles both with the meaning of generality and the constituencies of the individual.
[1] Versions of this chapter were discussed at the Philosophy of Religion Colloquium at The University of Notre Dame and at the Institute of Philosophy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, in 1999: I am indebted to the audiences for various corrections and suggestions.
[2] Michael J. Loux, Introduction, in: Michael J. Loux (ed.), The Possible and the Actual, Ithaca and London 1979, pp. 36 sqq. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford 1986, chapt. 4.
[3] This seems to me the reason why Plantinga treats philosophical theology with an extensive discussion of the concept and method of possible worlds: Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, Oxford 1974.
[4] Plantinga p. 88.
[5] Peter van Inwagen, Introduction: What it Metaphysics?, in: Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Metaphysics: The Big Questions, Oxford 1998, p. 5.
[6] P. van Inwagen, p. 3.
[7] Michael J. Loux, Substance and Attribute: A Study in Ontology, Dordrecht 1978, p. 178; it is the last paragraph of his final chapter on "Individual Essences", which is preceded by the exposition of "Genera and Species". A summary in Idem, Metaphysics: A contemporary introduction, London-New York 1998, pp. 117 ff.
[8] The evidence quoted by Loux is: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, Monadology, Lasalle 1901, 14th printing 1994, § IX, p. 14. Cf. Reinhard Finster et al., Leibniz Lexicon, Hildesheim 1988, pp. 336 sq. for more references.
[9] Discourse, p. 14 headline of § IX.
[10] Leibniz, Remarks upon Mr. Arnauld's letter (...), [May, 1686], ed. as quoted, Letter VIII, p. 103, cf. the final version of this letter, July 14, 1686, Letter IX, p. 129. Leibniz, Discours de métaphysique et correspondance avec Arnauld, ed. Georges Le Roy, Paris 1984, pp. 108, 119 sq.
[11] Ibid. Letter IX, p. 129.
[12] Some hints concerning free will and values in: Frederick Sontag, Being and God: Universal categories and one particular being, in: Religious Studies 9 (1973) 437-448.
[13] The terms 'gnoseoloy/gnoseological' do not exclude ontology, whereas in modern parlance 'epistemology/epistemological' are restricted to problems of conditions of cognition and understanding, while metaphysics focuses on knowledge of reality without correlation to sensation. See "Gnoseology" in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, Oxford 1995, p. 314.
[14] Hans Wagner, Begriff, in: Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, ed. Hermann Krings et al., vol. 1, München 1973, 191-209, esp. 204-206. A more recent study of the Prophyrian Tree is Ian Hacking: Trees of Logic, Trees of Porphyry, in: Advancements of Learning. Essays in Honour of Paolo Rossi, ed. by John L. Heilbron, Firenze 2007, pp. 219-261. Hacking is interested in part in the metaphysical, in part in the graphical aspects.
[15] Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula philosophica, ed. R. M. Spiazzi, Torino Marietti 1973, p. 7: "Sic etiam essentia generis et essentia speciei secundum signatum et non signatum differunt, quamvis alius modus designationis sit utrobique: quia designatio individui respectu speciei est per materiam determinatam dimensionibus; designatio autem speciei respectu generis est per differentiam constitutivam, quae ex forma rei sumitur." English translations of this text are taken from: Medieval Sourcebook: Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia), Translation E 1997 by Robert T. Miller, http://www.theologywebsite.com/etext/aquinas/beingandessence.shtml. Of course, I am not intending an exhaustive interpretation of Aquinas.
[16] A rather logical interpretation is given by Karl Werner: Der heilige Thomas von Aquino, 3 vols., Regensburg 1858-1859, vol. 2, p. 27-29. This is quite an extraordinary and still informative study on Thomas himself and the history Thomism. Concerning the necessary distinction of "il piano logico" and "reale" see for instance Pasquale Porro, Introduzione, in: Tommaso d'Aquino, L'ente e l'essenza, Milano 1995, p. 20 sq.
[17] De ente, p. 15: "quia in istis substantiis [sc. creatis intellectualibus] quidditas non est idem quod esse, ideo sunt ordinabiles in praedicamento".
[18] Thomas Aquinas: De natura generis (Opusculum 42) gives an extended discussion on the logical and ontological, as well as methodological implication of universals. One key passage is in chapt. 4: "Sciendum est ergo quod, sicut in quarto Metph. [1004 b 20 sq.] 'Logicus et Metaphysicus circa omnia operantur, differenter tamen' (...). quia Philosophus procedit ex certis et demonstrabilibus, Logicus autem ex probabilibus: et hoc ideo est quod ens dupliciter dicitur, scilicet naturae et rationis. Ens autem rationis proprie dicitur de illis intentionibus, quas ratio in rebus adinvenit, sicut est intentio generis et speciei, quae non inveniuntur in rerum natura sed sequuntur actiones intellectus et rationis: et hujusmodi ens est subjectum Logicae, et illud ens aequiparatur enti naurae quia nihil est in rerum natura, de quo ratio non negocietur." (Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula [cf. note 14] p. 180.) Even in this treatise, the authenticity of which is being debated, Porphyry with his Tree is not mentioned.
[19] Boethius: In Porphyrium commentariorum lib. III, in: Migne, Patrologia latina 64, 102 D.
[20] Laurentius Valla: Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, ed. Gianni Zippel, Padua 1982, 2 vols. (Thesaurus mundi 21-22); vol. 1: Retractatio totius dialecticae cum fundamentis universe philosophie [this text quoted here]; vol. 2: Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie; Retractatio I 7, pp. 46-50: "Substantie distributio contra Porphyrium et alios" (also in: Laurentius Valla: Opera omnia, Basel 1540; Reprint ed. Eugenio Garin, Torino 1962, I pp. 657-658).
[21] Valla p. 46 sq.: "'Substantia' summum genus ponitur, utpote predicamentum; 'corporea' et 'incorporea' differentie dicuntur, que semper bine constituuntur: que cum rediguntur in substantivum faciunt speciem, ut ex 'corporea' fiat 'corpus'. Verum 'incorporea' non est suum substantivum sortita apud hos [sc. Prophyrios and his commentators]: ad meam autem legem erit 'spiritus' sive 'anima'."
[22] Ibid. p. 49 sq.
[23] It does not appear in Francisus Suarez: Disputationes metaphysicae (first. ed. 1597) even though the categories and especially substance are treated there at length.
[24] The last edition of the Isagoge seems to have been published in 1600, and the last commentary on it is recorded in 1606: Wilhelm Risse, Bibliographia logica, I: 1472-1800, Hildesheim 1965, 264, 280.
[25] Thomas de Vio Cardinalis Caietanus: Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen ad praedicamenta Aristotelis, ed. Isnardus M. Marega, Romae (Institutum Angelicum) 1934; see chapt. 9, p. 61-69.
[26] Johannes a Sancto Thoma: Cursus philosophici Thomistici (...) pars prima. Continens ea quae ad artem logicam spectant (...), Coloniae Agrippinae (Münich) 1638, pars. 2, qq. 6-14.
[27] Ibid. q. 15, in fine, p. 250. The summary is headed: "Coordinatio praedicamenti substantiae"; similar 'coordinations' are given for the remaining categories. There is no graphic scheme in the editions I used: Wolfenbüttel Xb 2613, and Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus, Lugduni (Borde, Arnaud) 1663, Microfiche edition by IDC, Leiden 1987 (The Catholic Reformation CA 20).
[28] Ed. 1663, Logica, qu. 14, art. 1, pp. 205f.: "qinque enumerantur conditiones, quae requiruntur, ut aliquid sit in praedicamento (...). Prima, ut sit ens per se seu non per accidens. Secunda, ut sit ens completum. Tertia, ens finitum. Quarta, ens incomplexum. Quinta, ut sit univocum." In qu. 9, following Thomas Aquinas, Johannes presents a distinction of the individual into "designatum et determinatum" and "in communi seu vagum". Even though it is beyond the purpose of this paper it is worth mentioning that Johannes refers the concrete individual ('designatum') to the first and second intention to the effect that the individual considered in the first intention simply cannot be split up in to further properties (this is the literal meaning of individual), while according to the second intention, the individual is a twofold relationship ("constat duplici relatione rationis") and thus either it can be related to the superior degrees of substance, such as "hoc animal, hoc corpus", or it is selfreferential (Ed. 1663, p. 170). The "individuum vagum" refers to the concept of individuality and is as such not "praedicabile": it does not refer to any specific being and does not belong to any hierarchy of universals ( p. 174). The 'Leibnizian essence' overrides these distinctions.
[29] Franciscus Toletus: Commentaria, una cum Quaestionibus, in universiam Aristotelis logicam, Coloniae (Birckmann) 1573 [1st. ed. 1572], cap. 5, qu. 4, p. 113.
[30] Ibid. qu. 3, p. 112.
[31] "Metaphysics", in the case of later scholasticism, means the body of teaching in the Philosophy course (s. P. R. Blum: Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie, Stuttgart 1998), which has its medieval roots as one can see in the passage quoted from Aquinas, Opusc. 42, above note 14; it comprises the problem of being as being (later called ontology) and the 'being' of spiritual beings.
[32] Rodericus de Arriaga: Cursus philosophicus, Antverpiae 1632 [Microfiche edition by IDC, Leiden 1987 (The Catholic Reformation CA 2)], Metaph. disp. 3, sect. 2, n. 11: "Praedicamenta maiori ex parte proprie ad Metaphysicum spectare, nullo modo ad Logicam dixi supra, eo quod Logica solum agit de actionibus intellectus, non vero de rebus ipsis."
[33] Ibid.: "Quod si haec praedicamenta sunt tam Ecclesiastica (...) bene posset in illis Deus ut supremum caput locum habere."
[34] Ibid. disp. 4, sect. 4 n. 32: "Conceptus substantiae est quidquid intrinsece constituit primam rem. Nomine autem primae rei intelligo id quod primo et per se intenditur a natura, vel primo et per se existit; vel, quia est prima radix ceterorum."
[35] Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 4, in: Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, I, Paris 1890, p. 67: "Et ad hunc modum figura per modum arboris scribi consuevit, quae si secundum esset et essentiam consieratur, radices quibus principiatur, superius habet. Si autem secundum esse actuale consideratur, radices quae sunt in individuis, habet inferius." - References to Albert as a contemporary to Aquinas are of systematic order and cannot claim 'influences' or 'receptions', also because Albert is never quoted by the philosophers treated here.
[36] Albertus Magnus, De praedicamentis, tr. 2, c. 1, in: Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, I, Paris 1890, p. 166.
[37] On this distinction see Ronald P. McArthur, Universal 'in praedicando', universal 'in causando', in: Laval théologique et philosophique 18 (1962) 59-95.
[38] Albertus Magnus, De praedicamentis, tr. 2, c. 12, p. 189.
[39] Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I q. 3, a. 5 c: "Quod autem Deus non sit in genere per reductionem ut principium, manifestum est ex eo quod principium quod reducitur in aliquod genus, non se extendit ultra genus illud: (...) Deus autem est principium totius esse."
[40] Rodericus de Arriaga, Disputationes Theologicae, vol. 1, Antverpiae (Plantin) 1643, disp. 2, sect. 8, subsect. 3, p. 47: "Admittitur autem communiter unus conceptus obiectivus entis communis Deo et creaturis, in quo proculdubio ut sic concepto non explicatur differentia Dei: ergo est univocus, ergo genus. Neque timeant inde impediendam in Deo differentiam infinite perfectiorem creaturis, aut inducendam aliquam imperfectionem."
[41] Franciscus Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], in: Opera omnia, Paris 1856-1878, vol. 25-26, disp. 6, sect. 8, n. 2, p. 232: "Nam causa quae universalis dicitur, quia varios effectus potest producere, res aliqua singularis est, ut Deus, caelum, etc. (...) Tertium autem universale, quod vocatur in essendo, vel nullum est, vel in re coincidit cum quarto [sc. in praedicando], solumque nomine et habitudine rationis differunt." - Suárez does not discuss the Porphyrian Tree.
[42] Arriaga, Cursus, metaph 3, disp. 4, sect. 7, n. 41: "Substantia potest dividi, sicut et ens, in creatam et increatam (...). Ulterius substantia creata potest dividi in completam et incompletam. (...) Divisio haec non est rigorosa, quia unum membrum includitur in alio (...)."
[43] Ibid. n. 42: "Tertio dividitur substantia in materialem et spiritualem, viventem et non viventem, et sic per omnes illas differentias, quae in arbore Praedicamentali poni solent usque ad Petrum v.g. quae divisio etiam est propria entis."
[44] Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 3, p. 65: "Cum autem didtur ens absolute, non intelligitur nisi ens actu extistens: et ideo non sequitur si substantia est, ens est, quia esse ens accidit omni ei quod est."
[45] Johannes Poncius: Integer philosophiae cursus ad menten Scoti, prima pars complectens Logicam, Romae (Scheus) 1642, disp. 10, concl. 2, n. 24, p. 446.
[46] Ibid. p. 446 sq.: "sed quia est valde difficile assignare discrimen inter modum intrinsecum contrahentem ens ad Deum, ac differentiam, et quia non minus difficile est ostendere quod relatio ut sic, quae est summum genus praedicamenti relationis, non contrahatur per modos ad sua inferiora, si substantia, ut sic, contrahatur per tales modos ad Deum et creaturam."
[47] Poncius' treatment belongs to the Scotist tradition which seems to avoid the scheme of genus/species; see: Ludger Honnefelder: Scientia transcendens, Die formale Bestimmung der Seiendheit und Realität in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, Hamburg 1990, p. 233 (on Francisco Suárez and Scotus).
[48] Bartholomaeus Mastrius, Bonaventura Bellutus: Disputationes in Organum Aristotelis, Venice 1638; edition quoted: Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, vol. 1, Venice 1708, disp. 7, q. 1.
[49] Cf. the claim maid in the same text book, vol 4, Metaph. disp. 1, q. 3, n. 49, p. 15: "Sed Metaphysica dividit ens, et alia suprema genera, et ex his divisionibus colligit particulas entis".
[50] Antonius Goudin [Goudinus; also: Gaudinus]: Philosophia juxta inconcussa Divi Thomae dogmata quatuor tomis comprehensa, Urbeveteri 1859; edition used, but checked against the editions Bologna (Longus)1686 and Venetiis (Lovisa) 1736. Earliest editions known to me: Paris (Couterot) 1674 and Mediolani (Vigonus) 1674; latest edition known to me: Paris (Sarlit) 1886. On Goudin see Ignazio Narciso, Alle fonti del neotomismo, in: Sapienza 13 (1960) 124-147.
[51] Ibid. vol 1, Logica maior, pars 1, disp. 2, qu. 2, art. 2 p. 283: "Subjectum Physicum est, cui inhaeret aliquod accidens (...). Subjectum vero Logicum est, de quo aliquid praedicatur; ut Petrus est subjectum logicum hominis (...)."
[52] Ibid. art. 3, p. 291: "eas non esse proprietates physicas, sed solum attributales; id est non esse aliquid realiter distinctum a substantia, sed solum esse quasdam notiones secundas, quae attribui solent substantiae."
[53] Petrus Gassendi: Institutio logica, pars 1, canon 6, in: Opera omnia, I, Lugduni (Anisson/Devenet) 1658; Reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964, p. 95 A; there p. 94 Gassendi gives a scheme which goes from "Ens seu Res" via "Substantia" down to "Homo", and the last is divided into three: "Hic Filius Sophronisci etc. --Alius--Socrates".
[54] Melchior Cornaeus: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae, uti hoc tempore in scholis decurri solet, multis figuris et curiositatibus e mathesi petitis, et ad physin reductis, illustratum, Würzburg (Zinck) 1657, Summula Dialecticae, cap. 3, p. 12.
[55] The following authors also apply the tree on all categories: Caietanus Felix Veranus OTheat., Philosophia universa, 4 vols., Monachii (Iaecklin) 1684-1686, I, p. 486 sq.; Coelestinus Sfondrati OSB, Cursus philosophicus monasterii S. Galli, I, St. Galli (Müller) 1695 1696, I 3.
[56] Cornaeus, ibid. 5, p. 17 sq.
[57] For Cornaeus' relationship to Cartesianism see: Paul Richard Blum: Sentiendum cum paucis loquendum cum multis: Die aristotelische Schulphilosophie und die Versuchungen der Naturwissenschaften bei Melchior Cornaeus SJ, in: Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung (Festschrift Paul Moraux), ed. By Jürgen Wiesner, vol. II, Berlin 1987, 538-559 (cf. Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, chapter 4.5); abridged version as: Science and Scholasticism in Melchior Cornaeus SJ, in: Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani, Binghamton/New York 1988 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 53), 573-580. On Cornaeus's relation to modern science see Marcus Hellyer, "Because the Authority of my Superiors Commands": Censorship, Physics ad the German Jesuits, in: Early Science and Medicine 1 (1996) 319-354; 343-346 (cf. Idem, Catholic Physics. Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany, Notre Dame 2005, chapter 2.
[58] NB: Summulae, i.e. the technical part of definition and argumentation, and logic as the scientific treatise on the topics of Aristotle's Organon, are frequently separate in catholic text books.
[59] Cornaeus: Logica, tr. 3, q. 1, dub. 5. - A full version of this kind of tree can be found in: Carolus Josephus a S. Floriano OFMobs., Joannis Duns Scoti philosophia nunc primum recentiorum placitis accomodata, I, Mediolani (Typ. Morelliana) 1771, appendix; here it is named "Arbor Sanctofloriana" and compared with the traditional Tree and that of Purchotius, about which in the following. This is also the latest scholastic philosophy text book with the Tree I have encountered so far.- The Swiss Capuchin friar Gervasius Brisacensis presents two times the Porphyrian Tree in the identical traditional version, the difference is that the Tree in the Summula is poorly printed, while the one in the Logic is a more decorated and explicit engraving: Gervasius Brisacensis, Cursus Philosophicus, Coloniae Agrippinae (Schlebusch) 1699 (edition used, 1st. edition 1696), elem. logic, art. 8, p. 21; Logica, pars 1, q. 4, art. 6, p. 189.
[60] Jacobus Thomasius: Erotemata logica pro incipientibus, editio secunda, Lipsiae (Frommann) 1678, cap. 6, p. 13: "De Specie et Genere", and cap. 11 on substantia.
[61] G. Martano: Albero di Porfirio, in: Enciclopedia filosofica (Centro di studi filosofici di Gallarate), I, Firenze 1982, 149 sq.; Cajetan (cf. note 24***) p. 53, 67.
[62] Ramus' friend Talaeus commented on the Isagoge criticizing it's "confusio" and rejected the series of substances: Audomarus Talaeus, Dialecticae praelectiones in Porphyrium, edition used: Praelectiones in Ciceronem, Porphyrii Isagogen, et Aristotelis primum librum ethicorum, Francofurti (Wechel) 1583, 946-1001; esp. 970 n. 7, 1001.
[63] Johann Heinrich Alsted: Encyclopaedia, Herborn 1630, reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1989, vol. 2: tom. 3, metaph. pars. 2, cap. 2, p. 621 sq.
[64] This classification is rejected by Franciscus Suarez, Disp. metaph. 33, sect. 1, 12.
[65] Alsted, ibid.: "Praedicamentum in specie exhibet divisionem entis in substantiam et accidens. (...) Substantia est ens per se subsistens. Ejus divisio petitur e diversis tum gradibus tum rebus."
[66] Eustachius a S. Paulo: Ocist: Summa philosophiae, Paris 1609; I quote from the edition Coloniae (Zetzner) 1616.
[67] E. Gilson: Index scholastico-cartésien (1. ed. 1913), Paris 1966. But note recent studies on the subject such as: Marjorie Grene: Descartes among the Scholastics, Milwaukee 1991; Roger Ariew: Descartes and Scholasticism: the Intellectual Background to Descartes' Thought, in: Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham, Cambridge 1992, 58-90; André Robinet: Aux sources de l'esprit cartésien, Paris 1996, 182-184. Cf. Blum: Philosophenphilosophie, chapt. 2.1.
[68] However, Cornaeus spent some time of his career as a professor of philosophy in Toulouse.
[69] Eustachius: Dialect. pars 1, tr. 3, disp. 1, q. 1, p. 52.
[70] Eustachius, p. 52 sq.: "Porro series directa duplici ratione constituitur: Altera per synthesim seu compositionem ascendendo, altera per analysim descendendo."
[71] Cf. Cajetan (cf. note 24***) p. 53: "descendere autem per media dividentes".
[72] Eustachius' text book is different from the other scholastics also in that he almost never quotes his sources when discussing contrasting opinions.
[73] Eustachius: Metaphysics, pars 1, disp. 1, q. 3, p. 8: "Formalis conceptus entis est re unus in unoquoque intellectu concipiente. Probatur, quia notitia quam efformat intellectus, audito nomine entis, est una numero similitudo actualis in ipso intellectu residens." The usage of metaphysical as opposed to physical or real is present in Franciscus Suárez, Disp. metaph. 33, sect. 1, 13 on substantia incompleta: "hujusmodi subsantiam metaphysice seu potius logice esse completam"; and on the distinction between completa and incompleta, 24, p. 337: "aliter enim est de illa loquendum, si membra sumantur secundum metaphysicam considerationem, aliter vero si sumantur secundum physicas realitates."
[74] René Descartes: Regulae ad directionem ingenii, reg. 6, AT 10, p. 381: "res omnes per quasdam series posse disponi, non quidem inquantum ad aliquod genus entis referuntur, sicut illas Philosophi in categorias suas diviserunt, sed inquantum unae ex alijs cognosci possunt."
[75] René Descartes: Recherche de la verité, AT 10, p. 516. Gervasius Brisacensis (cf. note 48***), much later, said: "[linea Praedicamentalis] inde juvantur Philosophi ad construendas definitiones: Cum enim hae fieri debeant ex Genere et Differentia, et quidem ex genere proximo (...) inservit haec tabula etiam ad inveniendum genus proximum (...)."
[76] Ibid. p. 517: "cum me hominem esse (...) dixi (...) de ijs, quae vel omnium simplicissimus hominum, aeque et maximus (...) Philosophus, scit, locutus sum."
[77] Descartes: Principia Philosophiae, I 51, AT p. 24.
[78] Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole: La Logique ou l'Art de Penser, Paris 1662; quoted edition: ed. Pierre Clair and Fran‡ois Girbal, Paris (Vrin) 1993.
[79] Michael Angelus Fardella: Universae philosophiae systema, Venetiis 1691, I 172 sq.; according to: Wilhelm Risse: Die Logik der Neuzeit, 2: 1640-1780, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1970, 124.
[80] It should be noted that Eustachius was acquainted with Bérulle: F. Ferrier: Eustache de Saint-Paul, in: Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, III: Les Oeuveres philosophiques, Paris (PUF) 1992, 1132; Roger Ariew, Eustache de Saint-Paul, in: Dictionnaire des philosophes, Paris (PUF) 1993, 967 sq. Hence a mutual influence between the Cartesians and the Cistersian deserves further research.
[81] Reproduced in Frances A. Yates: The Art of Memory, London (Routledge) 1972, 180.
[82] Edmundus Purchotius: Institutio philosophica ad faciliorem ac recentiorem philosophorum lectionem comparata, Paris (J. B. Coignard) 1695, 5 vols; edition quoted: Patavii (Manfr‚) 1737. On Purchotius see: Risse (cf. note 68***) 126-129, and Paul Richard Blum: Pourchot, Edmund, in: Foisneau, Luc (ed.), The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers. London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2008, 1029-1031.
[83] An Augustinian Canon even identified "Res=Natura=Essentia=Substantia", see Plate 9 from Werner (cf. note 15***), III, p. 641, taken from: Julius Franciscus Gusmann: Dissertationes philosophicae, quibus philosophia rationalis et naturalis (...) illustratur (...), Graz 1755 sqq.
[84] Gallus Cartier OSB: Philosophia eclectica, Augustae Vind. et Wirceburgi (Adam et Veith) 1756; Logica p. 34, tabula 2. This was a text book for the Benedictine abbey of Ettenheimmünster (Breisgau, Germany).
[85] Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini Opiar: Introductio in universam philosophiam (...), Rastadii (Scheel) 1751 (this edition quoted, first ed. 1748), Table in I, after p. 141.
[86] Bertholdus Hauser: Elementa philosophiae Ad rationis Et experientiae ductum conscripta, I, Augustae Vind. et Oeniponti (Wolff) 1755, tables in the annex. On Hauser see Barbara Bauer: Experimentalphysik und Theologie. Die Embleme im mathematisch-physikalischen Museum zu Dillingen und die Physik des P. Berthold Hauser SJ, in: Scientia Poetica. Jahrbuch für Geschichte der Literatur und Wissenschaften 5 (2001) 35-89.
[87] Hauser mentions that this tree has been designed by a certain "P. Laurens" (p. 53).
[88] Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 3, p. 65: "Sequitur enim, si homo est, animal est: et si animal est, corpus animatum sive vivum est: si vivum est, corpus est, et si corpus est, substantia est, propter intellectum generis in specie. Sed non sequitur, si substantia est, ens est: quia sive sit aliquod, sive non, semper genus sequitur ad speciei positionem."
[89] De ente et essentia, c. 5, p. 14 sq.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance
PrefaceTherefore, the term "philosophy of religion" is used in this book as an interpretive tool to describe and evalutate how Renaissance philosophers thought about God. Modern philosophy of religion had its origin in treatises on "natural theology" of 17th century academic philosophy and therefore meant, first of all, the philosophical inquiry into the meaningfulness of speaking rationally about the divine (cf. Frank 2003). Hence, philosophy of religion was originally a continuation of the medieval philosophical theology, also know as the praeambula fidei (the humanly accessible preconditions of belief in revelation). However, beyond the school tradition, the question extended to the historicity of theological dogmas, the theory of worship and rituals, religious policy, the gnoseology of faith and the legitimacy of addressing matters of piety with rational means (Jaeschke 1992). Since it seems that the groundwork to this philosophical endeavor has been laid by Renaissance thinkers, insofar as they in fact raise philosophical questions about the coherence or divergence of knowledge, faith, practice, politics, metaphysics and (as will be emphasized in the ‘Epilogue’) epistemology, and insofar Ficino and Bruno speak about religion as such, in short, since they do philosophize about religion, it seems legitimate to speak – ante litteram – a about a “Renaissance philosophy of religion”.
A purely theoretical book on faith, reason and religion could be written, but not by me. For in my view, a philosophical problem is constituted by its history, so that its historical stages enable us to understand what troubles us today. This does not mean that delving into the history of Renaissance thought is an easy way out. On the contrary, doing philosophy historically amounts to doing philosophy properly. If philosophy consists in thinking theoretically, it also requires thinking about thinking — the second most difficult thinking accessible (second after God, of course) is that of others, particularly those who entered history. Furthermore, if the relationship between theology, philosophy and religion is troubled by the uncertainty of theory and action, then the practice of thinking in the past that shaped present philosophy is a case in point: the purely theoretical conundrums of the history of philosophy had nevertheless practical effect on present day thought.
Philosophical thinking about God in the Renaissance flourished in a variety of ways, each of which would deserve a systematic diachronic presentation. Since the publication of Charles Trinkaus’s book of 1970 on Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought it is not anymore necessary to dispel the secularist interpretation of an allegedly irreligious pre-Enlightenment humanism. Therefore we can now scrutinize Renaissance attempts at discussing philosophical issues theologically and theological issues philosophically. Topics that are covered in this book, tentatively tagged with some names, are:
- the rational concept of God (Lull)
- the reach of reason (Cusanus, Suárez)
- Trinity (Ficino, Valla, Campanella)
- religious politics (Lull, Bruno)
- hermeneutics (Salutati)
- mythology (Salutati, Plethon)
- mathematics (Cusanus)
- logic and language (Valla)
- transcendence (Valla, Suárez)
- competing religions (Plethon, Campanella)
- secularism (Ficino, Pico)
- epistemology (Ficino, Suárez)
[This is an excerpt from the preface. The book is out March 1, 2010, at Ashgate. ]
Monday, January 18, 2010
Book Review Keßler
Eckhard Keßler: Die Philosophie der Renaissance. Das 15. Jahrhundert. München: C. H. Beck, 2008. 270 S.
Print version in Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen 32 (2008-2010) 63-70.
Endlich, so darf ich sagen, endlich haben wir eine Philosophiegeschichte der Renaissance von Eckhard Keßler, der jahrzehntelang dieses Gebiet der Geschichte der Philosophie in München gelehrt hat und dessen Schüler in vielen Ländern der Welt daran weiterarbeiten zu zeigen, daß die Zeit der Renaissance auch eine Philosophie und daß die Philosophie eine entscheidende Phase in der Renaissance hatte. Dieses Buch bespricht nur ein langes 15. Jahrhundert, nämlich vom Beginn des Humanismus am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts bis zu Machiavelli und Pomponazzi. Humanismus, Neuplatonismus und Aristotelismus (in Italien) sind für ihn drei unterscheidbare, wenn auch miteinander verflochtene Strömungen des Philosophierens in der Renaissance, denen jeweils ein Drittel des Buches gewidmet ist. Der Humanismus wird an den Gründungsfiguren Petrarca und Salutati, am "Florentiner Bürgerhumanismus" von Leonardo Bruni bis Niccolò Machiavelli sowie an einigen Humanisten außerhalb von Florenz dargestellt. Der Florentiner Neuplatonismus beginnt mit dem Konzil von Florenz, hat seine Hauptvertreter in Marsilio Ficino und Giovanni Pico und endet im Skeptizismus von Gianfrancesco Pico. Der Aristotelismus knüpft am deutlichsten an der mittelalterlichen philosophischen Theologie an, hat sein Hauptzentrum in Padua und kulminiert wie zu erwarten in Pietro Pomponazzi. Soweit der Aufriß des Buches.
Kaum eine Studie zur Renaissancephilosophie kann umhin, die Gretchenfrage nach dem Säkularismus und der religiösen Einstellung der Humanisten und Philosophen zu stellen, zumal einige der bekanntesten Vertreter des 15. Jahrhunderts (Machiavelli und Pomponazzi) als Kritiker der Kirchen und Religionen notorisch geworden waren, während Ficino und die beiden Pico christliche Philosophen waren oder doch wenigstens sein wollten. Gerade diese Fragestellung erweist sich nach Keßlers Darstellung als die Frucht der philosophischen Bemühungen der Renaissance: die Neuzeit ererbt von ihr eine Dreiteilung von Offenbarungstheologie, Vernunftphilosophie und Erfahrungswissenschaften (S. 187), die forthin als selbstverständlich gilt und deren Paradoxien üblicherweise bei der Interpretation der Renaissancephilosophie an sie herangetragen werden. Dazu gehört auch, daß über kurz oder lang die Philosophie sich an einem Antagonismus zwischen Rationalität und Empirie abarbeitet, dabei die Themenbereiche des Glaubens für philosophisch irrelevant erklärt und der Theologie "die Kompetenz für den Bereich des natürlichen, dessen Kenntnis auf sinnlicher Wahrnehmung und Erfahrung beruht, abspricht" (S. 186). An dieser Stelle könnte erwähnt werden, daß die Disziplin der Religionsphilosophie ebenfalls aus dieser Spaltung (nämlich als ein Reparaturversuch) entstanden ist. Es ist offenkundig, daß seit dem Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts die Kompetenzbereiche des Glaubens und der Theologie in zahlreichen Gestalten gerade dorthin wiederkehren, wo die axiomatischen und empirischen Wissenschaften ihre größten Erfolge feiern, nämlich in der gegenwärtigen Biologie, Chemie und Physik, und das nicht nur in Feiertagsreden über ‚Glaube und Wissenschaft‘ sondern auch in der Epistemologie und Wissenschaftstheorie. Auch aus diesem Grunde ist es lehrreich zu sehen, wie diese Dissoziation zustandegekommen ist.
In der Einleitung umreißt Keßler die Entstehungsbedingungen der Renaissancephilosophie in der Politik (Schwäche des Papsttums, Entstehung der Stadtstaaten, Territorialisierung der Politik), in der Ökonomie (die große Pest, Manufaktur, Handel, Entstehung des Bürgertums), in der Bildungsgeschichte (Universitäten als Bildungsinstitutionen für Laien, das humanistische Bildungsprogramm) und in der Geistesgeschichte im engeren Sinne, nämlich der Krise der mittelalterlichen philosophischen Theologie durch Voluntarismus und Nominalismus. Dieser dritte Umstand dominiert dann die Narrativität des restlichen Buches. Keßler macht drei Strömungen aus, welche die Philosophie und Theologie im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert in eine tiefe Krise gestürzt haben: der Averroismus, welcher um der Erkennbarkeit der strikten Kausalität in der Natur willen die Ewigkeit der Welt, Determinismus und Unpersönlichkeit für das Individuum und schließlich die doppelte Wahrheit vertreten mußte; zweitens als dessen Überwindung der Voluntarismus mit Betonung der absoluten Potenz Gottes, in dem "zwar dem christlichen Schöpfungsglauben philosophisch Genüge getan, aber gleichzeitig jeder wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis der extramentalen Realität das Objekt entzogen" war (S. 13); drittens die Liaison des Voluntarismus mit dem logischen Nominalismus, wonach die Existenz einer logischen Begriffen entsprechenden und zudem kontingenten Realität unbeweisbar erscheinen mußte. Aus diesem Syndrom leitet Keßler die Kategorien ab, mit denen er die Geschichte der Philosophie des 15. Jahrhunderts beschreiben kann: nämlich als Bewältigung der Erkenntnisunsicherheit und Existenzunsicherheit durch Fokussierung auf den Menschen, Wiederherstellung der Einheit von menschlicher Existenz und Gotteserkenntnis und Verfeinerung der Naturtheorie und Erkenntnistheorie.
Francesco Petrarca reagiert auf die Krise des Mittelalters durch Wiederherstellung der Philosophie als Lebenskunst, welche mehr oder weniger glücklich zwischen der Gottesgewissheit und den Scheinsicherheiten der Logik navigiert und somit ein „handlungszentriertes Menschenbild“ (S. 24) entwirft, welches sich auf Geschichte und Rhetorik verläßt, in denen Erfahrung von Menschen und für Menschen faßbar ist. Die damit implizierte Betonung des Willens wird von Coluccio Salutati fortgesetzt, so daß der Voluntarismus Gottes in dem des Menschen abgebildet ist, so daß "Moralphilosophie anstelle der Metaphysik zur grundlegenden philosophischen Disziplin" wird (S. 28). Praktische Philosophie wird daher auch zur Philosophie schlechthin im sogenannten Florentiner Bürgerhumanismus, welcher an den Figuren Lonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, Matteo Palmieri, Leon Battista Alberti, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano und Niccolò Machiavelli dargestellt wird. Hier werden mögliche Ansätze zu einer Subjektphilosophie, welche persönliche Erfahrung intersubjektiv und historisch absichert (S. 33 f.) durch Skeptizismus eingeschränkt und durch Denkformen der Stoa, Epikureismus und generell antiker Quellen verfeinert, so daß bei Manetti der Mensch "als Einheit von Körper und Seele Schöpfer in dieser Welt, … der Vollender der Schöpfung selbst [ist], der, was Gott begonnen hat, durch Erkennen und Handeln zur Vollkommenheit bringt". (S. 38) Keßler übersetzt diese Rhetorik in eine Anthropologie, wonach "in diesem voluntaristischen Kosmos der Mensch nicht hilflos ausgeliefert ist und seine Selbstbehauptung nicht gegen eine ihm feindliche Umwelt … erstreiten muß,“ weil „die Verfaßtheit der Natur seinem Handeln entgegenkommt und sein geistiges Vermögen … sich im schöpferischen Tun des Menschen als Vermögen erweist, neue Ordnung zu stiften und damit die Ordnung der Natur zu vollenden" (S. 39). Zugleich entsteht eine konsensorientierte Ethik (Palmieri), wie sie einem Bürgertum passend erscheinen muß, die aber sofort bei Leon Battista Alberti zum Gegenstand der Satire und Kritik wird (S. 42 ff.). Denn die humanistische Rhetorik baut ein Menschenbild auf, das nicht nur aus Höhepunkten sondern viel öfter aus Katastrophen besteht. Herauskommt eine Existenzphilosophie, in der "der Mensch Herr der Zeit seines Lebens, also seiner Geschichte, ist und mit dieser Lebenszeit haushälterisch umzugehen hat" (S. 45) und in der "handwerkliches Tun, das nicht anders als moralisches Handeln Auseinandersetzung des Menschen mit der Welt ist, theoretisch zu reflektieren" ist (S. 47). Die Frage nach der Wahrheit zerläuft und verdichtet sich zugleich in die Frage, was es heißt, Mensch zu sein.
Die sich schon abzeichnende neue Phase der humanistischen Philosophie wird von Keßler unter Rückgriff auf die politisch-ökonomischen Entstehungsbedingungen damit erklärt, daß unter dem Prinzipat der Medici die Bürgerrepublik „nur noch eine historische Größe“ geworden war, so daß neue Ansätze, und das ist hier der Neuplatonismus, möglich wurden (S. 51 f., vgl. 101). Landino wird daher als einer der ersten das Lebensbild des Humanismus, einschließlich der Dichtungstheorie, die ja eine Schöpfungstheorie ist, mit platonischen Denkformen anreichern. Angelo Poliziano wird aufgrund vertiefter Kenntnisse der Literatur vor vorzeitiger Erstarrung in Klassizismus warnen (S. 56), aber er wird auch den Philosophiebegriff dem Platonismus annähern und zugleich eine philologisch-historische Interpretation des Aristoteles einfordern. Dennoch sieht Keßler in Poliziano das humanistische Postulat der konkreten Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte, in der der Mensch „seine Objektivität erfahren kann" (S. 55). Machiavelli setzt die Überprüfung moralischer Konzepte fort und ist daher "in der Kompromißlosigkeit der Analyse … radikaler und illusionsloser humanistisch als seine Vorgänger" (S. 57).
Die Methode dieser Geschichtsschreibung der humanistischen Philosophie basiert darauf, daß die aus der Krise der spätmittelalterlichen Philosophie resultierende Erkenntnisunsicherheit, Gottesferne und Willensbetonung in die Trias der Existenzunsicherheit, des Konsenses und der Historizität übersetzt wird. Wenn beispielsweise Poliziano eine genaue Lektüre des Aristoteles einfordert, dann scheint das so etwas wie Historizität zu implizieren, so daß der Begriff ’Historizität‘ im modernen Sinne sich als Kategorie der Interpretation des Humanismus anbietet. Historizität wiederum und Tatkraft im Verein mit Konsensbedarf bieten sich an, Geschichte und Rhetorik im exklusiv menschlichen Horizont zu lesen: wenn daher Cristoforo Landino Fragen des menschlichen Adels mithilfe antiker Quellen kontrovers diskutiert, so mag man vermuten, daß der Leser auf seine eigene "Lebenssituation und Erfahrung" zurückverwiesen und diese zugleich mitgeprägt werden soll (S. 52). Auch mag Polizianos Warnung vor einer Dogmatisierung des Florentiner Platonismus bedeuten, daß der „Gegenstand der Philosophie … nicht die ewigen Wahrheiten, sondern (…) die vom Menschen erlittene und gestaltete Geschichte" ist (S. 55). Das Problem ist, daß solche Begriffe von Geschichte, Leben und Erfahrung noch nicht im Humanismus der Renaissance vorkommen. Historische Projektionen fallen oft erst dann auf, wenn eine solche Projektion überraschend ist und nicht mit den eigenen Denkrahmen übereinstimmt. Die Interpretation des Humanismus mithilfe eines Begriffs von Geschichte als dem Inbegriff der Wahrheit (und zugleich als ihr Surrogat) ist viel zu einleuchtend, als daß sie der Projektion verdächtig sein könnte. Denn der moderne Mensch ist der existenziell im Handeln sich erfahrene und realisierende Mensch. Auf der anderen Seite ist diese Interpretation dadurch gerechtfertigt, daß genau jene Einsicht in die kontingente Situierung des Menschseins ihre genetische Voraussetzung darin hat, daß ewige Wahrheiten, Tugenden, ja die gesamte Menschenwürde bei den Humanisten von Petrarca bis Machiavelli nach allen Seiten hin kritisch betrachtet wurde. Deshalb kann Keßler Machiavelli vor der Entrüstungsgeschichte in Schutz nehmen (vor jener Interpretation, die immer noch glaubt, Machiavelli habe die Abschaffung der Tugend betrieben) und feststellen, daß seit Machiavelli politische Theorie "der Aufdeckung von kausalen Zusammenhängen und Zweck-Mittel-Relationen" dient, und somit "eine auf Erfahrung beruhende Technik des situationsgemäßen politischen Handelns" bietet (S. 58). Allerdings ist es nicht das, was Machiavelli sagt, sondern was wir aus ihm lernen können. "Verantwortung nicht nur für sein eigenes Leben, sondern auch für den Bestand der Gemeinschaft … und das daraus entspringende existenzielle Bedürfnis nach situationsgerechter Handlungsorientierung" (S. 61) - das beschreibt vielleicht die Situation des Menschen im Kommunitarismus, konnte aber wohl in diesen Kategorien nicht von den Florentinern gedacht werden. Entscheidend ist, daß die Humanisten Tugenden, Recht, Politik, Anthropologie und was daraus folgt in das Zentrum ihrer philosophischen Bemühungen gestellt haben. Keßlers Leitmotiv, nämlich die aus Nominalismus und Voluntarismus gewonnenen Einsichten in die Ungewißheit und das Wagnis der Humanität zu übersetzen, ist also fruchtbar, indem es als historiographische Sonde in den Textbestand und als Anwendungsprinzip für die Moderne dient.
Das gilt dann selbstverständlich auch für die philosophischen Bemühungen des "höfischen Humanismus" (S. 62), also der Denker, die von adligen Mäzenen abhängig waren. Die höfische Situation erlaubt es, anthropologische Fragen nach Adel, Erziehung und Politik abzuhandeln, so daß am Ende die Theorie des Fürstentums bei Giovanni Pontano in einer Analyse der Herrschaft mündet, die mit dem aus dem Bürgerhumanismus erwachsenen Principe des Machiavelli konvergieren kann. Die Erziehungstraktate rezipieren nicht nur die neu aufgefundenen Quintilian und Plutarch, sondern thematisieren vor allem den Zusammenhang der freien Künste mit der christlichen Tradition und der Entwicklung des Individuums, so daß aus den studia humanitatis am Ende ein Ausbildungsprogramm entstehen kann, das humanistisch genannt werden und die Vorstellung von Individuum und Bildung bis in das 20. Jahrhundert hinein prägen wird. Der höfische Humanismus hatte einen Knotenpunkt in Venedig mit seinem Zugang zu griechischen Quellen, in Pavia als Anlaufstelle für Studenten aus dem Norden und bringt eine erste Rehabilitation des Epikureismus; Rom wird humanistisch unter Papst Nikolaus V. und zieht nicht nur orthodoxe Denker an, und im Süden engagiert das Haus Aragon Humanisten und begründet damit den Ruhm Neapels für die Philosophie bis ins 20. Jahrhundert.
Die höfischen Humanisten sind zumeist Wanderhumanisten, und von ihnen ist selbstverständlich Lorenzo Valla (Rom, Pavia, Neapel, Rom) der bedeutendste. Sein Beitrag zur humanistischen Philosophie besteht in einer „Diskursänderung“ (S. 73): „Nicht die Philosophie als Theorie des begrifflich Allgemeinen ist … Grundlage und Hüterin der Wahrheit, sondern die Geschichte. … Die Geschichte … enthält in der Beispielhaftigkeit der in ihr dargestellten Prozesse … ein Allgemeines, das zugleich Konkretheit und allgemeine Verbindlichkeit beanspruchen kann.“ (S. 74 f.) Ein „historisch-narratives Universale“ erlaubt es Valla, in der gesprochenen Sprache faktische Wahrheit aufzudecken, sei es in der Konstantinischen Schenkung, sei es im Text der biblischen Offenbarung und schließlich beim „Umpflügen“ der Logik. Denn auch in der Sprache der Logik kommt es Valla auf den Realitätsbezug an (der in der scholastischen, letztlich nominalistischen Strömung unbegreifbar geworden war), nur daß hier keine Entsprechung von Sachen und Wörtern mehr erwartet wird sondern -- auf einer Ebene, die zugleich metasprachlich und menschlich erscheint -- „die Bestimmung der Grenzen der logischen Argumentation und ihre Integration in eine allgemeine Diskurslehre“ (S. 79). Auf der Seite der Erkenntnis der Welt ergibt sich in dieser Interpretation, daß Begriffe gar nicht für etwas Extramentales stehen, sondern „für jene vorbegrifflichen Inhalte, die in den übrigen ‚Sinnen‘ gegeben sind. Ein Wahrheitsanspruch kann daher nur erhoben werden, wenn und insofern begriffliche Aussagen ‚sinnlich‘ eingeholt werden können“ (S. 79). Was wie ein großer Schritt in Richtung empirisch verifiziertem Rationalismus aussieht, zeitigt in der Freiheitsdiskussion das beunruhigende Ergebnis, „daß aller begrifflichen Unvereinbarkeit zum Trotz eine reale Aufhebung der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens mit der Güte Gottes unvereinbar ist“ (S. 83). Beunruhigend ist das deshalb, weil in Valla – ante litteram – nachkartesischer Intuitionismus mit nachreformatorischem Fideismus verschwistert zu sein scheinen. Konnte Valla soetwas denken? In diesem Falle bin ich geneigt ja zu sagen. Die kühnen Wort- und Sachanalysen Vallas fordern allerdings kühne Interpretationen, d.h. solche, die sich nicht an vorgegebene Epochenrahmen halten.
Platon schien den Humanisten zunächst die Erwartungen an eine Philosophie des guten Lebens und der schönen Sprache zu bedienen, aber der entscheidende Impuls zur Entstehung des Renaissanceplatonismus kam durch das Auftreten von Georgios Gemistos Plethon beim Konzil von Florenz 1439: Er löst, indem er „an den bereits bestehenden humanistischen Platonismus anknüpft“ (S. 99), die Kontroversen um den Vorrang Platons oder Aristoteles‘ und (damit z.T. überschneidend) um Heidentum und Christentum aus. Das entscheidend Neue im Angebot des Neuplatonismus war überraschenderweise nach Keßler die Lösung des Nominalismus-Problems durch Historisierung der ewigen Wahrheiten: die platonisierende Anthropologie verortet den Menschen im Kosmos, entindividualisiert ihn aber zugleich und scheint ihn von der historischen Erfahrung zu trennen. Der Nominalismus gestand aber dem Allgemeinen keine Erkenntnisfunktion zu, sondern nur dem Einzelnen; daher der Charme der Rhetorik und der Historie. Plethons Konstruktion der "urspünglichen Philosophie" bot eine zeitliche Erstreckung der Offenbarung und der Emanation an, durch die die Historizität der Wahrheit für das humanistische Denken wiedergewonnen war (S. 100 f., vgl. 106 f.).
Dieses Programm wird dann von Marsilio Ficino ausgeführt, der ebenfalls wie die Humanisten Wahrheit nicht mehr in der Übereinstimmung zwischen Theorie und Einzeldingen sucht sondern nun "darin, daß sie Abbild jenes göttlichen umfassenden Einen ist, das mit der Wahrheit selbst identisch ist" (S. 105). Entsprechend dem interpretatorischen Prinzip liegt die Leistungsfähigkeit der ficinianischen kosmologischen Epistemologie darin, daß „das Nominalismusproblem gegenstandslos [wird], insofern die größere Allgemeinheit der Universalien gerade nicht mehr ihre Realitätsferne, sondern ihre größere Nähe zum ursprünglich Seienden bezeugt" (S. 105). Der nominalistisch beeinflußte Humanismus kann sich offenbar nun leisten, Realität so zu definieren, daß sie mit der Wahrheit ein Kontinuum bildet. Auf diese Weise erfüllt Ficino auch die Ansprüche an das aktive Leben und an die Frömmigkeit und Politik umfassende Sinngebung. Gleichzeitig gelingt es ihm, Aristoteles in die platonische Tradition zurückzuholen, indem der menschliche Geist sowohl die Welt als "Welt für den Menschen" konstituiert, als auch "die apriorische Einholung der adaequatio rei et intellectus … und die Rückgewinnung der Identität von Denknotwendigkeit und Seinsnotwendigkeit" zu Stande bringt (S. 110 f.). Auch dies ist eine erfrischende, sozusagen unorthodoxe Interpretation des Renaissance-Platonismus. Der Florentiner Platonismus ist nicht mehr ‚die Renaissancephilosophie‘ im Unterschied zum Humanismus, sondern die Fortsetzung des Humanismus neuplatonischen Mitteln.
Giovanni Pico erweitert die prisca theologia zu einem Synkretismus, der dadurch definiert wird, daß in ihm alle Aussagen auf ihren "vorsprachlichen Ursprung" zurückgeführt werden er mit der universalen Wahrheit identisch ist (S. 119). Daraus erklärt sich dann auch Picos Wahl desjenigen Textes, der am ehesten Quelle aller wahren Philosophie zu sein verspricht, den Bericht der Genesis. Seine Divergenzen mit Ficino erklärt Keßler aus dem gemeinsamen Interesse, den graduellen Aufstieg zu Gott in der Einheit von Lebensführung und Wahrheitsfindung darzustellen (S. 122). Die weiteren Folgen in der Renaissancephilosophie der Liebe lassen sich ebenfalls in diesem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Universalität der Wahrheit und kosmischer Epistemologie, die "Mathematisierung des Kosmos" (S. 133) darstellen. Agostino Steucos philosophia perennis führt alle diese Tendenzen so zwingend zusammen, daß aus der intendierten Gleichwertigkeit von philosophischer Theologie und Philosophie deren wechselseitige Befreiung resultiert und später zur Legitimation des Eklektizismus gebraucht werden kann (S. 135). Gianfrancesco Pico scheint das verstanden zu haben und wendet daher den Synkretismus seines Onkels in eine Kritik aller Wissenschaft, sofern sie nicht göttlich legitimiert ist, mit der Absicht der "generellen Zerstörung der heidnischen Philosophie" (S. 137). Beiläufig macht er damit das skeptische Instrumentarium philosophisch wirksam.
Auch der dritte Zweig der Renaissancephilosophie, der Paduaner Aristotelismus, ist ein legitimes Kind der späten Scholastik und des ihn kritisierenden Humanismus. Mit dessen Impuls und mit Hilfe des Neuplatonismus verläuft ein "sich zunehmend radikalisierender Prozeß der Transformation des Aristotelismus" (S. 139). Im Zentrum der Bemühungen von Biagio Pelacani, Paolo Veneto, Gaetano da Thiene, Nicoletto Vernia, Agostino Nifo und schließlich Pietro Pomponazzi stand die Aufgabe, die Wissenschaftstheorie des historischen Aristoteles mit den Fortschritten der Scholastik, den Einsichten des Humanismus, der Epistemologie des Neuplatonismus und hier und da auch mit der christlichen Dogmatik in Übereinstimmung zu bringen. Der historische Aristoteles, das ist die Innovation durch den Humanismus, daß nämlich der Text des Aristoteles auf innere Stimmigkeit gelesen werden sollte, was dazu führte festzustellen, daß seine Metaphysik, seine theoretische Physik, seine empirische Physik und seine Epistemologie keineswegs nahtlos zusammenhängen. Herauskam eine Emanzipation der Schulphilosophie vom Text des ‚Philosophen‘. Keßler beschreibt genüßlich, wie aus der Physiologie der Erkenntnis der Gegensatz zwischen materialistischem Monismus und Leib-Seele-Dualismus entstand (Pelacani, S. 144), mit wie viel Flexibilität das Gespenst des Averroismus (die Einheit des Intellekts) gebannt wird, etwa indem zwar ein einheitlicher Intellekt für alle Menschen, aber eine Vielzahl von Universalienerkenntnissen der Individuen erwogen wird (Veneto, S. 149), wie Gaetano auf Kosten der Naturphilosophie die menschliche Seele dem Bereich des Übernatürlichen zuweist (S. 152), wie Vernia schwankt und dabei die Variabilität der antiken Aristoteleskommentare entdeckt (S. 155 f.), wie Nifo die averroistische Theorie des intellectus possibilis und agens in der Weise mit dem Neuplatonismus verknüpft, daß sowohl ein universales Prinzip der Erkenntnis angenommen werden darf als auch die Individualität der menschlichen Erkenntnis mithilfe von eingeborenen Ideen (S. 164 f.) und wie er zugleich die Wissenschaftsmethode des 16. Jahrhunderts (regressus-Lehre, S. 168 ff.) vorbereitet. Die genannten und noch einige weitere Autoren werden hier ausführlich und zusammenhängend diskutiert.
Abschließend finden wir in Pietro Pomponazzi das Zusammenlaufen aller dieser Fäden, weil er sowohl die Leistungsfähigkeit der Naturphilosophie auch die Physiologie und Epistemologie der Erkenntnis und deren Relation zur christlichen Offenbarung diskutiert. Pomponazzi unterstreicht Kausalität als Erklärungsprinzip der Natur und etabliert in Abwehr gegen okkultistische Bestrebungen "eine prinzipiell empirische, von den Sinnen ausgehende Wissenschaft" (S. 176). In demselben Sinne versteht er, zwar unter Berufung auf die Stoa aber aus methodischen Gründen, das Schicksal streng deterministisch und handelt sich die große Frage nach dem Funktionieren der Seele im Menschen ein. Indem er "die Psychologie als Teil der in ihren Grenzen sich autonom erklärenden Naturphilosophie reklamiert" (S. 183), bearbeitet er die für das Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie und der konkurrierenden philosophischen Methoden entscheidende Frage nach der Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele in der Weise, daß für die Beschreibung des natürlichen Erkenntnisaktes es keinen Grund zur Annahme eines immateriellen Intellektes gibt (S. 182 f.).
Das Buch kann als Einführung dienen, was dadurch betont wird, daß jeder genannte Autor in einer langen Fußnote mit Bibliographie vorgestellt wird. Im allgemeinen sind die Literaturverzeichnisse auf dem aktuellen Stand, gerade deshalb darf man sich über einige Lücken wundern. Auch in dem Aufriß der Erforschung der Renaissancephilosophie kann man neuere Arbeiten vermissen, obwohl der Autor selbst dazu beigetragen hat. Man kann es gar nicht hoch genug schätzen, daß in diesem Buch keine Thesen heruntergebetet werden, die man in Spiegelstrichen zum Auswendiglernen aufreihen könnte ("Petrarca denkt …"; "Ficino glaubt …"; "Pico behauptet …"), wie Philosophiegeschichte üblicherweise dargestellt wird, so als wollte man Studenten davon überzeugen, daß im Vergleich zu Philosophiegeschichte Buchhaltung spannend ist. Vielmehr hat jeder Gedanke, den Keßler darstellt, einen Kontext und eine Begründung – in den Quellen, im Verlauf der Geschichte dieses Denkens und vor allem im Autor selbst. Ein Muster dafür, daß Philosophiegeschichte ein Philosophieren ist.
Print version in Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen 32 (2008-2010) 63-70.
Endlich, so darf ich sagen, endlich haben wir eine Philosophiegeschichte der Renaissance von Eckhard Keßler, der jahrzehntelang dieses Gebiet der Geschichte der Philosophie in München gelehrt hat und dessen Schüler in vielen Ländern der Welt daran weiterarbeiten zu zeigen, daß die Zeit der Renaissance auch eine Philosophie und daß die Philosophie eine entscheidende Phase in der Renaissance hatte. Dieses Buch bespricht nur ein langes 15. Jahrhundert, nämlich vom Beginn des Humanismus am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts bis zu Machiavelli und Pomponazzi. Humanismus, Neuplatonismus und Aristotelismus (in Italien) sind für ihn drei unterscheidbare, wenn auch miteinander verflochtene Strömungen des Philosophierens in der Renaissance, denen jeweils ein Drittel des Buches gewidmet ist. Der Humanismus wird an den Gründungsfiguren Petrarca und Salutati, am "Florentiner Bürgerhumanismus" von Leonardo Bruni bis Niccolò Machiavelli sowie an einigen Humanisten außerhalb von Florenz dargestellt. Der Florentiner Neuplatonismus beginnt mit dem Konzil von Florenz, hat seine Hauptvertreter in Marsilio Ficino und Giovanni Pico und endet im Skeptizismus von Gianfrancesco Pico. Der Aristotelismus knüpft am deutlichsten an der mittelalterlichen philosophischen Theologie an, hat sein Hauptzentrum in Padua und kulminiert wie zu erwarten in Pietro Pomponazzi. Soweit der Aufriß des Buches.
Kaum eine Studie zur Renaissancephilosophie kann umhin, die Gretchenfrage nach dem Säkularismus und der religiösen Einstellung der Humanisten und Philosophen zu stellen, zumal einige der bekanntesten Vertreter des 15. Jahrhunderts (Machiavelli und Pomponazzi) als Kritiker der Kirchen und Religionen notorisch geworden waren, während Ficino und die beiden Pico christliche Philosophen waren oder doch wenigstens sein wollten. Gerade diese Fragestellung erweist sich nach Keßlers Darstellung als die Frucht der philosophischen Bemühungen der Renaissance: die Neuzeit ererbt von ihr eine Dreiteilung von Offenbarungstheologie, Vernunftphilosophie und Erfahrungswissenschaften (S. 187), die forthin als selbstverständlich gilt und deren Paradoxien üblicherweise bei der Interpretation der Renaissancephilosophie an sie herangetragen werden. Dazu gehört auch, daß über kurz oder lang die Philosophie sich an einem Antagonismus zwischen Rationalität und Empirie abarbeitet, dabei die Themenbereiche des Glaubens für philosophisch irrelevant erklärt und der Theologie "die Kompetenz für den Bereich des natürlichen, dessen Kenntnis auf sinnlicher Wahrnehmung und Erfahrung beruht, abspricht" (S. 186). An dieser Stelle könnte erwähnt werden, daß die Disziplin der Religionsphilosophie ebenfalls aus dieser Spaltung (nämlich als ein Reparaturversuch) entstanden ist. Es ist offenkundig, daß seit dem Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts die Kompetenzbereiche des Glaubens und der Theologie in zahlreichen Gestalten gerade dorthin wiederkehren, wo die axiomatischen und empirischen Wissenschaften ihre größten Erfolge feiern, nämlich in der gegenwärtigen Biologie, Chemie und Physik, und das nicht nur in Feiertagsreden über ‚Glaube und Wissenschaft‘ sondern auch in der Epistemologie und Wissenschaftstheorie. Auch aus diesem Grunde ist es lehrreich zu sehen, wie diese Dissoziation zustandegekommen ist.
In der Einleitung umreißt Keßler die Entstehungsbedingungen der Renaissancephilosophie in der Politik (Schwäche des Papsttums, Entstehung der Stadtstaaten, Territorialisierung der Politik), in der Ökonomie (die große Pest, Manufaktur, Handel, Entstehung des Bürgertums), in der Bildungsgeschichte (Universitäten als Bildungsinstitutionen für Laien, das humanistische Bildungsprogramm) und in der Geistesgeschichte im engeren Sinne, nämlich der Krise der mittelalterlichen philosophischen Theologie durch Voluntarismus und Nominalismus. Dieser dritte Umstand dominiert dann die Narrativität des restlichen Buches. Keßler macht drei Strömungen aus, welche die Philosophie und Theologie im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert in eine tiefe Krise gestürzt haben: der Averroismus, welcher um der Erkennbarkeit der strikten Kausalität in der Natur willen die Ewigkeit der Welt, Determinismus und Unpersönlichkeit für das Individuum und schließlich die doppelte Wahrheit vertreten mußte; zweitens als dessen Überwindung der Voluntarismus mit Betonung der absoluten Potenz Gottes, in dem "zwar dem christlichen Schöpfungsglauben philosophisch Genüge getan, aber gleichzeitig jeder wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis der extramentalen Realität das Objekt entzogen" war (S. 13); drittens die Liaison des Voluntarismus mit dem logischen Nominalismus, wonach die Existenz einer logischen Begriffen entsprechenden und zudem kontingenten Realität unbeweisbar erscheinen mußte. Aus diesem Syndrom leitet Keßler die Kategorien ab, mit denen er die Geschichte der Philosophie des 15. Jahrhunderts beschreiben kann: nämlich als Bewältigung der Erkenntnisunsicherheit und Existenzunsicherheit durch Fokussierung auf den Menschen, Wiederherstellung der Einheit von menschlicher Existenz und Gotteserkenntnis und Verfeinerung der Naturtheorie und Erkenntnistheorie.
Francesco Petrarca reagiert auf die Krise des Mittelalters durch Wiederherstellung der Philosophie als Lebenskunst, welche mehr oder weniger glücklich zwischen der Gottesgewissheit und den Scheinsicherheiten der Logik navigiert und somit ein „handlungszentriertes Menschenbild“ (S. 24) entwirft, welches sich auf Geschichte und Rhetorik verläßt, in denen Erfahrung von Menschen und für Menschen faßbar ist. Die damit implizierte Betonung des Willens wird von Coluccio Salutati fortgesetzt, so daß der Voluntarismus Gottes in dem des Menschen abgebildet ist, so daß "Moralphilosophie anstelle der Metaphysik zur grundlegenden philosophischen Disziplin" wird (S. 28). Praktische Philosophie wird daher auch zur Philosophie schlechthin im sogenannten Florentiner Bürgerhumanismus, welcher an den Figuren Lonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, Matteo Palmieri, Leon Battista Alberti, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano und Niccolò Machiavelli dargestellt wird. Hier werden mögliche Ansätze zu einer Subjektphilosophie, welche persönliche Erfahrung intersubjektiv und historisch absichert (S. 33 f.) durch Skeptizismus eingeschränkt und durch Denkformen der Stoa, Epikureismus und generell antiker Quellen verfeinert, so daß bei Manetti der Mensch "als Einheit von Körper und Seele Schöpfer in dieser Welt, … der Vollender der Schöpfung selbst [ist], der, was Gott begonnen hat, durch Erkennen und Handeln zur Vollkommenheit bringt". (S. 38) Keßler übersetzt diese Rhetorik in eine Anthropologie, wonach "in diesem voluntaristischen Kosmos der Mensch nicht hilflos ausgeliefert ist und seine Selbstbehauptung nicht gegen eine ihm feindliche Umwelt … erstreiten muß,“ weil „die Verfaßtheit der Natur seinem Handeln entgegenkommt und sein geistiges Vermögen … sich im schöpferischen Tun des Menschen als Vermögen erweist, neue Ordnung zu stiften und damit die Ordnung der Natur zu vollenden" (S. 39). Zugleich entsteht eine konsensorientierte Ethik (Palmieri), wie sie einem Bürgertum passend erscheinen muß, die aber sofort bei Leon Battista Alberti zum Gegenstand der Satire und Kritik wird (S. 42 ff.). Denn die humanistische Rhetorik baut ein Menschenbild auf, das nicht nur aus Höhepunkten sondern viel öfter aus Katastrophen besteht. Herauskommt eine Existenzphilosophie, in der "der Mensch Herr der Zeit seines Lebens, also seiner Geschichte, ist und mit dieser Lebenszeit haushälterisch umzugehen hat" (S. 45) und in der "handwerkliches Tun, das nicht anders als moralisches Handeln Auseinandersetzung des Menschen mit der Welt ist, theoretisch zu reflektieren" ist (S. 47). Die Frage nach der Wahrheit zerläuft und verdichtet sich zugleich in die Frage, was es heißt, Mensch zu sein.
Die sich schon abzeichnende neue Phase der humanistischen Philosophie wird von Keßler unter Rückgriff auf die politisch-ökonomischen Entstehungsbedingungen damit erklärt, daß unter dem Prinzipat der Medici die Bürgerrepublik „nur noch eine historische Größe“ geworden war, so daß neue Ansätze, und das ist hier der Neuplatonismus, möglich wurden (S. 51 f., vgl. 101). Landino wird daher als einer der ersten das Lebensbild des Humanismus, einschließlich der Dichtungstheorie, die ja eine Schöpfungstheorie ist, mit platonischen Denkformen anreichern. Angelo Poliziano wird aufgrund vertiefter Kenntnisse der Literatur vor vorzeitiger Erstarrung in Klassizismus warnen (S. 56), aber er wird auch den Philosophiebegriff dem Platonismus annähern und zugleich eine philologisch-historische Interpretation des Aristoteles einfordern. Dennoch sieht Keßler in Poliziano das humanistische Postulat der konkreten Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte, in der der Mensch „seine Objektivität erfahren kann" (S. 55). Machiavelli setzt die Überprüfung moralischer Konzepte fort und ist daher "in der Kompromißlosigkeit der Analyse … radikaler und illusionsloser humanistisch als seine Vorgänger" (S. 57).
Die Methode dieser Geschichtsschreibung der humanistischen Philosophie basiert darauf, daß die aus der Krise der spätmittelalterlichen Philosophie resultierende Erkenntnisunsicherheit, Gottesferne und Willensbetonung in die Trias der Existenzunsicherheit, des Konsenses und der Historizität übersetzt wird. Wenn beispielsweise Poliziano eine genaue Lektüre des Aristoteles einfordert, dann scheint das so etwas wie Historizität zu implizieren, so daß der Begriff ’Historizität‘ im modernen Sinne sich als Kategorie der Interpretation des Humanismus anbietet. Historizität wiederum und Tatkraft im Verein mit Konsensbedarf bieten sich an, Geschichte und Rhetorik im exklusiv menschlichen Horizont zu lesen: wenn daher Cristoforo Landino Fragen des menschlichen Adels mithilfe antiker Quellen kontrovers diskutiert, so mag man vermuten, daß der Leser auf seine eigene "Lebenssituation und Erfahrung" zurückverwiesen und diese zugleich mitgeprägt werden soll (S. 52). Auch mag Polizianos Warnung vor einer Dogmatisierung des Florentiner Platonismus bedeuten, daß der „Gegenstand der Philosophie … nicht die ewigen Wahrheiten, sondern (…) die vom Menschen erlittene und gestaltete Geschichte" ist (S. 55). Das Problem ist, daß solche Begriffe von Geschichte, Leben und Erfahrung noch nicht im Humanismus der Renaissance vorkommen. Historische Projektionen fallen oft erst dann auf, wenn eine solche Projektion überraschend ist und nicht mit den eigenen Denkrahmen übereinstimmt. Die Interpretation des Humanismus mithilfe eines Begriffs von Geschichte als dem Inbegriff der Wahrheit (und zugleich als ihr Surrogat) ist viel zu einleuchtend, als daß sie der Projektion verdächtig sein könnte. Denn der moderne Mensch ist der existenziell im Handeln sich erfahrene und realisierende Mensch. Auf der anderen Seite ist diese Interpretation dadurch gerechtfertigt, daß genau jene Einsicht in die kontingente Situierung des Menschseins ihre genetische Voraussetzung darin hat, daß ewige Wahrheiten, Tugenden, ja die gesamte Menschenwürde bei den Humanisten von Petrarca bis Machiavelli nach allen Seiten hin kritisch betrachtet wurde. Deshalb kann Keßler Machiavelli vor der Entrüstungsgeschichte in Schutz nehmen (vor jener Interpretation, die immer noch glaubt, Machiavelli habe die Abschaffung der Tugend betrieben) und feststellen, daß seit Machiavelli politische Theorie "der Aufdeckung von kausalen Zusammenhängen und Zweck-Mittel-Relationen" dient, und somit "eine auf Erfahrung beruhende Technik des situationsgemäßen politischen Handelns" bietet (S. 58). Allerdings ist es nicht das, was Machiavelli sagt, sondern was wir aus ihm lernen können. "Verantwortung nicht nur für sein eigenes Leben, sondern auch für den Bestand der Gemeinschaft … und das daraus entspringende existenzielle Bedürfnis nach situationsgerechter Handlungsorientierung" (S. 61) - das beschreibt vielleicht die Situation des Menschen im Kommunitarismus, konnte aber wohl in diesen Kategorien nicht von den Florentinern gedacht werden. Entscheidend ist, daß die Humanisten Tugenden, Recht, Politik, Anthropologie und was daraus folgt in das Zentrum ihrer philosophischen Bemühungen gestellt haben. Keßlers Leitmotiv, nämlich die aus Nominalismus und Voluntarismus gewonnenen Einsichten in die Ungewißheit und das Wagnis der Humanität zu übersetzen, ist also fruchtbar, indem es als historiographische Sonde in den Textbestand und als Anwendungsprinzip für die Moderne dient.
Das gilt dann selbstverständlich auch für die philosophischen Bemühungen des "höfischen Humanismus" (S. 62), also der Denker, die von adligen Mäzenen abhängig waren. Die höfische Situation erlaubt es, anthropologische Fragen nach Adel, Erziehung und Politik abzuhandeln, so daß am Ende die Theorie des Fürstentums bei Giovanni Pontano in einer Analyse der Herrschaft mündet, die mit dem aus dem Bürgerhumanismus erwachsenen Principe des Machiavelli konvergieren kann. Die Erziehungstraktate rezipieren nicht nur die neu aufgefundenen Quintilian und Plutarch, sondern thematisieren vor allem den Zusammenhang der freien Künste mit der christlichen Tradition und der Entwicklung des Individuums, so daß aus den studia humanitatis am Ende ein Ausbildungsprogramm entstehen kann, das humanistisch genannt werden und die Vorstellung von Individuum und Bildung bis in das 20. Jahrhundert hinein prägen wird. Der höfische Humanismus hatte einen Knotenpunkt in Venedig mit seinem Zugang zu griechischen Quellen, in Pavia als Anlaufstelle für Studenten aus dem Norden und bringt eine erste Rehabilitation des Epikureismus; Rom wird humanistisch unter Papst Nikolaus V. und zieht nicht nur orthodoxe Denker an, und im Süden engagiert das Haus Aragon Humanisten und begründet damit den Ruhm Neapels für die Philosophie bis ins 20. Jahrhundert.
Die höfischen Humanisten sind zumeist Wanderhumanisten, und von ihnen ist selbstverständlich Lorenzo Valla (Rom, Pavia, Neapel, Rom) der bedeutendste. Sein Beitrag zur humanistischen Philosophie besteht in einer „Diskursänderung“ (S. 73): „Nicht die Philosophie als Theorie des begrifflich Allgemeinen ist … Grundlage und Hüterin der Wahrheit, sondern die Geschichte. … Die Geschichte … enthält in der Beispielhaftigkeit der in ihr dargestellten Prozesse … ein Allgemeines, das zugleich Konkretheit und allgemeine Verbindlichkeit beanspruchen kann.“ (S. 74 f.) Ein „historisch-narratives Universale“ erlaubt es Valla, in der gesprochenen Sprache faktische Wahrheit aufzudecken, sei es in der Konstantinischen Schenkung, sei es im Text der biblischen Offenbarung und schließlich beim „Umpflügen“ der Logik. Denn auch in der Sprache der Logik kommt es Valla auf den Realitätsbezug an (der in der scholastischen, letztlich nominalistischen Strömung unbegreifbar geworden war), nur daß hier keine Entsprechung von Sachen und Wörtern mehr erwartet wird sondern -- auf einer Ebene, die zugleich metasprachlich und menschlich erscheint -- „die Bestimmung der Grenzen der logischen Argumentation und ihre Integration in eine allgemeine Diskurslehre“ (S. 79). Auf der Seite der Erkenntnis der Welt ergibt sich in dieser Interpretation, daß Begriffe gar nicht für etwas Extramentales stehen, sondern „für jene vorbegrifflichen Inhalte, die in den übrigen ‚Sinnen‘ gegeben sind. Ein Wahrheitsanspruch kann daher nur erhoben werden, wenn und insofern begriffliche Aussagen ‚sinnlich‘ eingeholt werden können“ (S. 79). Was wie ein großer Schritt in Richtung empirisch verifiziertem Rationalismus aussieht, zeitigt in der Freiheitsdiskussion das beunruhigende Ergebnis, „daß aller begrifflichen Unvereinbarkeit zum Trotz eine reale Aufhebung der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens mit der Güte Gottes unvereinbar ist“ (S. 83). Beunruhigend ist das deshalb, weil in Valla – ante litteram – nachkartesischer Intuitionismus mit nachreformatorischem Fideismus verschwistert zu sein scheinen. Konnte Valla soetwas denken? In diesem Falle bin ich geneigt ja zu sagen. Die kühnen Wort- und Sachanalysen Vallas fordern allerdings kühne Interpretationen, d.h. solche, die sich nicht an vorgegebene Epochenrahmen halten.
Platon schien den Humanisten zunächst die Erwartungen an eine Philosophie des guten Lebens und der schönen Sprache zu bedienen, aber der entscheidende Impuls zur Entstehung des Renaissanceplatonismus kam durch das Auftreten von Georgios Gemistos Plethon beim Konzil von Florenz 1439: Er löst, indem er „an den bereits bestehenden humanistischen Platonismus anknüpft“ (S. 99), die Kontroversen um den Vorrang Platons oder Aristoteles‘ und (damit z.T. überschneidend) um Heidentum und Christentum aus. Das entscheidend Neue im Angebot des Neuplatonismus war überraschenderweise nach Keßler die Lösung des Nominalismus-Problems durch Historisierung der ewigen Wahrheiten: die platonisierende Anthropologie verortet den Menschen im Kosmos, entindividualisiert ihn aber zugleich und scheint ihn von der historischen Erfahrung zu trennen. Der Nominalismus gestand aber dem Allgemeinen keine Erkenntnisfunktion zu, sondern nur dem Einzelnen; daher der Charme der Rhetorik und der Historie. Plethons Konstruktion der "urspünglichen Philosophie" bot eine zeitliche Erstreckung der Offenbarung und der Emanation an, durch die die Historizität der Wahrheit für das humanistische Denken wiedergewonnen war (S. 100 f., vgl. 106 f.).
Dieses Programm wird dann von Marsilio Ficino ausgeführt, der ebenfalls wie die Humanisten Wahrheit nicht mehr in der Übereinstimmung zwischen Theorie und Einzeldingen sucht sondern nun "darin, daß sie Abbild jenes göttlichen umfassenden Einen ist, das mit der Wahrheit selbst identisch ist" (S. 105). Entsprechend dem interpretatorischen Prinzip liegt die Leistungsfähigkeit der ficinianischen kosmologischen Epistemologie darin, daß „das Nominalismusproblem gegenstandslos [wird], insofern die größere Allgemeinheit der Universalien gerade nicht mehr ihre Realitätsferne, sondern ihre größere Nähe zum ursprünglich Seienden bezeugt" (S. 105). Der nominalistisch beeinflußte Humanismus kann sich offenbar nun leisten, Realität so zu definieren, daß sie mit der Wahrheit ein Kontinuum bildet. Auf diese Weise erfüllt Ficino auch die Ansprüche an das aktive Leben und an die Frömmigkeit und Politik umfassende Sinngebung. Gleichzeitig gelingt es ihm, Aristoteles in die platonische Tradition zurückzuholen, indem der menschliche Geist sowohl die Welt als "Welt für den Menschen" konstituiert, als auch "die apriorische Einholung der adaequatio rei et intellectus … und die Rückgewinnung der Identität von Denknotwendigkeit und Seinsnotwendigkeit" zu Stande bringt (S. 110 f.). Auch dies ist eine erfrischende, sozusagen unorthodoxe Interpretation des Renaissance-Platonismus. Der Florentiner Platonismus ist nicht mehr ‚die Renaissancephilosophie‘ im Unterschied zum Humanismus, sondern die Fortsetzung des Humanismus neuplatonischen Mitteln.
Giovanni Pico erweitert die prisca theologia zu einem Synkretismus, der dadurch definiert wird, daß in ihm alle Aussagen auf ihren "vorsprachlichen Ursprung" zurückgeführt werden er mit der universalen Wahrheit identisch ist (S. 119). Daraus erklärt sich dann auch Picos Wahl desjenigen Textes, der am ehesten Quelle aller wahren Philosophie zu sein verspricht, den Bericht der Genesis. Seine Divergenzen mit Ficino erklärt Keßler aus dem gemeinsamen Interesse, den graduellen Aufstieg zu Gott in der Einheit von Lebensführung und Wahrheitsfindung darzustellen (S. 122). Die weiteren Folgen in der Renaissancephilosophie der Liebe lassen sich ebenfalls in diesem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Universalität der Wahrheit und kosmischer Epistemologie, die "Mathematisierung des Kosmos" (S. 133) darstellen. Agostino Steucos philosophia perennis führt alle diese Tendenzen so zwingend zusammen, daß aus der intendierten Gleichwertigkeit von philosophischer Theologie und Philosophie deren wechselseitige Befreiung resultiert und später zur Legitimation des Eklektizismus gebraucht werden kann (S. 135). Gianfrancesco Pico scheint das verstanden zu haben und wendet daher den Synkretismus seines Onkels in eine Kritik aller Wissenschaft, sofern sie nicht göttlich legitimiert ist, mit der Absicht der "generellen Zerstörung der heidnischen Philosophie" (S. 137). Beiläufig macht er damit das skeptische Instrumentarium philosophisch wirksam.
Auch der dritte Zweig der Renaissancephilosophie, der Paduaner Aristotelismus, ist ein legitimes Kind der späten Scholastik und des ihn kritisierenden Humanismus. Mit dessen Impuls und mit Hilfe des Neuplatonismus verläuft ein "sich zunehmend radikalisierender Prozeß der Transformation des Aristotelismus" (S. 139). Im Zentrum der Bemühungen von Biagio Pelacani, Paolo Veneto, Gaetano da Thiene, Nicoletto Vernia, Agostino Nifo und schließlich Pietro Pomponazzi stand die Aufgabe, die Wissenschaftstheorie des historischen Aristoteles mit den Fortschritten der Scholastik, den Einsichten des Humanismus, der Epistemologie des Neuplatonismus und hier und da auch mit der christlichen Dogmatik in Übereinstimmung zu bringen. Der historische Aristoteles, das ist die Innovation durch den Humanismus, daß nämlich der Text des Aristoteles auf innere Stimmigkeit gelesen werden sollte, was dazu führte festzustellen, daß seine Metaphysik, seine theoretische Physik, seine empirische Physik und seine Epistemologie keineswegs nahtlos zusammenhängen. Herauskam eine Emanzipation der Schulphilosophie vom Text des ‚Philosophen‘. Keßler beschreibt genüßlich, wie aus der Physiologie der Erkenntnis der Gegensatz zwischen materialistischem Monismus und Leib-Seele-Dualismus entstand (Pelacani, S. 144), mit wie viel Flexibilität das Gespenst des Averroismus (die Einheit des Intellekts) gebannt wird, etwa indem zwar ein einheitlicher Intellekt für alle Menschen, aber eine Vielzahl von Universalienerkenntnissen der Individuen erwogen wird (Veneto, S. 149), wie Gaetano auf Kosten der Naturphilosophie die menschliche Seele dem Bereich des Übernatürlichen zuweist (S. 152), wie Vernia schwankt und dabei die Variabilität der antiken Aristoteleskommentare entdeckt (S. 155 f.), wie Nifo die averroistische Theorie des intellectus possibilis und agens in der Weise mit dem Neuplatonismus verknüpft, daß sowohl ein universales Prinzip der Erkenntnis angenommen werden darf als auch die Individualität der menschlichen Erkenntnis mithilfe von eingeborenen Ideen (S. 164 f.) und wie er zugleich die Wissenschaftsmethode des 16. Jahrhunderts (regressus-Lehre, S. 168 ff.) vorbereitet. Die genannten und noch einige weitere Autoren werden hier ausführlich und zusammenhängend diskutiert.
Abschließend finden wir in Pietro Pomponazzi das Zusammenlaufen aller dieser Fäden, weil er sowohl die Leistungsfähigkeit der Naturphilosophie auch die Physiologie und Epistemologie der Erkenntnis und deren Relation zur christlichen Offenbarung diskutiert. Pomponazzi unterstreicht Kausalität als Erklärungsprinzip der Natur und etabliert in Abwehr gegen okkultistische Bestrebungen "eine prinzipiell empirische, von den Sinnen ausgehende Wissenschaft" (S. 176). In demselben Sinne versteht er, zwar unter Berufung auf die Stoa aber aus methodischen Gründen, das Schicksal streng deterministisch und handelt sich die große Frage nach dem Funktionieren der Seele im Menschen ein. Indem er "die Psychologie als Teil der in ihren Grenzen sich autonom erklärenden Naturphilosophie reklamiert" (S. 183), bearbeitet er die für das Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie und der konkurrierenden philosophischen Methoden entscheidende Frage nach der Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele in der Weise, daß für die Beschreibung des natürlichen Erkenntnisaktes es keinen Grund zur Annahme eines immateriellen Intellektes gibt (S. 182 f.).
Das Buch kann als Einführung dienen, was dadurch betont wird, daß jeder genannte Autor in einer langen Fußnote mit Bibliographie vorgestellt wird. Im allgemeinen sind die Literaturverzeichnisse auf dem aktuellen Stand, gerade deshalb darf man sich über einige Lücken wundern. Auch in dem Aufriß der Erforschung der Renaissancephilosophie kann man neuere Arbeiten vermissen, obwohl der Autor selbst dazu beigetragen hat. Man kann es gar nicht hoch genug schätzen, daß in diesem Buch keine Thesen heruntergebetet werden, die man in Spiegelstrichen zum Auswendiglernen aufreihen könnte ("Petrarca denkt …"; "Ficino glaubt …"; "Pico behauptet …"), wie Philosophiegeschichte üblicherweise dargestellt wird, so als wollte man Studenten davon überzeugen, daß im Vergleich zu Philosophiegeschichte Buchhaltung spannend ist. Vielmehr hat jeder Gedanke, den Keßler darstellt, einen Kontext und eine Begründung – in den Quellen, im Verlauf der Geschichte dieses Denkens und vor allem im Autor selbst. Ein Muster dafür, daß Philosophiegeschichte ein Philosophieren ist.
Book Review Sousedík
Stanislav Sousedík. Philosophie der frühen Neuzeit in den böhmischen Ländern. Stuttgart- Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2009. 277 pp. EUR 158,00 ISBN 13 9783772824784
Now published: Intellectual
History Review, 20: 4, 531 — 533
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.525928
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.525928
History Review, 20: 4, 531 — 533
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.525928
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.525928
This is a history of philosophy of the early modern period that focuses on one cultural region, which is roughly equivalent to the present day country of Czech Republic. (The plural in the title: "Bohemian lands", means to include the regions of Moravia and Silesia.) The era of national histories of philosophy is over, so one should think -- but has it been replaced by a method of writing history that truly pays tribute to all angles of the civilized world? Standard histories of philosophy are still limited to the great names, identified with the great strains of philosophy. Geographically, when speaking about the early modern period, it's all about France, the Low Countries and England, Italy and Germany; and for the German countries it's about the Protestant principalities. Poland, the Habsburg Empire, Spain, Portugal, and Scandinavia don't seem to have a place on the map. It is currently the Ueberweg's history of philosophy, which is producing volume after volume for the 17th and 18th centuries at Schwabe in Basel, that takes a closer look at regional developments in philosophy. One method employed by the editors of this monumental history of philosophy is to look at the European countries by their divisions according to denominations. However, the constant shifting between insulation and influence among Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed philosophers appears to be one of the driving forces of the development of early modern philosophy. At the same time it is obvious that the 19th century approach to national history with its denominational bias fostered eclipsing the role of philosophy in Bohemia. František Palacký's history of Bohemia emphasized the Hussite movement to the effect that in philosophy "other phases of the Bohemian history remained outside of the attention of Czech historians" (11). In that climate Scholastic and Catholic thinkers were deemed by definition to be of secondary quality. Sousedík's book is a case study in denominational and regional intellectual history.
The early modern history of the Bohemian countries (1450-1790) is divided into two unequal parts by the Battle of White Mountain (1620), when the Hussites and other Protestants lost power and re-Catholization took effect. Since non-Catholic thinkers had to leave the country, Jan Amos Comenius, for instance, cannot play a role in this history (10). The time until ca. 1690 was particularly fruitful with a variety of original philosophers. The 18th century witnessed the gradual infiltration of Enlightenment philosophy.
During the first period Prague University welcomed Thomism alongside with Scotism and Lullism. Hilarius of Leitmeritz (1412-69) is the first Czech thinker presented in this book (30-33). Raised in the Hussite environment he converted to Catholicism after having spent some time in Padua from where he had brought Lullist manuscripts. During the reign of Emperor Rudolph II Lullism enjoyed a first popularity in Prague, which continued into the 17th century (Kaspar Knittel, S.J., 190-193). Rudolph's court (62-68) is well known to have harbored a great number of more or less orthodox personalities, including Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler. Among the local intellectuals was Johann von Nostitz, who preserved some of Bruno's writings. As everywhere else in Europe, the Italian Renaissance was the source of innovation. Bohuslav Hasištejnský z Lobkovic and Jan Šlechta in the 15th, Johannes Jessenius in the 16th/17th century divulged humanist anthropology, Neoplatonic cosmology (Francesco Patrizi), and Scholastic psychology. Influenced by both Catholic and Protestant sources, Jessenius introduced the current debate over political power in a treatise on tyranny (1614, 1620) that had immediate impact on the Constitution of the Bohemian state (68-75). (Cf. also recently: Tomáš Nejeschleba. Jan Jessenius v kontextu renesanční filosofie [Jessenius in the context of Renaissance philosophy]. Prague: Vyšehrad, 2008.) An important predecessor was the Hussite King of Bohemia George of Poděbrady who in 1464 had proposed a universal peace organization as an alternative to the competing powers of Pope and Emperor and as a response to the growing threat of the Turks (34-36). Jessenius's political thought would be continued by the Jesuit Karl Grobendoncq who followed Catholic thinkers in advocating (1666) the importance of the people while attacking Machiavellianism (206-213).
The Jesuits arrived in Prague as early as 1556 and opened their first college in Moravia in 1565. They were successful in upholding the Catholic metaphysical tradition against the influence of Philipp Melanchthon, Peter Ramus, and others. After the defeat of the Protestants they dominated Bohemian Baroque Philosophy. The most important philosopher, perhaps of the entire period, was the Spanish Jesuit Rodrigo de Arriaga who taught at Prague University from 1622 through 1667. He advocated a version of nominalism with important consequences for metaphysics and philosophy of nature. For instance, he defined universal being as "that which -- though being one -- is multiplied in inferior instances" (89). He reduced the number of causes to efficient causality and almost identified matter with quantity, thus opening philosophy to Cartesian mechanicism (101-2).
An interesting counterpart was the Capuchin Friar Valerian Magni (1586-1661), a diplomat and philosopher influenced by Platonism and Augustinianism. On the basis of his understanding of consciousness he redefined the concept of space as "the evolution of an imaginary mass" (132). Sousedík argues convincingly that Magni developed an early version of philosophy of consciousness that was independent of Descartes (139). The same climate, in which ideas that were broadly accepted in Europe developed in unique way in Bohemia, had Johannes Marcus Marci of Kronland (1595-1667) flourish. Influenced by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher he developed a philosophy of nature that explained the existence of finite beings through "substantial forms" (an Aristotelian theorem) reinterpreted as (Platonic) "operative ideas" (150). Therefore tangible beings were not necessarily seen as instantiations of eternal forms but as products of "evolution" (152). Marci responded to Arriaga's critique by endorsing his nominalist interpretation of matter and form.
The most obscure and prolific writer of Bohemian Baroque Philosophy was Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz (1606 -1682), who was active all over Europe and familiar with most philosophers of his time and served for some years as abbot of the Benedictine monastery Emmaus in Prague and as bishop of Hradec Králové. In ethics he defended probabilism, but his major contribution to philosophy was his analysis of language and mathematics. Taking up the fashion of cryptography he analyzed the structure of language from the point of view of formalization. He managed to find theoretical differentiations of dictionary, syntax, semantics, and logic. In a complex system he differentiated the various meanings of being/existence depending on their logical, modal, and existential claims (178-184).
Among the Scholastic traditions, Thomism was never strong in Bohemian countries (225-229), but Scotism was supported by Irish Franciscans who settled in Prague in the middle of the 17th century, Bernhard Sannig being the most important of them. The Franciscans were also the first group that was torn apart by nationalist tensions between Germans and Czechs (204-206).
The Premonstratensian abbey Strahov in Prague was an important cultural center, and in 1676 its abbot Hieronymus Hirnheim published his De typho generis humani (The Disease of Humanity), a critique of human knowledge in the tradition of Agrippa of Nettesheim, combining relentless skepticism with fideism (214-222).
Around 1700 Enlightenment entered Bohemian countries first through a representative of atomism, Peter Guttlaw of Strahov, then through the Franciscan Friar Wolter Schoppen who taught Cartesianism. Another Franciscan, Anton Kalckstein was the first in that region to publish a history of philosophy (236-238), a phenomenon that went along with the movement of eclecticism. Eventually Wolffianism took command and the peculiar profile of philosophy in Bohemian lands merged with mainstream European philosophy where questions of religion were deemed to be alien to philosophy (265).
Since most of the philosophers are widely unknown, it was necessary to mention at least some of them that are treated with diligence in this book. As the center of the Holy Roman Empire for some time, and the stronghold of Catholic Reformation most of the time, Bohemia was well connected with all intellectual and political movements of early modernity. Sousedík is at times overly cautious in not overemphasizing the merits of some philosophers. It is nevertheless obvious that Czech libraries conserve enormous philosophical and theological treasures. In his effort to assign each work its proper place in the intellectual history Sousedík manages to give extremely clear and helpful lectures on a variety of philosophical problems: Thomism versus Scotism, nominalism and philosophy of language, Cartesianism, atomism, political theory, etc. In an unobtrusive way this book is a specimen of a philosophical approach to philosophy's history and at the same time a handbook of the main issues of philosophy in its gradual transition from the late Middle Ages to modernity.
Paul Richard Blum
Loyola University Maryland
Friday, October 30, 2009
Philosophy in Poetry: Francesco Petrarca
LOYOLA COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Distinguished Scholar Lecture Series
Promoting conversation about scholarship
among the diverse academic disciplines at Loyola College
Friday, Oct. 9 at 2 p.m.
Sellinger 004
“Philosophy in Poetry: Francesco Petrarca”
Paul Richard Blum
T.J. Higgins, S.J., Chair in Philosophy
Philosophy in Poetry: Francesco Petrarca
(Text as read without credits; poems were also cited in English.)
You, you are sitting there waiting to hear me utter my incoherent thoughts. You expect to hear something about my personal intellectual experience, or maybe of the ways and delays over the span of my academic career.
You may wonder what troubles me; what I tried and failed to achieve and attempt to compare that with your experience, which will allow you to relate with me and understand.
On the other hand, to my embarrassment,I may not be able to live up to your expectations
As such, I should be embarrassed by my hopes, which are nothing but a representation of my vanity, and I should admit that a successful lecture is nothing but a dream.
This is the first sonnet of Petrarch's collection of poems, the so called Canzoniere.
Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono,
del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.
Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno;
et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.
You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,
I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its trials.
Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;
and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world's delight is a brief dream.
(Translation by Phil Lu @ SPS) taken from Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Canzoniere
The most famous book of European poetry, Petrarch's Canzoniere, opened with a provocation. It speaks about the poetic "I" and addresses squarely the audience. This is a program.
Why should a poet believe that any reader or listener could be in any way interested in his youthful days? in his changes? and what could make an audience feel "pity and forgiveness"?
The answer is certainly not the final line of the poem: "that worldly joy is just a fleeting dream.” Other people's illusions are not a matter of empathy. Of course, love is what we all know, and mostly suffer from, but most importantly: to be the talk of the town, big time (al popolo tutto favola fui gran tempo) -- that's what we all understand: it is an achievement and at the same time an embarrassment.
Francesco Petrarca opens his collected 366 poems by stating that he hopes to become famous and that he is embarrassed about this hope.
You might wonder who was Petrarch, and, of course, what does that opening have to do with philosophy?
Francesco Petrarca was born in the town of Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304.
His father was a lawyer, who for political reasons had to emigrate from there to southern France, where in Avignon the Popes had their residence since 1309. Like his father, Petrarch studied law, first in Montpellier, then together with his brother in Bologna. I mention his brother because he will play an important role at some point in my talk; and I mentioned the law studies, not because that's what you expect from the Wikipedia entry, but because it will be important for Petrarch's life; and his upbringing in southern France in exile because it fostered his admiration for Rome.
At that time the best way to get a job was to be related to a family of Bishops and Cardinals, in this particular case, the Colonna family. Petrarch used his legal skills as a diplomat, he tried to convince the Popes to return to Rome, and also met the Emperor Charles IV several times. As a result he became acquainted with Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, and representative of the Pope during his absence from Rome. In 1341 Petrarch had written a few poems, not many, but enough to convince the King to crown him a Poet Laureate -- the first since the ancient times -- in a solemn ceremony on the Capitol Hill in Rome.
For a short time Petrarch came into the circle of Cola di Rienzo, a Roman underdog who had worked his way up to become a lawyer, who had convinced the Pope to make him Governor of Rome, and who believed in the ancient glory of Rome and strove to restore it; much to the disliking of the Pope. Petrarch and Cola shared that dream of a renaissance of ancient glory. Petrarch even tried to learn Greek. (It would be his admirer Coluccio Salutati to invite qualified teachers of Greek to Florence, which was the beginning of classical learning in Renaissance humanism.) Cola di Rienzo failed, which prompted Petrarch write to him: "Even if you don't mind your own reputation, you should at least care for mine!" You see, for Petrarch it was all about fame and glory.
Petrarch's political connections secured him a property in northern Italy, not far from Padua, where he died in 1374 (100 years after St. Thomas Aquinas, 53 years after Dante (1321), one year earlier than Boccaccio (1375).)
I have not mentioned the most important event in Petrarch life, namely the 6th of April 1327, Good Friday, when he met Laura, the object of his love poems. How do we know of that event? The poet says so (Canzoniere 3):
Era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro
per la pietà del suo factore i rai,
quando i' fui preso, et non me ne guardai,
ché i be' vostr'occhi, donna, mi legaro.
Tempo non mi parea da far riparo
contra colpi d'Amor: però m'andai
secur, senza sospetto; onde i miei guai
nel commune dolor s'incominciaro.
Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato
et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,
che di lagrime son fatti uscio et varco:
però al mio parer non li fu honore
ferir me de saetta in quello stato,
a voi armata non mostrar pur l'arco.
[It was on that day when the sun's ray
was darkened in pity for its Maker,
that I was captured, and did not defend myself,
because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady.
It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myself
against Love's blows: so I went on
confident, unsuspecting; from that, my troubles
started, amongst the public sorrows.
Love discovered me all weaponless,
and opened the way to the heart through the eyes,
which are made the passageways and doors of tears:
so that it seems to me it does him little honour
to wound me with his arrow, in that state,
he not showing his bow at all to you who are armed.
Taken from http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=3]
Are we to believe that? Obviously the punch line undoes what it says: love did not even exhibit his weapon to the lady, who herself was armed, i.e., either well protected or having the bow herself. But at the same time, in saying that, Petrarch is aiming his arrow at the object of his love. That's what we usually do on Good Friday, don't we? We go to church and fall in love. Again, I believe the main message is not in the punch line but in the center: "all my misfortune began in midst of universal woe". Petrarch's lovesickness is nothing but the expression of human suffering, of which the death of Christ is the epitome. We are very much used to the understanding that the sweetness of love is always combined with bitterness, Petrarch is taking up a tradition and reinforcing one. That however, doesn't make a poet, nor a philosopher; what makes him a philosopher is that he takes love to be a metaphor for human existence.
No doubt, many poems of Petrarch employ Christian imagery; frequently on the verge of blasphemy. The last poem of the Canzoniere is a litany that can be referenced to both St. Mary and to Laura. This occurs so frequently that I won't mention it every single time.
Petrarch is famous for his poems, and my contention is that these poems are not just aesthetically beautiful expressions of love, but they are Petrarch's philosophy put in verse.
In order to make that evident I will first tell you the famous story of Petrarch's ascent on the Mont Ventoux, and then explain a few aspects of his work by the title "My Secret". However, I will not get us into his more technical philosophical writings, namely his invective against a doctor, in which he claims that philosophy is only worth if it is put into action. I will also skip his treatise "On His Own Ignorance and the Ignorance of Everybody Else", in which he advocates something like a Christian philosophy.
Petrarch initiated the humanist tradition of publishing tractates in the form of letters. He even wrote a Letter to Posterity that describes homelessness, intimacy and alienation, and contradictory impulses as the general condition of being human that binds together antiquity, his own personality, and any human being distant over space and time. One of his letters, inscribed On My Personal Concerns (De curis propriis), tells the following story:
Petrarch lives in southern France; one day he decides to climb a mountain, called The Windy Mountain. The purpose seems to be for physical exercise. He calls his brother to join him. The path is steep, Petrarch tries this way and that way; his younger more energetic brother goes the straight way up. Obviously the brother is the alter ego. Later the alter ego will become an Augustinian Friar. Upon arrival on the mountaintop Petrarch thinks he can see the Mediterranean or maybe Greece -- nonsense! Having accomplished this physical exercise, he starts longing: for Greece, Italy, the past, and so on.
Sobering up he realizes his deep internal conflict: "I do love, sadly. I love what I should rather not love, what I wish I would hate. I love, but unwillingly, under compulsion, sadly and in mourning." At this point he pulls out of his pocket the book he happened to be reading: Augustine's Confessions. He opens it randomly, of course, and reads from the 10th book: "And men go to look in amazement at mountain heights and the huge waves of the sea and the broad flow of rivers and the ocean and the stars and their courses but neglect themselves."
Can it be assumed that Petrarch expected his readers to check the reference? Augustine is speaking about the immense capability of the human mind, particularly human memory. When people gawk at the world they forget the vastness of the human intellect. Petrarch turns it into his gesture of contempt for the beauty of the world that had attracted him to climb the mountain. But let us see what follows.
Immensely irritated he rushes down the mountain to their shelter, and hastily, short of breath, writes down this very letter that we are reading, to that person who had donated him that copy of Augustine's Confessions. The problem is, we know today, and Petrarch knew at his time, that the addressee, an Augustinian Friar, was already dead. Note the antinomy: the poet goes out into the world and is taken aback to himself; he turns his internal disturbance into the urge to communicate it with a personal friend. And in the same way as it doesn't matter that the readers of The Letter to Posterity are not even born, it also doesn't matter that the intended reader of this letter is already dead. What is important is that as human beings we cannot do other than turn to the exterior, question the interior, and revert to other human beings.
Here's another poem: (311)
Quel rosignol, che sí soave piagne,
forse suoi figli, o sua cara consorte,
di dolcezza empie il cielo et le campagne
con tante note sí pietose et scorte,
et tutta notte par che m'accompagne,
et mi rammente la mia dura sorte:
ch'altri che me non ò di ch'i' mi lagne,
ché 'n dee non credev'io regnasse Morte.
O che lieve è inganar chi s'assecura!
Que' duo bei lumi assai piú che 'l sol chiari
chi pensò mai veder far terra oscura?
Or cognosco io che mia fera ventura
vuol che vivendo et lagrimando impari
come nulla qua giú diletta, et dura.
[That nightingale who weeps so sweetly,
perhaps for his brood, or his dear companion,
fills the sky and country round with sweetness
with so many piteous, bright notes,
and it seems all night he stays beside me,
and reminds me of my harsh fate:
for I have no one to grieve for but myself,
who believed that Death could not take a goddess.
Oh how easy it is to cheat one who feels safe!
Who would have ever thought to see two lights,
clearer than the sun, make earth darken?
Now I know that my fierce fate
wishes me to learn, as I live and weep:
nothing that delights us here is lasting.
Taken from http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=311]
The Nightingale is out there, it embellishes the landscape with its sorrow. That's the poet's cue. It makes him reflect about his own destiny, he blames the object of his desire for that very desire; he realizes that suffering is learning and learning is living; and finally that in this life nothing is both pleasant and durable. And yet, isn't that a beautiful poem? Why is it that "diletta" and "dura" coexist in wonderful assonance and dissonance? It is the human condition to oscillate constantly and contradictorily between care for the other, being lost to the world; and between reflection, self pity, self motivation, and self neglect. Self-neglect is the precondition for turning outside.
The report about the hike on the mountain has a message hidden in its name: Mont Ventoux means the Windy Mountain; which in Italian Ventoso is an expression for vanity. The journey depicts the successful attempt at gaining fame and consequently shame. The story was included by Petrarch in his collected Letters to Friends, in the section that explains his run, for the coronation as Poet Laureate. Therefore it concludes with the confession that all his thoughts were "wandering uncertainly for so long, … and after being pointlessly tossed here and there, they may be redirected towards what is one, good, true, certain, and steadfast." This motive, vain hopes and unsteadiness, open the Canzoniere and are the central motive of the book "My Secret". The one, God, is an aim and nothing more.
The full title of this book is: "The Inner Conflict of My Concerns" which clarifies one problem from the outset; it is staged as a conversation between St. Augustine and Petrarch, but it becomes pretty obvious soon that Augustine is, again, an alter ego of the poet, or his conscience. Augustine even refers to one of Petrarch's works as "our book". As early as 1330 Petrarch had admitted that both Augustine and Petrarch's love, Laura, might be fictitious (Familiares II 9). The name of the lady connotes laurel. Since Augustine reflects his internal conflicts, as he previously stated, he serves as a counter balance for the passion towards Laura. Therefore, the whole dialogue is a dialogue of Petrarch with himself.
The topic is that which is expressed in Canzona 264: the pity for himself.
I' vo pensando, et nel penser m'assale
una pietà sí forte di me stesso,
che mi conduce spesso
ad altro lagrimar ch'i' non soleva:
ché, vedendo ogni giorno il fin piú presso,
mille fïate ò chieste a Dio quell'ale
co le quai del mortale
carcer nostro intelletto al ciel si leva. …
[I go thinking, and so strong a pity
for myself assails me in thought,
that I'm forced sometimes
to weep with other tears than once I did:
for seeing my end nearer every day,
I've asked God a thousand times for those wings
with which our intellect
can rise from this mortal prison to heaven. …
Taken from http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=264]
What is the problem? Augustine asks him (that is Petrarch asks himself): "What are you doing, little man? [homuncio, homunculus, mannequin] Dreaming? What are you waiting for? Have you completely forgotten your unhappy state? Have you forgotten you are mortal?" That's how the book begins. Later Augustine chides Petrarch: "You stupid little man [homuncio]! You really think that all earthly joys and all the joys of heaven will come at your call? … [While many people believe] they could keep one foot on earth and one in heaven, they found they could neither stay down here nor rise up there."
Obviously Petrarch is reminding himself of eternal life and of true virtue. After all, who could argue against St. Augustine? But with all his conflict, Petrarch remains constant, or rather stubborn: "I've heard those old trite fables of the philosophers: that the whole earth is like a tiny dot; that a thousand thousand years are as one year; that human glory cannot occupy either that dot or that one year; and other arguments of the same kind to dissuade us from the love of glory. … I'm not hoping to become God, to live forever and embrace both heaven and earth. Mortal glory is enough for me: that's what I aspire to; being a mortal, I aspire only to mortal things." And he recklessly continues: "My conscience [that is Augustine], which now is all my troubles, tells me that I have always burned with love for what is eternal. [That is the Augustinian part in Petrarch.] … I treat mortal things as mortal, and don't wish to go against nature by nursing immoderate desires. I hope therefore for glory amongst men, paying tribute to the fact that both it and I are mortal." That is a line that could have been attributed to his Satan by John Milton.
And yet Petrarch in this dialogue with himself recognizes an extremely important fact about the human condition. Men can be stubborn and reckless in pursuing earthly goals, on the other hand as long as they are conscious of being reckless and stubborn, "mortal" as Petrarch says, they open for themselves by way of conscience access to the transcendent realm, which, born out of the awareness of the human limitations, condemns all human activities as vain. Mortality and vanity become synonyms. I believe that is the reason why Petrarch says he fell in love on the day of Christ's passion.
The human condition of wandering pointlessly and aimlessly through life, once understood, degrades all human achievements. Therefore, Petrarch dares to say: "that the glory in which one may hope for down here should be pursued while one remains down here. The other, the greater glory, is to be enjoyed in heaven, and no one who gets there would be interested in earthly glory any more." Is he being relativistic? Petrarch states clearly about eternal life "I'm not defecting, I am deferring".
From an Augustinian perspective all human strife is impotence; and yet human beings cannot but keep struggling. So what the Petrarchean man can do is to keep all contradictory desires and wishes in check. Petrarch in the garb of Augustine tells himself "I shall not desert you, as long as you do not desert yourself." And Petrarch the poet promises: "I shall gather up the scattered fragments of my soul and live to myself."
"The scattered fragments of my soul" that's the definitive formula. The Canzoniere was given the title by Petrarch "Rerum vulgarium fragmenta" -- "Fragments in Italian", and as we had heard at the beginning, it's his collection of his scattered thoughts. Petrarch's poetry is the disorder, laceration, and disorientation of humanity, all encapsulated in beauty.
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