Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 249 - Paris When it Sizzles - the Condemnations.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.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Paris When It Sizzles—The Condemnations. Given that you're still listening to this series of podcasts, you're presumably at least open to thinking that medieval philosophy might be interesting, or even better, thoroughly convinced that it is very interesting indeed. But of course, not everyone agrees. Prejudice against it derives above all from the assumption that thinkers of this period were constrained by the iron shackles of theology. Any green shoots of genuine innovation or free thought would have been trampled by the Church before they could blossom, leaving us with a dreary succession of unoriginal scholastics. Of course, we know by now that this would be at best a crude exaggeration, since there were plenty of heated debates amongst the scholastics themselves to say nothing of philosophy outside the university setting. Still, there were clearly restrictions on the freedom of thought in medieval Christendom. In the 12th century, Peter Abelard ran into trouble for his theological teachings and not just his love life. Around the turn of the 13th century, the Crusades in southern France against the Cathars showed just how far the Church was willing to go in its efforts to stamp out heterodoxy. Of course, that was not really a dispute over philosophical ideas, but it may have influenced the development of philosophy. The concept of the transcendentals may have developed in part to emphasize that all of creation is good and not an arena in which good and evil principles clash, as the Cathars believed. If we're looking for the effects of persecution and censorship on medieval philosophy, then one event in particular looms above all others—the condemnations issued at Paris by the city bishop Stephen Tomfier in 1270 and 1277. It was not the first intervention in the intellectual life of the university. Restrictions had been placed on the works of Aristotle earlier in the 13th century, though these were ultimately abandoned in favor of a curriculum based on a full range of Aristotelian writings. Tomfier's condemnations were rather different. He enumerated specific condemned teachings in 1270, a brief list of ten propositions, and then in 1277, a much longer list with 219 articles. In neither case was anyone explicitly named as having taught the condemned articles, though the 1277 articles were preceded by an introductory remark which complained that the errors on the list were being discussed in the arts faculty at the University of Paris. Also, two manuscripts of this longer list have notes in the margin that do name names. Both refer to a certain Boethius, who is of course not the famous thinker of late antiquity who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, but probably Boethius of Dacia. One of the two notes also singles out Sigé of Brabant. As we'll see, these figures, Boethius of Dacia and Sigé of Brabant, are at the center of modern-day assessments of the condemnations. Tomfier was not alone in being alarmed by goings-on among the masters and students of arts in Paris. In the late 1260s, Bonaventure had identified certain philosophical teachings as heretical, singling out three in particular, determinism, the eternity of the universe, and worst of all, the notion that all of humankind shares one single intellect. In his work The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Bonaventure compared these three doctrines to three beasts of the apocalypse. In another treatise, On the Days of Creation, he added as a fourth heresy the idea that happiness is attainable in this life, and complained that some of his contemporaries were turning the wine of theology into water by mixing in pagan teachings. It would be easy to take this as an expression of Augustinian opposition to enthusiasm for Aristotle, but remember that Bonaventure was at pains to integrate Aristotelian ideas into his own writings where possible. Moreover, his critique of the arts masters was echoed by the two leading Aristotelians of the time, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. We have the record of a correspondence in which Albert was asked to pass judgment on 13 propositions, 10 of which are identical to the articles condemned in 1270. He duly explains why each of the suspect teachings is erroneous. In that same year, Aquinas wrote a work attacking the idea named by Bonaventure as being particularly heinous, namely of Verroes's view that there is only one single mind that we all share. Then there's a treatise called Errors of the Philosophers, which is ascribed to Aquinas's student Giles of Rome, though its authenticity is doubted. It names and shames philosophical authorities, including many from the Islamic world, for their unacceptable doctrines. Aristotle too comes in for criticism, not for failing to endorse the truths of faith, since these may have been beyond his ken, but for falsely asserting things contrary to the faith. The theologians, it would seem, were presenting a united front against provocative philosophical ideas. Their apparent goal was to rein in the arts faculty, where heretical doctrines were at best being openly discussed in front of the young students, and at worst actually being endorsed on the authority of Aristotle. But the exact sources of the controversy at Paris have themselves been a matter of controversy among modern day scholars. The standard line is that some of the arts masters were indeed willing to follow Aristotle and of Verroes wherever they might lead. C.J. of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia have been called Latin Averroists and Radical Aristotelians, notorious especially for their views on the intellect and the eternity of the universe. They are typically contrasted to Aquinas, who emerges as a moderate figure positioned between the intolerance of Stephen Tampier and the excessive rationalism of the Averroists. Aquinas and Albert before him sought to cure radical Aristotelianism with the antidote of less radical Aristotelianism. Albert said the cause of the heretical teachings was in fact that some Parisians were ignorant of true philosophy and deceived by the sophisticated arguments. Aquinas's treatise against the unity of the intellect did not content itself with showing the incompatibility of the theory with religion. He showed that Averroes's teaching conflicts with common sense, and above all offered an unconvincing interpretation of Aristotle. Here we see Albert and his student Aquinas trying to rescue Aristotle from his overly fervent supporters. Unfortunately, this version of the story is far too simple, and indeed subject to qualification on pretty much every detail. We'll see in the next episode that the intellectual position of the so-called Latin Averroists, and indeed the very idea that there was such a group, is a matter of fierce debate. As for Aquinas, you'd have to go to an advanced yoga class to find a more complicated position. His treatise on the unity of the intellect clearly shows that he wanted to distance himself from the arts masters without going so far as to name his chief target, who was probably CJ of Brabant. But it seems likely that the bishop was targeting Aquinas along with the arts masters. Though his teachings weren't included on the earlier 1270 list, perhaps because of his eminent standing in Paris, the far longer condemnation in 1277 does take aim at numerous ideas that can be associated with Aquinas, including his controversial position that each human has only a single substantial form. The 1277 condemnation was issued on the third anniversary of Aquinas's death, which may not be a coincidence. And in the days following the condemnation, Bishop Tompier pursued an inquiry against Aquinas's student, Giles of Rome, who was accused of making unacceptable statements in his commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard. The result was that Giles was prevented from teaching theology at Paris. Furthermore, later witnesses were certainly under the impression that the 1277 condemnation was directed towards Aquinas as well as the arts masters. In his survey of Aquinas's errors, William de la Mer is not reluctant to point out that some of these errors already appeared on Tompier's list. Almost two decades after 1277, Aquinas's admirer Godfrey of Fontaine urged the sitting bishop of Paris to overturn Tompier's condemnation. He pointed out that Tompier and his commission had been so sloppy that the list contains internal contradictions, and decried the way that it besmirched the excellent teachings of the great Aquinas. Godfrey did not get his wish though. The condemnation stayed in force, and was still being invoked against much later figures like Pico della Mirandola in the late 1400s and even against Galileo in the early 17th century. Since it had been issued on the authority of the bishop of Paris and not the pope, there was some debate about its general application. Could its force cross the sea to affect teaching in England, for instance? Pico della Mirandola satirically added that if Tompier's authority couldn't reach across the English Channel, then neither could it reach over the Alps to apply to him in Italy. If there is debate about the exact target of the condemnations, then it is also unclear exactly what effect it was intended to have. For one thing, as I've already suggested, Tompier seems to have been outraged by the mere discussion of heretical theses, whether or not anyone actually accepted them. He speaks in the prologue to the 1277 articles of the fact that the arts masters were discussing these propositions in class, as if there were any room for debate about them. He threatens not just the masters with excommunication, but also any student who hears a master defending such theses and fails to report it. After this dramatic opening, we might be expecting that the condemned theses would involve rejecting core tenets of Christianity. That may be true in some cases, like the proposition that God only moves the cosmos rather than actually creating it. But many of the issues seem rather obscure or technical. The bishop forbids teaching or declaring that forms are divided only through matter, and that the subject and object of knowledge are a single substance. You'd have to be a well-trained scholastic to understand most of the theses, never mind believe in them. And indeed, Tompier was assisted by a commission of expert theologians, including Henry of Ghent whom we'll be getting to know in a future episode. This along with Tompier's opening allusion to activities in the arts faculty suggests that condemned articles were based on actual teaching sessions at Paris, perhaps the so-called reports of disputations set down by students. Individual articles often seem quite innocuous unless you understand the broader context in which the articles were discussed. Let's take the example I just mentioned, the proposition that form is divided only through matter. The issue here is one familiar to us from our look at the 12th century thinker Gilbert of Poitiers. How is it that each individual comes to be the particular individual that it is? We saw Gilbert struggling to explain this and considering a range of possible answers. In the 13th century, under the influence of Aristotle and thinkers from the Islamic world like Avicenna and Ibn Gabirol, a consensus emerged. Each thing is made an individual by its matter. Thus, and I know you've been missing this example, the four Marx brothers are the same in form, essence, or species because they are all humans. They become distinct individuals because they are made of four distinct parcels of matter, which is why Groucho is over here smoking a cigar while Harpo is over there chasing girls, while Chico is betting on the horses. All fine and good, but what if we are dealing with things that have no matter? There's no problem about God, since there's only one of him, but what about angels? They are spiritual beings, yet supposedly quite numerous. For much of the 13th century, this posed no difficulty. It was widely agreed that even spiritual things have some kind of matter which can be invoked to explain what differentiates one angel from another. This was the position of Bonaventure, for one. But Aquinas questioned this consensus. For him, all matter is spatially extended, so angels cannot be made of matter. How then does it happen that there is more than one angel? Following the logic of his metaphysical commitments with complete consistency, he assumed that each angel is unique in species. In other words, each angel is a distinct type of thing. The difference between the angels Michael and Gabriel is like the difference between humans and horses. Of course, there are lots of humans and lots of horses, which is how there could be more than one Marx brother and how there could be horse races for Chico to bet on. This is because humans and horses are made of matter. In the case of angels, by contrast, each is, quite literally, one of a kind. Aquinas' position is apparently condemned in the 1277 list, which forbids the teaching that, God cannot multiply individuals of the same species without matter, and, as already mentioned, that form is divided only through matter. I say apparently because Aquinas actually didn't take himself to be denying that God lacks the ability to make more than one angel of the same type. His point was that it is just incoherent to suppose that there are two distinct immaterial things of the same species. For God to make two angels that are the same in species would be like his creating a round square, dry water, or a boring episode of this podcast. Such things are intrinsically contradictory, and it was uncontroversial to say that God's omnipotence does not allow him to bring about contradictions. It's also worth noting that even Bonaventure's view, which was the standard theory among the schoolmen, is threatened by the condemnation. It requires us to believe that God could create two angels that are the same in species and lack matter, whereas Bonaventure wanted to say that it is matter that distinguishes the angels. This looks sloppy on Tomfier's part, perhaps a sign that the articles were assembled in a hurry for some reason, maybe so that they could be published by the anniversary of Aquinas' death? On the other hand, the most eminent theologian on his commission, Henry of Ghent, did believe that God can make two identical angels. He suggested that they could be distinguished by the different acts of creation that bring them into existence. So perhaps the wording of the condemned articles is carefully chosen after all. So far we've seen that there is no scholarly agreement about the targets or intended effects of the condemnations. The dispute continues when we come to the most important question of all, what effect did they actually have? Did Tomfier succeed in crushing the spirit of innovation at Paris and elsewhere? Or did his actions achieve nothing, or even backfire, as so often happens with censorship? A case for the latter option was mounted by the historian Pierre Duhem. He suggested that Tomfier unwittingly helped to pave the way for the rise of modern science by condemning certain ideas of Aristotelian science that actually needed to be rejected if progress was to be made. While Duhem's version of this thesis is now usually seen as an oversimplification, there is still a plausible argument to be made in favor of his basic idea. The argument centers especially on the idea that God has the power to do things that are naturally impossible even if he cannot bring about actual contradictions. As the medieval's would say, God has the absolute power to do anything whatsoever, as long as no inconsistency results. In particular, the condemnations require everyone to admit that God can create more than one universe, and that he can move the vault of the heavens away from its present location by moving it in a straight line. So what we're imagining here is that the spherical universe could be just one of several such universes, or that our universe is simply shifted, say, a mile to the left. As the latter proposition mentions, the offending philosophers who denied God's ability to move the cosmos had given a reason why it would be impossible. In order for God to do this, or to create another cosmos, there would have to be empty space or void beyond our universe. Otherwise, there would be nowhere to put the second universe, and nowhere for our universe to move to when God shifts it. Now, of course, Tampier and his commission were not claiming that God actually does these things, but they did believe, and were demanding that others admit, that God could do it if he wanted. This was a real blow against Aristotelian science, which was wholeheartedly committed to the impossibility of void. But it can also be taken as an unintentional blow in favor of scientific progress, since of course void is possible. We duly find thinkers after 1277 accepting the possibility and even actual existence of void, and also mentioning the condemnation as they do so. But let's not act like the universe if it were shifted one mile to the left and get carried away. Fourteenth century thinkers were developing new ideas in physical science for a number of reasons, and they may have cited the condemnation just as a convenient support for views they would have developed anyway on the basis of independent considerations. Leaving aside these specific issues of physics, what can we say about the effects of the condemnation more generally? There is little doubt that church authority was brought to bear against some specific thinkers. I've already mentioned Giles of Rome as a victim of persecution, and don't forget that Roger Bacon was even imprisoned for his teachings. Nor did the church need to be omnipotent to put daring theologians like Peter Olivey in hot water if not dry water. Of course it's hardly news that 13th century Europe was no high point in the history of free speech, but 1277 marks something more specific, an institutional effort to thwart the pursuit of philosophy independently of theology. To quote Luca Bianchi, a scholar who has written extensively on the condemnations, Tampier was not so much interested in distinguishing philosophy from theology, but in subordinating the one to the other. If we think of philosophy as an autonomous discipline that should be allowed to follow reason wherever it leads, then philosophy does seem to have been hampered by the condemnations. This is shown by the fact that later arts masters like John Buridan will refuse even to discuss certain topics because they are the affair of the theologians and not the philosophers. Soon, we'll be looking at figures in the time of the condemnations who were less circumspect. We'll be asking whether it is really justified to speak of radical Aristotelianism or Latin Averroism in the 13th century by looking more closely at the controversial figures Sigé of Rabant and Boethius of Dacia. First though, it will be time to celebrate a milestone. The next episode will be the 250th installment of this podcast series, and I'm going to devote it to answering listener questions about such topics as philosophy, philosophy podcasting, and Buster Keaton. You never know, maybe the Marx Brothers will come up too. That's next time, here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Thank you.