WHAT HE OUGHT TO DESIRE; AND TO KNOW WHAT HE OUGHT TO DO.”
Two Precepts of Charity
The Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas, by Velazquez: Aquinas’s struggle to stay true to his vocation is well documented.
AQUINAS 267
demonstrated. However, he rejected Anselm’s ontological argument (see also pp.140–1), claiming that the expression
“God exists” is not self-evident to us.
God’s existence cannot be established by the use of reason alone, but only with arguments based on evidence from the nature of the world. Aquinas famously offered fi ve such demonstrations, the fi rst three of which are versions of the cosmological argument, the fourth of the moral argument, and the fi fth of the teleological argument (see also pp.147–9).
HOW WE PERCEIVE GOD While we may prove his existence through reason, the true nature of God cannot be grasped by our fi nite minds.
Our language refers to the world of experience, and so cannot accurately describe a transcendent being. Thus when we speak of God as being wise or compassionate, our descriptions inevitably fall short of the reality. But this does not mean that our descriptions of God are false or meaningless. Rather, such terms are being used analogically:
we are saying that these qualities exist in him in a more perfect way than we can understand from our experience.
THE SOUL
Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that each living thing has a soul, which is the form of the body and its principle of unity, and that the human person is a psychophysical unit. What distinguishes us from other animals as spiritual beings is the possession of our rational element.
The intellect, being concerned with matters spiritual, is immortal, and so, contrary to Aristotle, Aquinas claimed that physical death was not the end of us. However, for us to enjoy eternal life, the soul, which is naturally suited to union with the body, must be reunited with it at the General Resurrection.
NATURAL LAW ETHICS Aquinas’s ethics also take their starting point from Aristotle and the idea that all created things have an end, or purpose, and the fulfi llment of that purpose is their good. For a Christian this makes perfect sense since it is in the nature of the universe that each thing is part of the divine plan, and thus whatever is
the natural purpose inherent in something’s design will constitute what is best for it. Human beings are no exception, but what distinguishes us from other things is that we can, as rational beings, become aware of our purpose and so freely direct ourselves toward it.
Aquinas argues that reason tells us that our wellbeing or happiness is our good and this includes the satisfaction of our basic desires for, for example, nourishment and procreation. But this is not to say that wellbeing is to be equated with health, riches, pleasure, or any other mundane goods, but, rather, consists in living a virtuous life within the community, the pursuit of intellectual endeavor, and the contemplation of the essence of God.
Dante’s cosmology refl ects that of Aquinas, with its series of concentric spheres sustained by the fi rst principle—the prime mover, or God. In his Divine Comedy, Dante encounters the pagan philosophers Socrates and Plato in Hell, but when he enters Paradise he meets the glorifi ed spirit of Aquinas. Dante’s admiration for Aquinas was such that it is often said that the Divine Comedy is the Summa Theologiae in verse.
Like Aquinas, Dante regarded the pursuit of wisdom as integral to the virtuous life.
Dante and Virgil peer into a circular Hell that has claimed the souls of the Greek philosophers of antiquity, while Aquinas dwells in Paradise.
DANTE AND AQUINAS
SEE ALSO 왘 Does God exist? (pp.140–9)
Educated at the court in Mallorca, Llull developed a mystical version of Neo-Platonism. After a vision of Christ, he joined the Franciscan order and worked as a missionary in North Africa. Convinced that rational argument could persuade Muslims and Jews to convert to Christianity, Llull wrote his great work, Ars Magna.
This attempted to demonstrate the truths of Christianity from the basic concepts accepted by all monotheists.
He devised complex techniques to generate different combinations of the set of basic concepts, hoping to convert all and so combine human knowledge into a single system.
Ramon Llull
b 1232–1316 n Spain
Duns Scotus studied and taught at Oxford and then in Paris, from where he was expelled briefl y for siding with the Pope against the king.
He argued, against Aquinas (see pp.264–5), that predicates, when applied to God, retain the same meaning as when used of ordinary objects. On the issue of universals, he was a realist while at the same time maintaining that we can apprehend particulars directly through
perception without the
mediation of general concepts; he coined the term haecceity, meaning “thisness,”
for the quality a particular has that makes it the individual it is. He also
Little is known of Eckhart’s early life.
He joined the Dominican order at Erfurt and held various administrative posts and lectureships around Europe.
A follower of Aquinas (see pp.264–5), his thinking deviated from mainstream Scholasticism, as did the mystical imagery of his prose. He is best known for his sermons (in the vernacular), which dwelt on the presence of God within man’s soul. Condemned for heresy, he defended himself saying that the fl orid language he used to inspire his listeners to good deeds might have led him to stray from the path of orthodoxy. He recanted to avoid being burned to death.
Meister Eckhart
b ca. 1260–1327 n Germany
John Duns Scotus
b ca. 1266–1308 n Scotland
Duns Scotus became a Franciscan in 1281 and was ordained 10 years later. Among the most infl uential of the medieval metaphysicians and logicians, he produced a complex version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence (see pp.142–3).
defended our natural faculties against sceptics, claiming that knowledge can be acquired by their proper use and without the need for divine “illumination.”
Duns Scotus’s treatment of these and many other issues is characterized by the rigor and intricacy of his arguments, which earned him the sobriquet “The Subtle Doctor.” Later philosophers were not so complimentary, and the diffi culty of much of his argumentation led detractors to condemn his followers, who were known as “Dunses”—hence the derogatory term “dunce.”
Duns Scotus speaking to his students, some of whom heavily edited his works after his death.
WHO’S WHO IN PHILOSOPHY 269
In the great medieval debate on universals (see Plato, pp.244–7), Ockham argued against the “realist” view that general terms refer to entities existing independently of particular things. In his support for the
“nominalist” claim that universals are abstractions from our experience of particulars, he is often regarded as a forerunner of modern British empiricism.
Students of philosophy are familiar with the methodological principle that bears his name, Ockham’s Razor, by which “entities should not be multiplied beyond the necessary:” in other words, one should always appeal to the smallest possible number of factors in explaining anything.
Nicholas of Cusa received his doctorate in canon law at Padua University in 1423 and worked as an emissary for the papacy. He became a Cardinal and was appointed to the diocese of Brixen in 1450. However, a dispute with Duke Sigismund of Austria, who briefl y imprisoned him, prevented him from fulfi lling his duties after 1460. On Learned Ignorance (1440) argues that the limitations of our intellect mean we can have no positive knowledge of God. Reason is bound by the law of non- contradiction, but in God, opposites are united in a way we cannot grasp, and since the universe mirrors God, it too is infi nite and unfathomable. In astronomy, Nicholas of Cusa predated Copernicus in suggesting that the Earth is spherical and that it orbits the Sun.
Nicholas of Cusa
b 1401–1464 n Germany
Erasmus was a key fi gure in the new humanism of northern Europe’s Renaissance. Ordained in 1492, he studied in Paris, and devoted his life to scholarship at various universities around Europe. Erasmus was a critic of orthodox Catholicism, seeing it as his mission to reform organized religion. His In Praise of Folly (1509) satirized religious practices and
argued for a faith freed from Scholastic
theology. Though his project had much in
common with Luther’s, Erasmus disagreed with his views on free will.
He produced new Latin translations of the Bible and a Greek edition of the New Testament.
Erasmus
b ca. 1466–1536 n Holland
William of Ockham
b ca. 1285–1347 n England
Ockham was a Franciscan who studied and later taught at Oxford and, possibly, in Avignon. It was while in Avignon that he became involved in a controversy with the papacy which led to him being excommunicated, although his philosophy was never offi cially condemned.
Most parents believe, like Ockham, that the simplest explanation for events is usually the correct one.
Machiavelli spent his life in Florence. He worked as a diplomat for the Florentine Republic (established after the fall of the Medici in 1494), engaging in missions around Italy, France, and Germany. In the process he met many important political fi gures, such as King Louis XII of France, the Pope, and, signifi cantly, Cesare Borgia (upon whom it is thought The Prince was modeled). When the Medici returned to power in 1512, he was accused of conspiring to oppose their return, imprisoned, and tortured.
Maintaining his innocence, he was eventually freed by the new Pope in 1513 and went into a forced retirement from political life on his estate. He continued
The webs of intrigue spun by the noble families of Renaissance Florence were fashioned into political theory by Machiavelli in his infamous work, The Prince.
his political theorizing and, hoping for a return to political life, dedicated The Prince (1513) to the Medici. His Discourses On Livy (1517) is an analysis of Livy’s history of the Roman Republic, and its support for republicanism is probably closer to his true views. Machiavelli’s notoriety spread quickly during his own lifetime to the point where the term
“Machiavellian” became synonymous with the scheming and ruthless deployment of political power.
ESSENTIAL TEXTS The Prince; The Art of War; Discourses On the First Ten Books of Livy.
KEY IDEAS
Before Machiavelli’s time it was commonplace for political theorists to describe the organization of the perfect state and outline the virtues required of the ideal ruler. Through such discussion, it was felt that practitioners of the art of government would be provided with a model to which they might aspire. What these thinkers tended to ignore is how states are actually organized and how, as a matter of fact, political order is maintained. In The Prince, the work for which he is best known, Machiavelli set out to inject a dose of realism into political philosophy. Presented as a handbook for princes in the exercise of political authority, and written in a deliberately provocative manner, it discusses how to win and retain power, grounding its claims in historical evidence. While it might be nice to
Niccolò Machiavelli
b 1469–1527 n Italy
Machiavelli’s account of how monarchs must wield political power to achieve their ends made his name synonymous with unscrupulous dealings, and The Prince was condemned as the work of the Devil. He argued that whether an action is justifi ed depends on the ends it is intended to achieve.
LIFE AND WORKS