Henry of Ghent

This volume offers a new and comprehensive study of a central aspect of Henry of Ghent's (+ 1293) philosophical thought: his understanding of metaphysics.

L'A. esamina in primo luogo l'origine del problema metafisico in Enrico. Il tema del subiectum metaphysice è inquadrato nel contesto della problematica del soggetto scientifico e ciò che interessa l'A. è soprattutto il procedimento argomentativo di Enrico ed il significato delle conseguenze di tale procedere. Lo studio si chiude con uno sguardo sul commentario alla Metafisica di Pietro di Auvergne, evidenziando la relazione fra soggetto della metafisica e dottrina del primum cognitum nell'intelletto umano. Riferimenti alle posizioni di Avicenna, Averroè e (...) Tommaso. (shrink)

Life and the living (on Aristotelian biohorror) -- Supernatural horror as the paradigm for life -- Aristotle's De anima and the problem of life -- The ontology of life -- The entelechy of the weird -- Superlative life -- Life with or without limits -- Life as time in Plotinus -- On the superlative -- Superlative life I: Pseudo-Dionysius -- Negative vs. affirmative theology -- Superlative negation -- Negation and preexistent life -- Excess, evil, and non-being -- Superlative life II: (...) Eriugena -- Negation in the periphyseon -- The quaestio de nihilo: on nothing -- The quaestio de nihilo: superlative nothing -- Dark intelligible abyss -- Apophasis -- The apophatic logic -- Negation in Frege and Ayer -- Negation vs. subtraction in Badiou -- Negation and contradiction in Priest -- The dialetheic vitalism of negative theology -- Ellipses: Suhraward and the luminous void -- Univocal creatures -- On spiritual creatures -- Life as form in Aristotle -- The concept of the creature -- Univocity I: Duns Scotus vs. Aquinas -- Univocity in Aquinas' Summa theologica -- Univocity in Duns Scotus' Opus oxoniense -- The common nature of the creature -- Univocity II: Duns Scotus vs. Henry of Ghent -- Univocity in Henry of Ghent -- Negative vs. privative indetermination -- Absolute indetermination -- Univocity III: Deleuze's scholasticism three variations -- Spinoza et le problème de l'expression -- Différence et répétition -- Cours de Vincennes -- Univocal creatures -- Ellipses: Dgen and uncreated univocity -- Dark pantheism -- Everything and nothing -- Life as spirit in Aquinas -- The concept of the divine nature -- Immanence I: Eriugena's periphyseon -- Natura and the unthought -- Universal life -- Four statements on pantheism -- Immanence II: Duns Scotus' reportatio Ia -- Univocal immanence -- Actual infinity -- The pathology of the triple primacy -- Immanence III: Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia -- The coincidence of opposites -- The folds of life -- Absolute vs. contracted pantheism -- Speculative pantheism (Deleuze's interlocutors) -- Pantheism and pure immanence -- The insubordination of immanence in Deleuze -- Scholia I: the isomorphism of univocity and immanence -- Scholia II: the vitalist logic of common notions -- Scholia III: the life of substance -- Dark pantheism -- Ellipses: Wang Yangming and idealist naturalism -- Logic and life (on Kantian teratology) -- The wandering line from Aristotle to Kant -- Critique of life -- Spectral life and speculative realism -- Ontotheology in Kant, atheology in Bataille -- The night land. (shrink)

Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in Henry of Ghent’s theory of (...) instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant. (shrink)

In spite of the fact that Henry of Gent had a major and lasting influence on the developments at the University of Paris after the condemnation of the errores philosophorum in 1277, the Gandavistae - pupils of Henry of Gent - are hardly known by their proper names in the history of philosophy. As a member of the theological and philosophical faculty, Henry broke with the predominant Averroistic approach to Aristotle's conception of science and concentrated, instead, on the Aristotelian tradition. (...) He defended a revised version of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories along the lines of the pseudo-Boethian Liber de sex principiis and ascribed fundamental eminence to relatio, a category which was considered ontologically “debilissimus“ among the Aristotelians. John de Polliaco was a pupil of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Gent and Godfrey of Fontaines during the seventies of the 13th century. In his Quodlibet I, q. 7, dating from 1307, he gave a controversial account of the notion of relation that was favoured by Henry's adherents: “Does the relation, expressed as a respect, differ from the respects expressed by the six principles?“ In this discussion he attacks the intentional and modal interpretation given by the Gandavistae and calls them non-reales. Is this accusation already an indication of the rise of 14th century nominalism? (shrink)

Rather unusually, Henry of Ghent includes ‘totality’ in the list of divine attributes discussed in his Summa quaestionum ordinariarum. Availing himself of the different philosophical definitions of totality given by Boethius and Avicenna, Henry concludes that God cannot be considered a totum universale, a totum numerale and a totum virtuale or potestativum, but concedes that He may be considered a totality insofar as His being comprehends the exemplary perfections of all created beings.

Between 1276 and 1288, Henry of Ghent composes four quodlibetal questions concerning the ‘economic’ practice commonly known as ‘rent contracts’ or emptio-venditio reddituum. In contrast to other authors of his day, Henry holds that these rent contracts are not legitimate, arguing that the practice is just a form of usury. In particular the Flemish doctor, following Aristotle, denounces the emptio-venditio reddituum as a kind of usurious loan being contra naturam. In this article I want to show that behind his condemnation (...) of this ‘economic’ practice lie two aims: 1) to demonstrate the central role of the master of theology in society, that is, not only in the religious, but also in the civil society of his time; 2) to attack, as a secular master, the religious orders. Henry argues that because the validity of a norm depends on whether or not it conforms to the natural/divine law, rather than to the positive law, the legitimacy of a norm must be established by the theologian. The reason for this is that the theologian knows the natural and religious law better than anyone else. Accordingly, the secular theologian becomes the unique authority in ‘economic’ matters in particular and in ethics more generally. By contrast, the religious orders seem to endorse the emptio-venditio reddituum. Henry argues that this betrays their ignorance concerning the natural law. As a consequence, they should not be given authority in ‘economic’ or moral matters. (shrink)

The paper explores three areas in which Avicenna had an important influence on the metaphysics of Henry of Ghent: first, in developing an argument for the existence of God in metaphysics rather than in physics; secondly, in his intentional distinction between essence and existence; and thirdly, in his arguments not merely that there is only one God, but that it is impossible for there to be many gods, his arguments which Henry clearly took from books one and eight of Avicenna’s (...) ’Metaphysics’. (shrink)

This modest contribution has been occasioned by the publication of the Proceedings of an international colloquium held at the De Wulf-Mansion Centre of the Institute of Philosophy in commemoration of the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of Henry of Ghent. This colloquium had a twofold purpose: «first to establish a status quaestionis of the different fields of research concerning Henry’s doctrines and the critical edition of his work and, second, to provide a forum for specialists to exchange ideas and insights (...) on specific problems. The publication of the Proceedings offers an assessment of our present knowledge and opens up possibilities for further research». It is only natural, then, that the present contribution takes over this twofold end. On the one hand it will attempt to give a survey of what has been achieved thus far in studying Henry’s thought. On the other hand it hopes to derive from this survey a picture of what has been left undone until now, in order to set out a few lines for future research. More in particular it will push forward one issue that has been stepmotherly dealt with: relation. (shrink)

According to one recent account, in the “preliberal epoch” before the seventeenth century people did not think of individuals “as possessing inalienable rights to anything — much less life, liberty, property, or even the pursuit of happiness.” The statement is not true, but it is excusable. Compared with the flood of writing on the classical rights theories of the early modern period, there has been only a thin trickle of work on medieval ideas concerning individual natural rights, or human rights (...) as we say nowadays, rights inhering in the human person as such. Some modern authors see the seventeenth-century rights theories as a radical departure from ancient and medieval ways of thought; they are content to explain the ideas of Hobbes and Locke and Pufendorf by reference to some aspect of the intellectual, political, or economic life of the seventeenth century itself. C. B. MacPherson, for instance, emphasizing economic factors, inaugurated a minor academic industry when he interpreted Locke's teaching that everyone had a property right in his own person as a reflection of the possessive individualism of early-modern capitalism. (shrink)

IN THIS study I shall concentrate on three leading philosophical and theological thinkers of the thirteenth century: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines. Of these, Thomas Aquinas is surely the best known. But I have selected these three because their discussions of nonexisting possibles are sufficiently different from one another to illustrate some of the major solutions proposed to this issue at that time.

This article investigates three major contexts in which Henry of Ghent’s Summa quaestionum ordinariarum was received from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. The study takes into account the material features of a group of relevant manuscripts of the Summa: Paris, where the Summa was copied and annotated by Godfrey of Fontaines and his socii; the Dominican convent in Bologna at the beginning of the fourteenth century, to which Aimericus de Placentia gave a copy of the Summa corrected against the (...) very manuscript of Godfrey of Fontaines; the Roman Papal Court, where the Summa attracted the special attention of the humanist Pope Nicholas V, who employed the manuscript from the Bolognese convent for producing new copies of the work. In this study, I endeavour to present a late-medieval history of the Summa as a book, and to contribute to the debate about the mutual relationships among some of the most important witnesses of the text. I pay particular attention to the marginal annotations in t... (shrink)

The third volume of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts will allow scholars and students access in English, to major texts that form the debate over mind and knowledge at the center of medieval philosophy. Beginning with thirteenth-century attempts to classify the soul's powers and to explain the mind's place within the soul, the volume proceeds systematically to consider the scope of human knowledge and the role of divine illumination, intentionality and mental representation, and attempts to identify the object (...) of human knowledge in terms of concepts and propositions. The authors included are Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, William Alnwick, Peter Aureol, William Ockham, William Crathorn, Robert Holcot, Adam Wodeham as well as two anonymous Parisian masters of arts. This volume will be an important resource for scholars and students of medieval philosophy, history, theology and literature. (shrink)

In spite of the fact that Henry of Gent had a major and lasting influence on the developments at the University of Paris after the condemnation of the errores philosophorum in 1277, the Gandavistae – pupils of Henry of Gent – are hardly known by their proper names in the history of philosophy. As a member of the theological and philosophical faculty, Henry broke with the predominant Averroistic approach to Aristotle’s conception of science and concentrated, instead, on the Aristotelian tradition. (...) He defended a revised version of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories along the lines of the pseudo-Boethian Liber de sex principiis and ascribed fundamental eminence to relatio, a category which was considered ontologically “debilissimus” among the Aristotelians. John de Polliaco was a pupil of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Gent and Godfrey of Fontaines during the seventies of the 13th century. In his Quodlibet I, q. 7, dating from 1307, he gave a controversial account of the notion of relation that was favoured by Henry’s adherents: “Does the relation, expressed as a respect, differ from the respects expressed by the six principles?” In this discussion he attacks the intentional and modal interpretation given by the Gandavistae and calls them non-reales. Is this accusation already an indication of the rise of 14th century nominalism? (shrink)