Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 256 - Frequently Asked Questions - Henry of Ghent.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Frequently Asked Questions, Henry of Ghent. In recent episodes I've been trying to show how misleading it is to think of Thomas Aquinas as the definitive thinker of the late 13th century, never mind of medieval philosophy in general. Sure, he was original, brilliant, and in the long run very influential, but his staunch commitment to Aristotle made him idiosyncratic, if not quite as controversial as some colleagues at the Paris Arts Faculty. A figure who might better personify the intellectual climate in these decades would be Henry of Ghent. Of course, he's far less famous than Aquinas. I recently asked someone whether they'd ever heard of him and got the response, well, I've heard of Henry and I've heard of Ghent, but not Henry of Ghent. Yet he was a major figure in his time. Though he was born earlier than Aquinas, Henry's long stint as master of theology came after Aquinas' death in 1274, running from 1276 until just before Henry's death in 1293. For evidence of his standing as a leading and more mainstream intellectual, we need only recall the 1277 condemnations. Where Aquinas may have been one of the targets, Henry of Ghent was on the commission that drew up the list of banned teachings. With Henry, we also have a leading exponent of the format that dominated philosophical writings of the 13th century, the disputed question. His extensive writings are largely in this form, and have been gathered into one large theological treatise, called either his Summa or Questiones Ordinariae, and a series of fifteen further collections of questions on various issues, the quadlibita. In this sprawling body of work, Henry touches on all the contested issues of his day. He is often thought of as a champion of Augustine's ideas and cast as an Augustinian critic of Aquinas. But we won't understand Henry well if we think of him just as a foil for Aquinas. Henry too was an original and synthetic thinker, eager to draw on the authority of Augustine, but also of Aristotle, and any number of sources from the theological, philosophical, and legal traditions. And it was Henry, more than Aquinas, who would set the agenda for the last towering figure of late 13th century thought, John Duns Scotus. This despite the fact that, as Scotus himself complained, it can be hard to pin down Henry's ideas because he says different things in different places about the same topics. His views seem to have evolved over time, and the very form of his writings means that you can find Henry tackling pretty well any philosophical issue, but not so easily discern the coherence or thrust of his thought as a whole. Rather than forcing his varied and voluminous output into a simple framework, or choosing just one problem that he discusses, I'm going to touch on a whole range of questions addressed by Henry. This will incidentally give us a nice survey of some key philosophical issues as we get ready to turn to Scotus and then the very different context of the 14th century. So question 1. Henry was a theologian. Does that mean that he wasn't a philosopher? On this point, Henry agrees with Thomas Aquinas. Theology is a science and one with an intimate relationship with philosophy. Henry condemns the pursuit of the liberal arts or other rational sciences for their own sake as mere curiosity, but commends the use of philosophy towards a higher goal. This goal is, of course, God, who is ultimately pursued in practical sciences like ethics, because he is the highest good, and also in theoretical sciences like natural philosophy or metaphysics, because he is the ultimate cause of all things. Philosophy can thus be very useful as long as one has already accepted the truths of the Christian faith in advance. This is an important constraint, because philosophy on its own is liable to reach conclusions that would be overturned from the perspective of theology. One reason for this is that philosophers consider only what Henry calls proximate causes, which may be trumped by the ultimate cause that is God. He alludes several times to the example of Hezekiah, taken from the Bible. Hezekiah was on his deathbed and doctors and philosophers would have predicted his imminent demise by looking to the natural causes at play, but instead God chose to heal him. Thus, as Paul puts it in another book of the Bible, does God make foolish the wisdom of this world? Still, philosophy can help us understand religious doctrines more fully. As far as Henry is concerned, it is better to grasp something with certainty on the basis of reason than without certainty on the basis of faith. This may sound a bit surprising coming from a medieval theologian. Surely the truths of faith are as certain as it gets? Yes, of course, but, and this is less surprising coming from a medieval theologian, we need to make a distinction here. Unshakeable confidence through faith is possible, but given only to a lucky few. In themselves, religious truths, like God's having created the world or His having a Trinitarian nature are perfectly certain, but most believers are less than absolutely sure about them. So as Henry puts it, the certainty on the side of the believer may differ from the certainty of what is believed. This is a distinction we could apply to non-religious cases too. Imagine that you've worked out a complicated mathematical proof. Assuming the proof's conclusion is indeed true, it is in itself perfectly certain, but you, the mathematician, may still be unsure. You can't rule out that you made a mistake along the way. Much of what Henry has to say on these matters is in agreement with Aquinas. Like him, Henry situates theology within a system inspired by Aristotle in which higher sciences provide the principles for lower sciences, with theology all the way at the top. Henry is happy to claim agreement with the philosophers, insofar as they too make the study of God the highest science. This is part of what philosophers call metaphysics. We can even say that metaphysics is a first science because it studies primary concepts like being. Still, metaphysics is part of human philosophy, which studies things in themselves, whereas theology studies things in relation to their divine source. That makes theology, not metaphysics, the highest and most authoritative of all sciences. And here, Henry does disagree with Aquinas. Thomas had suggested that theology is subordinated to an even higher science, namely that of God himself. This proposal prompts a scathing response from Henry. He remarks that Aquinas apparently didn't understand what it means for one's science to be subordinate to another. Divine knowledge is not made up of discursive arguments that can provide premises to be used in the demonstrations of a lower science. So it is a crass mistake to integrate God's understanding of himself into the scientific hierarchy. Question 2. While we're on the subject, what is knowledge anyway? Here Henry had a choice to make. He could go for an Aristotelian model of knowledge according to which we use our senses to learn about the world around us and then abstract our concepts from these experiences. Or he could adopt a more Augustinian theory on which God illuminates the mind. Other 13th century thinkers had emphasized one of these two stories without entirely rejecting the other, Bonaventure highlighting the need for illumination, Aquinas the contribution of sensation. Characteristically, Henry goes for both. He describes our initial attempts to achieve knowledge along more or less Aristotelian lines. We form rough concepts in our minds on the basis of our sense experiences. The mind has some work to do here, constructing an abstract notion of, say, a giraffe on the basis of numerous encounters with giraffes. In some cases, we can immediately arrive at such a concept without having to depend on intuition, as with a fundamental idea like being, or thing. Either way, Henry calls the concept a mental word. This is going to be important in a more theological area of his thought, since he thinks that we can understand the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God, as the product of God's intellectual thinking. But of course, it also makes it easier to see how thoughts connect to language. When you utter a word, like giraffe, you are simply expressing the concept or mental word of giraffe that is in your mind. As we form mental words, we are of course trying to understand the nature of the things we are encountering, to grasp the very essence that makes something a giraffe. That isn't something we can achieve simply by forming a concept though. Since we are limited creatures, our ability to apprehend natures is also limited. Henry compares the initial concept we form to seeing a book in dim light, such that you can tell there are letters written there, but not what they say. How then can we see things in, so to speak, the full light of day? This is the cue for Henry to turn to the second option, the Augustinian Illumination Theory. The human mind can achieve certain understanding of true essences with help from God. But Henry doesn't think that God simply sends the essence into your mind the way that Avicenna's active intellect emanates forms into the human soul, like Star Trek characters beaming down from a spaceship onto a planet. Instead, Henry dares to boldly go where someone had already gone before, Plato. He asserts that true knowledge can be had only in the light of perfect exemplars, which reside with God after he created them as models for the things we find around us in the physical universe. These exemplars are the very natures and essences of the things. By aligning our initial concepts with them, we can avoid all error and guarantee a successful end to the scientific enterprise. Question 3. What was that thing you just said about having an immediate grasp of the concept of being? Here we have to mention Avicenna again. A signature doctrine found in his writings has to do with the core notions of metaphysics, the so-called transcendentals, which are those features that belong to absolutely everything, like unity, truth, and of course, being. Avicenna thought that the idea of being, or of a thing, is so basic that we cannot be extracting it from our experiences of the world. Rather, it is known primarily, or immediately. Henry agrees and seizes the chance to forge another link between philosophy and theology. Since God is the highest being, and the source of all being, we are already, in the dim, imperfect way possible for us with our natural resources, grasping God as soon as we get hold of this primary concept. The vague understanding of being that is immediately available to us mirrors the transcendent being of God, which is indeterminate not because it is vague, but because it is infinite. Of course, this doesn't mean that all humans are aware of an innate knowledge of God that they've had since childhood. It takes a lot of philosophy to see that our idea of being, which is so fundamental that we usually don't even articulate it to ourselves, is in some way a crude intuition of the divine. Question 4. This has all been pretty abstract and metaphysical so far. Does Henry have anything to say about more concrete issues, for instance in ethics? Well, Henry has something to say about almost everything, so the answer is definitely yes. My favorite example is his discussion of whether it is morally permissible for a condemned prisoner to escape in order to save his own life. Let's suppose that Mr. Spock has been court-martialed by Starfleet command for some crime, like beaming onto a planet together with several anonymous red-shirted crew members when he ought to know from experience that those guys always get killed. Spock is in the brig awaiting his execution, but he sees a chance to escape. Is he entitled to run away? Listeners who find this example too frivolous are invited to go read Plato's dialogue Crito instead since it presents the same scenario with Socrates in the condemned prisoner role. Henry says that Spock should go right ahead and escape. He appeals to the natural law, according to which every human has the right, and even the responsibility, to maintain the link between soul and body. This is not to say that the judge who condemned the man was acting unjustly, since the judge does have the right to put him to death, but it is to say that the criminal retains an inalienable right for self-preservation. For the same reason, Henry says it is morally acceptable to steal food if the alternative is starvation. On the other hand, it's not that anything goes when you are trying to save your own life. Since the judge, or the state, owns things like the prison cell's bars and the shackles, the prisoner would transgress if he destroyed these things in a bid for freedom. Needless to say, it would also be wrong to injure or kill the guards. Still, Mr. Spock can escape with a clear conscience if he is left unattended and can just walk out without doing any damage, something Henry compares to the fact that you're allowed to stroll through someone else's field if no one has bothered to put a fence around it. Question 5. What is the relationship between the intellect and the will? I'm so glad you asked, because with this final question, we come to a pivotal contribution by Henry and one that paves the way for Duns Scotus's more famous treatment of human freedom. The issue has been a recurring one throughout the medieval period, with early figures like Ariugina and Anselm wondering how humans can be free if they need God's grace to avoid sin, and Peter Abelard locating moral responsibility in human intention because intention is something over which we have free control. In the late 13th century, the issue is much more focused on two powers within the soul, the intellect and the will. There is a division of labour here. Intellect is tasked with determining the best thing to do in any given situation, and on this basis will forms a volition to act. Henry says that this makes will superior to intellect, since the intellect has only an advisory capacity, whereas will has the executive function. He thus compares the intellect to a servant who goes before a master bearing a lamp to help the master see. But there's an obvious problem here. If the intellect tells the will what it ought to do, and the will always chooses accordingly, then how is the will free? It seems to be constrained, not by God's grace or any other external factor, but by the rational processes going on in the intellect. Suppose Mr. Spock is deciding whether to escape from prison. As it happens, he's read Henry of Ghent's disputed question and agrees with Henry's reasoning. He duly concludes that it would be right for him to escape. Since he now thinks that, all things considered, this is the best thing to do, all that remains for his will to do is ratify that belief by deciding to act upon it. In other words, it would just rubber stamp the decision already made by intellect and set action in motion. That way of looking at things could be called rationalist or intellectualist. Aristotle gave medieval authors a big push in this intellectualist direction since he depicts human choices as the outcome of practical reasoning. Aquinas is often seen as taking Aristotle's lead. He of course insists that the will is free, yet it seems that for him the will cannot act directly against the intellect. What it can do is influence the intellect, for instance by instructing it to direct its attention to certain considerations rather than others, an all too familiar phenomenon, as when you rationalize about why it would be a great idea to watch Star Trek instead of reading some Henry of Ghent. I really ought to relax first, or it will provide me with good examples to use when I explain Henry's ideas later on. For Aquinas, freedom really belongs to intellect and will together, which act in concert to discern and choose whatever seems good. For Henry, this underestimates the power of the will. For when the will chooses, it is moving itself, not being moved to choose by the intellect. It treats the outcome of rational deliberation in the intellect as a proposal, and is always free to reject intellect's advice. This must be so, because if intellect could actually bring the will to move, it would render the will unfree. It may seem that Henry has gone too far here. Why bother deliberating at all if the will is just going to ignore the conclusion you reach? His answer takes the form of a metaphor. The counsel of the intellect creates a kind of weight in the will, meaning a propensity to do one thing rather than another. This weight disposes the will to make a certain choice, but without constraining it so that it must make that choice. This may seem rather unsatisfactory. It seems that Henry makes freedom consist in the will's capacity to defy good advice from intellect. This would be rather ironic, since Henry agrees with Anselm that humans have been given freedom for a very specific purpose, namely so that we can choose what is good. Really, Henry just wants to ensure that when the will does choose rightly, it is choosing freely. If it only ever has one option, the one recommended by the intellect, then it would not be free. This availability of multiple options is going to be a key issue for Scodas too. The two of them are laying the seeds of Voluntarism, which is going to be a striking feature of philosophy in the 14th century. Question 6. What will the next couple of episodes be about? It's just about time for us to move on to Scodas, who took much from Henry while frequently opposing his teachings. But Henry really deserves a bit more attention from us and he's going to get it in the shape of two more episodes. One will be an interview with a leading expert on his thought, Martin Picave, who will be joining me next time to look more deeply into this central issue of Henry's thought, his so-called Voluntarism, and his understanding of the will. After that, I want to do something that would probably win approval from Henry himself. In this episode, and in fact in the whole series of episodes on medieval philosophy, we've been looking for the philosophical ideas in authors like Henry who thought of themselves primarily as theologians. I want to put this approach to the ultimate test by considering a couple of explicitly theological issues. We'll see how thinkers like Aquinas, Henry, and Scodas applied philosophical tools even in this sort of context, drawing fine distinctions, offering rational arguments, and alluding to Aristotle as they clashed over church doctrines. One could choose many issues to illustrate this, but my intellect has decided to focus on the Trinity and the Eucharist, and in this case, my will went along with the idea. So it is, if you will, indisputable that you should tune in for the next couple of episodes here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.