The tow, the fire, the Heavens and God, Article 156 of Tempier’s Syllabus and John of Naples. Through the examination of the direct textual tradition of the March 1277 condemnation, the indirect tradition and the possible interpretations linked to each of the main variants, the article attempts to reconstruct the original meaning of article 156 of Tempier’s Syllabus. The issue at the heart of the question is whether the impossibility of fire burning the tow after the cessation of the celestial (...) movement is due to the fact that God would then also cease to exist (quia nec Deus esset or quia Deus non esset, prevailing variants in the manuscript and indirect tradition), or to the fact that nature would cease to exist (quia natura deesset, minority variant chosen by Roland Hissette in his own edition of the text of the condemnation published in 1977, and since then commonly accepted). On the basis of the evidence provided especially by two quodlibetal questions by John of Naples, it is suggested that the correction proposed by Hissette is unnecessary, and that article 156 concerns the inseparability of God’s cosmological function as mover of the Heavens from His own Divine nature. The appendix contains the first critical edition of John of Naples’ Quodl. III, q. 10. (shrink)

Among the authors of the 13th century, Albert the Great is perhaps - together with Thomas Aquinas - the one who chose to confront more closely the metaphysical instances of the Liber de causis. The anonymous work, an original readaptation of Proclus’ Elementatio theologica, not only found in Albert one of its most passionate interpreters, but also profoundly shaped his thought. It is difficult to establish whether it was more the Liber de causis that modelled Albert’s philosophical and theological reflection, (...) or Albert’s reading of it that profoundly influenced the posterity of the De causis. One of the best known aspects of Albert’s thought is undoubtedly his metaphysics of flow, and more particularly his attempt to harmonise the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo with the Neoplatonic model of procession and emanation. In this article I jointly analyse: Albert’s definition of the flow; the way he describes the process of creation by the First Cause; the different definitions he offers of the first product of the First Cause. In this way, I hope to show that the nature of the flow - considered in its moment of origin - can be more adequately understood if considered in its relationship to that of the first created product, and vice versa. (shrink)

Among the authors of the 13th century, Albert the Great is perhaps - together with Thomas Aquinas - the one who chose to confront more closely the metaphysical instances of the Liber de causis. The anonymous work, an original readaptation of Proclus’ Elementatio theologica, not only found in Albert one of its most passionate interpreters, but also profoundly shaped his thought. It is difficult to establish whether it was more the Liber de causis that modelled Albert’s philosophical and theological reflection, (...) or Albert’s reading of it that profoundly influenced the posterity of the De causis. One of the best known aspects of Albert’s thought is undoubtedly his metaphysics of flow, and more particularly his attempt to harmonise the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo with the Neoplatonic model of procession and emanation. In this article I jointly analyse: Albert’s definition of the flow; the way he describes the process of creation by the First Cause; the different definitions he offers of the first product of the First Cause. In this way, I hope to show that the nature of the flow - considered in its moment of origin - can be more adequately understood if considered in its relationship to that of the first created product, and vice versa. (shrink)

The Scriptum in Librum de causis traditionally attributed to Pseudo-Adam of Bocfeld occupies an important place in the history of the Latin reception of the Liber de causis. Previous studies have h...

The doctrine of motion elaborated by Albert the Great has often been interpreted in the light of the debate, which developed in the 14th century, on the alternative between motion as a forma fluens, according to the Avicennian approach, or as a fluxus formae, more in line with Averroes’ position. Projecting this alternative onto Albert retrospectively, however, does not seem to be very productive for at least two reasons: (i) there is not a sufficient textual basis to affirm that he (...) understood the syntagmas forma fluens / fluxus formae as indices of two different and opposing ways of interpreting physical motion; (ii) Albert actually proposes his own interpretation of motion that does not really coincide with either Avicenna’s or Averroes’. In this article, I intend to show how Albert understands motion – particularly in his Physics – as a forma fluens, but in a determinate sense, i.e. as changing according to its being and not according to its essence (secundum suum esse et non secundum suam essentiam). This qualification means that Albert’s position does not coincide in a strict sense with either Avicenna’s or Averroes’, and must instead be understood in close connection with Albert’s doctrine of incohatio formae and the presence, in matter, of a kind of ‘intellectual appetite’. My aim is thus to show how Albert found a way to inscribe the doctrine of the flow of form and the inchoative presence of forms in matter in a Neoplatonic emanationist system (mainly influenced by the Liber de causis) and to rethink the nature and function of the ‘giver of forms’ with respect to the Avicenna model. (shrink)

Ptolémée «al-Ghari-b», ép.tre à Gallus sur la vie, le testament et les écrits d’Aristote. Texte etabli et traduit par M. Rashed, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2021.

This article draws on the perspectives opened up by two recent collective volumes, one dedicated to the Tabula Aurea and the Concordantiae textuum discordantium [...] Thomae Aquinatis produced in the 15th century by Peter of Bergamo, and completed by his confrere Ambrose ‘de Alemania’ (Mario Meliado / Silvia Negri [Hrsg.], Widerspruche und Konkordanz. Peter von Bergamo und der Thomismus im Spatmittelalter), and the other focusing the tradition of the Summistae, i.e. the Renaissance and modern commentators on the Summa theologiae of (...) Thomas Aquinas (Lidia Lanza and Marco Toste [eds], ‘Summistae’. The Commentary Tradition on Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Summa Theologiae’ from the 15th to the 17th Centuries). On this basis, I propose to examine the way in which certain genres and specific types of theological and philosophical writings can mark an often decisive shift in the content and orientation of a particular tradition of thought (in this case, the Thomist tradition). (shrink)

If we consider that being and its multiple meanings represent the subject of Aristotle’s Metaphysics - of which the Liber de causis was the ‘official’ complement in the teaching programmes of medieval universities -, it may seem odd that one of the points perceived as most troublesome and innovative in the Liber was precisely the concept of being. Among the most quoted and commented passages of the De causis is indeed proposition IV, which states that being is the first of (...) created things. Yet this first created thing, which represents the level closest to the First Cause, is called at the same time esse and intelligentia. But even apart from this double identification, what is to be understood here, in the strict sense, by esse? The assonance between the lemma of prop. IV and the statement of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite according to which ‘being’ is the first divine participation granted to creatures, helped to increase the fortune of the lemma, but also conditioned, at least in part, its interpretation by Scholastic masters. As an analysis of the Latin manuscript tradition of the De causis and its commentaries shows, Latin interpreters hesitate to attribute to the esse mentioned in the Liber an existential value or an essential meaning; however, this hesitation or oscillation may in fact be rooted in a stratification already present in the Liber itself, both because of the peculiar nature of the first created thing and because of the difficulty of translating the Arabic lexicon into Latin. (shrink)

W. Goris, Scientia propter quid nobis. The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus, Aschendorff, Munster 2022 (Archa Verbi. Su...