PARIS ARTS FACULTY (THE): SIGER OF BRABANT, BOETHIUS OF DACIA, RADULPHUS BRITO
The Paris arts faculty: Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, Radulphus BritoSten EbbesenThroughout the thirteenth century Paris overshadowed all otheruniversities in the arts as in theology. This chapter will deal almostexclusively with Paris.In pagan antiquity philosophy had not only been the pursuit of anever better understanding in all sorts of fields, it had also been expectedto provide the intellectuals with a sense of purpose in life, reconcilethem with death and console them in difficult times. In a Christiansociety philosophy must leave the second task to religion. The divisioninto arts and theology faculties at the universities institutionalized thedivision of tasks, leaving the artists with the obligation not to offertheir own way to salvation, but also with a freedom to do penetratingresearch in a wide spectrum of disciplines, unfettered by demands thattheir insights be relevant to the achievement of existential satisfaction.On the whole, the division of tasks worked well, but problems arosewhen a considerable body of non-Christian literature on ethics,cosmology and natural theology became available to the artists andwas taught in class. A crisis occurred in Paris in the 1270s.An episcopal condemnation of thirteen theses in 1270 marks thebeginning of the crisis. Then in 1272 the artists (that is, those teachingand studying in the arts faculty) think it necessary to codify their ownobligation not to meddle in theological matters, ‘overstepping, as itwere, the limits set’ for them. Finally, in 1277 the bishop, StephenTempier, issues a stern letter in which unnamed members of the artsfaculty are accused of actually ‘overstepping the limits of the faculty’scompetence’, and of thinking that theories found in the writings ofpagan philosophers could be true notwithstanding the fact that theyconflict with the truth of Scripture.Tempier appends a list of 219 thesesand threatens severe sanctions against anyone who may teach any sucherrors in the future or who has already done so.Among the condemned theses some appear to deny creation, someto deny the immortality of individual souls, others are less obviouslyrelevant to Christian dogma. The bishop had culled most of them fromwritings by arts masters. However, his attack on the artists was onlythe first move in a campaign designed, it seems, to culminate in acondemnation of a recently deceased theologian, Thomas Aquinas.The artists had less powerful supporters than the theologians;attacking them first meant beginning with the weakest opponent, butit also meant striking at the root. It was the study of non-Christianwriters that inspired the theories that Tempier would not tolerate, andthat study had its permanent base in the arts faculty, whence it infiltratedthe higher faculty of theology. Aristotelizing theologians could, in turn,influence the artists. In the 1260s and 1270s Thomas Aquinas made astrong impact; masters like Siger of Brabant borrowed freely fromThomas, though also occasionally polemicizing against him.The contents of the arts had changed considerably since the twelfthcentury. Traditional Latin rhetoric had all but vanished. Grammarthrived, and conscious attempts were made to develop it into anaxiomatized science of the type delineated by Aristotle in hisPosteriorAnalytics. Logic underwent a deep transformation; the twelfth centuryhad revelled in detailed propositional analysis; a technical vocabularyhad been developed and theorems established that permitted muchpreciser determination of the possible interpretations of a sentence andof its truth-conditions than Aristotle’s logic could provide. This wasthe ‘native tradition’ of Western logic, already highly developed beforethe entry of the ‘New Aristotle’ after 1130. At first the native traditionhad been enriched by the encounter with the new books, in particularwith theOn Sophistical Refutationswhose subject-matter, fallaciousreasoning, lay within the existing sphere of interest. But in the thirteenthcentury the New Aristotle started to act as a cuckoo in the nest. HisTopicskilled the study of Boethius. HisPosterior Analytics,Metaphysics, Ethics, Physics,etc. drew the attention away from theniceties or technical logic. The theorems (regulae,‘rules’) formulatedby the preceding generations were repeated in elementary handbooksbut provoked little discussion and were not significantly added to. Thefoci of the masters’ interest were elsewhere.In logic, one focus of interest was metalogical problems; what sortof things are the objects (arguments, universals, topics, etc.) logiciansdeal with? Another was how to apply basic notions of metaphysics,such as substance, subject and accident, matter and form, movementand rest to the analysis of the meaning(significatio)of terms. Aboveall, there was a lively interest in the theory ofscientia:knowledge,science. At the same time the old logic course expanded into a generalcourse of philosophy, comprising metaphysics, ethics, naturalphilosophy and all.It looks as if Oxford kept the native tradition more alive, and thatthis prepared for the spectacular breakthrough of English logic in thefourteenth century. But be that as it may, the thirteenth century wasParis’s.The present state of scholarship allows no clear picture of theoreticaldevelopments prior toc.1265–70. We get fascinating glimpses only.Thus one anonymous logician from about the middle of the centuryconsiders the relations ‘parenthood’(paternitas)and ‘being a child’(filiatio);they are one species of relation, he says, in conformity withtradition, but then he proposes that a father plus his child will be oneindividual of that species, just as one unity plus another unity are anindividual of the species ‘set of two’(binarius). This seems to amountto treating dyadic relations as predicates or properties of (ordered)pairs of things. Is this theory peculiar to the one text in which I foundit? Perhaps; but it is quite possible that an examination of uneditedtexts will show that it was widely known.Though nobody can claim to be able to survey the extant writingsfrom the early Parisian arts faculty, it is possible to name some of themost important masters. One was John Lepage, who was active in the1230s. Another was Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279), archbishop ofCanterbury from 1272, who, teaching in the years round 1240, was toinfluence his successors for several decades. When Albert the Great (c.1200–80) compiled the logical part of his vast encyclopaedia, he reliedon Kilwardby to an extent that nowadays would be called plagiarizing.Though full of inconsistencies, Albert’s encyclopaedia became popularas a work of reference among the artists, much to the regret of RogerBacon (d. 1292 or slightly later). Bacon seems to have taught at Paris inthe 1240s, but the extent of his influence is difficult to gauge. John ofSecheville was a promine nt master in the 1240–50s who found a lot ofinspiration in Averroes, who was now eclipsing Avicenna as the leadingauthority on what Aristotelian philosophy was about. Secheville is nowbest known for hisDe principiis naturae (On the Principles of Nature),a treatise on fundamental physics, probably written in the 1260s afterthe author’s return to his native England. About 1250 there also wasNicholas of Paris, author of several logical works with some later success.The generation who started their career as masters about 1265 arereasonably well known, though it must be admitted that modernresearch has been lopsided, the lion’s share of attention going to textsand subjects relevant to the 1277 condemnation or Thomas Aquinas.The fact that a Belgian and a Dane figured prominently among themasters targeted by the condemnation helped launch a Belgian andDanish project to edit each country’s medieval philosophers, thusmaking the work of artists from those parts of Europe much betterknown than that done by their French or Italian colleagues. The Belgianwas Siger of Brabant, the Dane Boethius of Dacia (‘Bo from Denmark’).All evidence of Boethius’ life before 1277 is contained in the epithetindicating his nationality and the number and nature of his extant orattested writings. He is likely to have commenced teaching about themid-1260s. His best known works are the short treatises,On theHighest GoodandOn the Eternity of the World,but considerableparts of hisoeuvrein the fields of logic, natural philosophy and grammarhave also survived. He wrote one of the very first Latin commentarieson Aristotle’sRhetoric,but unfortunately it has been lost, and little isknown about the early reception of theRhetoric. Extant sources suggestthat the book was rarely taught and then with an emphasis on generalproblems of logic, ethics or psychology without much attention to thespecific problems of rhetorical communication. Scholastics never quitegot a firm grip of the art of persuasion.It is the general, but unproven, assumption that Boethius was stillteaching in 1277 and that the condemnation stopped his universitycareer. He was almost certainly a secular during his regency in arts, yethis works occur in a medieval catalogue of books composed byblackfriars. It is permissible to speculate that the condemnation madehim seek a new life among the friars, but actually his fate is unknown.While some of his works enjoyed wide diffusion, the author’s personwas soon forgotten. Only in the twentieth century has he re-emergedas an important figure in the history of philosophy.Siger of Brabant always had more publicity, in life and in death. Hisvery entry into history is spectacular: according to a document from1265 he was suspected of complicity in the kidnapping of a member ofthe French nation of the university by scholars from the Picard nation.In 1271 the faculty of arts was split in two; the Normans and onePicard seceded from the rest. The Normans rewarded the Picard byelecting him as rector. The Picard was Siger. When the nations werereunited in 1275 through the intervention of a papal legate, the blamewas put on the Normans and this may have prompted Siger to leaveParis for Liège where he was a canon. In 1276 he was summoned toappear before an inquisitor to face charges of heresy; he was probablyacquitted, but the next year propositions culled from his books wereamong those condemned in Paris. He himself may have been in Liègeand thus out of harm’s way. In 1281 or shortly afterwards he met hisend in the papal residential town of Orvieto, stabbed by his ownsecretary who had gone insane, it is said.Siger wasmagister regens(i.e. actually teaching) for some ten years(c.1265–75) and several works from that period have survived, notablyhis questions on Aristotle’sMetaphysics,on theLiber de causis (Bookabout Causes),some psychological works, and one about the eternityof the world.Siger’s name was never forgotten. Some decades after his death Danteportrayed him as a denizen of Paradise and let Thomas Aquinas pointhim out with the words:This is the eternal light of Sigerwho, when lecturing in rue de la Fouarre [site of the schools ofarts],concluded unwelcome truths.(Paradiso10.136–8)In Italy some people continued to read Siger until the early sixteenthcentury.The pope’s legate who in 1275 reunited the university that Sigerhad helped split installed Peter of Auvergne (d. 1303) as rector—probably a wise choice. Peter’s voluminous (and mostly unedited)writings reveal him as a mainstream thinker, a competent man, but aman of compromises rather than one of sharp or innovative positions.Peter later advanced to master of theology and in 1302 was awarded abishopric. In the 1270s he and Boethius had some sort of collaborationas teachers, though they disagreed on many points, and discretelypolemicized against each other. Peter was, after Thomas Aquinas, thefirst important Latin commentator on Aristotle’sPolitics,but hispolitical philosophy is only just beginning to be seriously studied.Simon of Faversham (d. 1306) is another mainstream author of somerepute. He is likely to have been somewhat younger than Peter; hisParisian regency in arts probably fell around 1280. Later he taughttheology in Oxford. Much of hisoeuvreis preserved but only somelogical works have been edited and doctrinal studies have been sporadic.About the early 1270s Martin of Denmark (Martinus de Dacia, d.1304) composed a remarkably well-organized grammar,ModiSignificandi,which became widely used. In the 1440s the humanistLorenzo Valla paid tribute to its continuing actuality by specificallymentioning Martin and his ‘sickening’Modi Significandiin a virulentattack on scholastic grammar. Martin became master of theology inthe 1280s, served as chancellor to the Danish king about 1287–97,and then seems to have returned to Paris; at least he was buried inNotre Dame, of whose chapter he was a member.Modus significandi,‘way’ or ‘mode of signifying’, is a term with along history before 1270, but now it had become a key concept oflinguistics. Virtually all late thirteenth-century Parisian arts masterswere ‘modists’ in the sense that this concept with its complements,modi intelligendi(ways or modes of understanding) andmodi essendi(ways or modes of being) played a major role in their thought.The basic idea of modism is this: each constituent of reality (eachres)has a number of ways or modes of being(modi essendi)whichdetermine the number of ways in which it can be correctlyconceptualized; the ways in which it can be conceptualized(modiintelligendi)in turn determine in which ways it can be signified.Assume that pain is a constituent of reality. Pain is in a way like asubstance: a stable thing in its own right that can have changingproperties (be intense or weak, precisely located or diffuse, for example);in a way it is like a process occurring in some subject. The concept ofpain will then be able to present itself to our mind in two ways and wewill consequently be capable of signifying pain in two ways. Any wordthat signifies it as the stable carrier of properties(per modum habituset permanentiae)is a noun; any word that signifies it as a process in asubject(per modum fieri)is a verb. The English words ‘a pain’ and ‘toache’ signify the same thing or ‘common nature’ under two differentmodes. A third mode is expressed by the interjection ‘ouch’.‘Whatever can be conceived of by the mind may be signified by anypart of speech’, says Boethius; his only restriction on this rule is thatthe mode of signifying of the part of speech must not be incompatiblewith the thing to be signified.Fully elaborated theories of modes of signifying would, by similarmeans, account for all the traditional grammatical categories, not onlyparts of speech, but also cases, tenses, etc. Latin provided the examplesused, but the modes were assumed to be completely independent ofany particular language. What is around to be talked about isindependent of the speaker’s cultural background; ‘what is there’(ens)is things(res)and their ways or modes of being; we can form conceptsof no more things than there are and conceive of things only in asmany ways as things are. Moreover, we can express whatever we canunderstand, but no more.All peoples, then, have the same intellectual equipment (conceptsplus ways of understanding) with which to grasp a common reality(things plus ways of being); the several ways of being of things determinethe ways in which they may be known(modi sciendi),and those waysare what logic is about. So logic must be pan-human, says Boethius,and so must language in the sense that whichever thing can be signifiedin one tongue can be signified in another, and whichever mode ofsignifying is actualized in one tongue can be so (or even: is so) in anyother. All languages have the same grammar and total translatability isguaranteed. True, some peoples may know things others don’t andhave a richer vocabulary, but this is accidental; new words can alwaysbe added to a language. Grammar is not disturbed by the fact that thesame thing is called ‘homo’, ‘anthropos’, and ‘man’ in differentlanguages; how to match sounds with concepts is a matter of convention(though it was generally assumed that some sort of mimetic systemunderlay the choice of sounds for the basic vocabulary of eachlanguage). Similarly, any device can be used to express masculinity(more preciselymodus significandi per modum agentis)—suffixes,particles, whatever—but you cannot have a language incapable ofexpressing that fundamental category. Nor can you have a significativeword with the lexical component [male human] and the grammaticalcategory [female], as the result would be incomprehensible and hencenon-significative. Such clashes between lexical component(significatum)and mode of signifying apart, there are no restraints on whichcombinations of significate and mode of signifying a particular languagemay choose to lexicalize by assigning them a certain sound value. Thusthe same thing,X,may have a feminine name in languageAand amasculine name in languageB. The difference only means that the‘impositor’, i.e. whoever introduced the word inA,paid attention toone mode of being ofX(‘as something acting’), whereas theB-impositorpaid attention to another mode (‘as something acted on’).Various strategies were used to block simple-minded inferences fromsurface grammar to reality; one would not like to be saddled with‘nothing’ as a genuine thing in its own right just because ‘nothing’ is anoun, but at least in the 1270s and 1280s it must have seemed to mostmen as if such difficulties were surmountable. It was possible to describea grammar that abstracted totally from phonetic realization, yet waseasily correlatable to it, and which promised to yield a list of elementarymodes of cognition all with a sure foundation in the reality subject tocognition.Modistic theories promised easy shifts between the levels of being,understanding and signifying. Some went so far as to hold that themodes of signifying, understanding and being are fundamentallyidentical, just, said Martin, as the thing that is signified and the thingthat is understood are basically identical with the thing out there. Inother words, the mode of being is a mode of understanding whencognized by an intellect, and a mode of signifying when related to alinguistic sign.Others, notably Boethius of Dacia, strongly opposed thisidentification, which threatened to leave the intellect as a mere mirrorof extramental reality with the result that there could not be differentsciences based on the same modes of being of things; thus logicalrelationships(habitudines locales)and grammatical modes of signifyingwould be strictly identical when derived from the same modes of being.Moreover the way would be open to facile deductions from expressionsand thoughts to extramental reality.One weakness of all variants of modistic theory was that it wasdifficult to combine it with a theory of reference, for whatever the‘things’(res)of modistic theory were, they certainly were not singularextramental entities. On the other hand, no one wanted to be afullfledged Platonist. There was a tendency to answer all questionsabout the relation between words and reality by referring to the set ofsignificate and modes of signifying encoded in each lexical item whenit was ‘imposed’. Modistic semantics possessed few tools to deal withthe contribution of linguistic context to the meaning of a term, andnone at all to explain how extralinguistic context contributes to theway an expression is understood. Nor was it possible to offer a plausiblemodistic account of figurative expressions, metaphors, and the like.Desperate attempts were made to explain how ‘man’ can change itsmeaning from ‘living rational body’ into ‘lifeless irrational body’ onbeing joined by the adjective ‘dead’. ‘Man’ was declared an ‘analogical’term, and as such equipped on imposition not only with significationand modes of signifying but also with a rule to the effect that in isolationit signifies its primary significate (living human being), but its secondarysignificate (cadaver) when combined with the adjective ‘dead’.Radulphus Brito in the 1290s gave up many of the makeshiftsolutions proposed by the generation before him, but then he introducedinstead a factor that simply does not belong in a modistic theory: theintelligent listener’s ability to correct badly transmitted informationand understand ‘dead body’ when the message strictly speaking says‘dead living body’.Another, and ultimately related, difficulty was that it was not obviouswhy one should resist the temptation to describe all sorts of distinctionsin terms of modes of signifying, thus endangering the position ofgrammar as a separate science. In works from the late thirteenth centurythere is an uneasy relationship between the properly grammatical modesof signifying (such as the substantive’smodus per se stantis) and socalledmodes of category (modi praedicamentorum,such as themodussubstantiaeof ‘whatever’).Finally, the old trick of introducing non-things called modes to makedistinctions without splitting one entity into several, always leaves theunpleasant question, ‘What is the thing without the modes?’ Perhapsthe best answer is ‘Nothing’, for the ‘common nature’ hiding underthe modes has no job in isolation. Its job is to glue together a numberof items: thing-cum-mode-A, thing-cum-mode-B, etc.Traditionally the common nature was identified with the essence ofa thing which, according to Avicenna, is nothing except self-identical:horsehood is horsehood, blackness is blackness (well, you may add afew trivial analytical statements, like ‘blackness is a sort of colour’, butthat’s all you can say about it). A common nature neither exists nordoes not exist, it is neither universal nor particular. It can be thusmodified, but in itself is beyond those oppositions.There was in Avicenna and in the Latin tradition an ambiguity. Onone hand the essence or common nature was thought to be prior tosuch determinations, on the other hand it was given positivedeterminations: it does not exist, but it has essential being; it is notconcrete, but it is abstract.The identification of the common nature with what was felt to bethe least determinately modified alternative was a major source oftheoretical inconsistency. Boethius may have sensed the problem, forhe discusses whether it is possible to signify a thing under no mode.Since he believes we can think of it thus, he must—and does—holdthat we can signify it thus, i.e. that it would be possible to institute aword for pain, for example, that would belong to no part of speech.However, he does not enter into a closer investigation of how such aword could be significative. The root of the trouble with the commonnature seems not to have been localized till Radulphus Brito did so.Brito may have been born about 1270. He was regent master of artsin the 1290s and possibly also in the first decade of the next century,while preparing for his degree in theology (obtained 1311/12). He mayhave died in the 1320s. The bulk of his extantoeuvreis non-theological,consisting of questions on Aristotle, Manlius Boethius and Priscianplus some sophismata.Brito’s work may be seen as a clever attempt to mend and save atheoretical framework in crisis, though in his day the crisis of modismwould not be obvious. Sometime around 1300 a new handbook waswritten by Thomas of Erfurt; calledNovi modi significandiit was todominate in German schools, while the oldModi significandiby Martincontinued to be used in Italy. Philosophy began to drop the modesonly about 1315, and in grammar they lived till much later.Some of the problems besetting modistic theories had been realizedas early as the 1270s. Thus it had been shown that explaining a lexicalunity in terms of its modes of signifying had the awkward result thatan equivocal noun, saycanis=‘dog, dog-fish, dog-star’, could notactually be one noun but would have to be as many nouns as it hadmeanings. An attempt was made to save the situation through adistinction: each of the things signified would possess its own passivemode of signifying (i.e. mode of being signified) as a noun, but to thethree passive modes of signifying would correspond only one activemode on the vocal level.Caniswould be one noun. This, on the otherhand, threatened the basic modistic idea of isomorphy between thelevels of being, understanding, and signifying. Radulphus thereforeproposed that the distinction between active and passive modes is merelynotional. It is, after all, a question of a relation of signification betweenword and thing. If you look at the relation from one end it is anaccidental property of the word, if from the other, then of the thing. Itis called active or passive according to which end it is viewed from.The lengths to which Brito had to go to save the fundamental ideas ofmodism are signs of a theory in trouble.The greatest of the modists, Boethius, did not have to worry aboutany ‘crisis for modism’. But he found other worries when BishopTempier in 1277 lashed out against him and Siger because he thoughtthey had said objectionable things about the human soul, creation,and the ultimate aim of human life.There always was a hot debate about the nature of the human soul,but it was unusually hot in the 1260–70s. It centred on four questions,namely:(1) On the common presupposition that the intellect (=intellective soul)has two components, an active one(intellectus agens)which,inter alia,forms universal concepts on the basis of the particular pieces ofinformation provided by the senses, and a passive one (intellectuspossibilisorpotentialisormaterialis) which is the initially blank waxtablet on which the active one leaves its imprints in the form of conceptsand knowledge acquired. On this presupposition, is the agent intellecta genuinely different thing from the ‘possible’ one, or are theyfundamentally identical?There was an old tradition for treating the two as genuinely differentand considering the agent intellect to be an extra-human separatesubstance. Roger Bacon and many others had identified the agentintellect with God, others had held that this ‘Giver of Forms’ was acreated intelligence, closer to God than men are but not identical withthe First. On either view the agent intellect would be the same for allmen; the common source of our intellectual insights would explain thepossibility of communication. The individuality of our passive intellectswould explain why we do not share all thoughts with one another.However, the radical separation of the agent intellect from thepossible one had become rather old-fashioned in the 1260s and 1270s;the main combatants of the time agreed that the two intellects are notas many substances.(2) Is the intellect an extra-human separate substance? This was assumedto be Averroes’ opinion (though earlier in the century he had beentaken to represent the opposite view). Siger of Brabant seems to havegradually changed his mind on this question, but initially, at least, hethought Averroes was right.This position allows the vegetative and sensitive souls to die withoutthis affecting the intellect. Like the old assumption of a separate agentintellect it also accounts for men’s ability to share knowledge, but ithas a weakness that the old theory has not: however much such an‘Averroistic’ intellect is supposed to exercise its activity in corporealmen it is hard to see how it can be individualized so that my intellect isdifferent from yours. Siger accepted the consequence that there is justone shared intellect for all men, but tried to save some private thoughtfor the individual by making the operation of the intellect in a particularhuman depend on representations(intentiones imaginatae)with anorigin in sensation and formed without the help of the intellect. Whenexplaining how the individual ‘plugs into’(continuatur)the supraindividualintellect Siger relies heavily on Averroes, but is no less obscurethan his master.Contemporaries were alert to the ‘Averroistic’ theory’s inability toexplain how men can share an intellect without sharing all thoughts.However, the gravest objection against such ‘monopsychism’ (a modernterm) was that it could leave no individual rational soul to carryresponsibility for a deceased person’s acts. Nor was it easy to see howan immaterial intellect could fail to be eternal; but it was Christiandoctrine that God creates new souls every day and that they are inprinciple perishable (God could annihilate a soul, if he so wished).(3) If each living man has his own intellect, this may be assumed to bethe substantial form that makes him a member of the human speciesrather than of the asinine one. But is the intellect fundamentally identicalwith the sub-rational ‘parts’ of the soul? Or is a man constituted by acompound of hierarchically ordered substantial forms (corporeality,vegetative, sensitive and intellectual soul), corresponding to the definition‘man is a rational animal’=‘man is a rational, sensitive, vegetative body’?Such was the traditional view about 1270. It could be used to explainhow human semen develops into an irrational embryo and thence into agenuine human by successive acquisition of higher forms, and it mightseem to allow the highest form to survive bodily death.However, it may be doubted if the notion of a plurality of substantialforms is at all consistent; a substantial form is supposed to make itsthing into the kind of thing it is; several such forms would seem todissolve it into several things, as was often pointed out by medievalcritics. Thomas Aquinas was the leading proponent of the thesis thatone substance can have one substantial form only: a nobler form enablesits owner to do anything a lower form would, and so no independent‘vegetative soul’ is needed to explain the fact that intelligent beingsmetabolize. A main problem with this theory is that the embryo cannotacquire rationality without shedding its previous substantial form andthus becoming a new thing; nor can the dead Christ’s body have beenidentical with that which existed before he expired on the cross or thatwhich existed after the resurrection.The form-question was intensively debated both among theologiansand among artists. Boethius of Denmark was for the unity of form.John of Denmark—a contemporary about whose life nothing isknown—believed in a plurality; in the short run, at least, he was onthe winning side, for Stephen Tempier had the same belief and so hadRobert Kilwardby, who in 1277 made the University of Oxfordcondemn the unity thesis.(4) How can the corporeal man’s form survive bodily death? Aristotlehad indicated that the intellect should not be treated as an ordinarymaterial form; for a material form to be there, is for some matter to beorganized in some particular way. The intellect, he felt, was of a differenttype; matter is no essential ingredient of thought.If Aristotle could sit on the fence, so can we, many medievals thought.Thus Aquinas came to argue that the intellect is a self-subsistent form,substance-like in its capability of being on its own, but like a materialform in that it is an incomplete entity if deprived of its matter. Adisembodied Thoman intellect has the capacity for metabolizing, itjust does not have the requisite tools for so doing. Siger of Brabantscoffed at this notion and Boethius did not like it either. He agreed thata man has just one substantial form, namely his soul, which, of course,is rational. It is a material form and can only in a very weak sense becalled a substance. It must perish if it ceases to inform its body. If theintellect survives somehow—and Boethius does leave this possibilityopen—it does not do so as a disembodied Thoman form craving for abody; a separate intellect is neither a soul nor a form at all, it is asubstance. One would like to ask Boethius which sort of identity sucha substance has with the living man’s form, and whether separateintellects can have individuality. It is a fair guess that he would answer‘No’ to the second question, but I have no idea how he would tacklethe first one.The discussions about the soul ended in an impasse. The soul wasrequired to do too many jobs. It was required to be a form that vivifiesa body, yet to be a substance capable of surviving the body; to beindividualized, yet to be totally immaterialquaintellect; to bestowidentity over time, yet be able to acquire or lose essential properties; tohave an intellective ingredient which is immaterial and not naturallygenerable, yet with a beginning in time and capacity for beingannihilated as well as a capacity for lasting forever.There are clear signs that many artists felt that all these requirementscould not be simultaneously satisfied. Stephen Tempier forbade themto obtain consistency by dropping one or more of the requirements.Although his ruling was legally binding only in Paris, it effectivelyprovided the framework within which philosophers could move forthe next two and a half centuries, and it became a standard procedureto describe first the philosophically tenable theories, namely (1) thewhole soul is a material form and perishes with bodily life (ascribed toAlexander of Aphrodisias); (2) the intellect is as a whole an eternal andsupra-individual substance (ascribed to Averroes). Then, after indicatingwhich alternative he favours, the author will add, ‘But according totruth and the catholic faith neither of these theories is acceptable, but…’,without seriously trying to provide reasons for the ‘true’ theory.Incidentally, such tactics had already been used by Siger and othersbefore 1277 and were denounced by Tempier, but to no avail.The late ancient philosophical way to salvation was an ascent from themiserable world of matter towards ultimate being or even to thetranscendent One. This ascent was effected via the theoretical study ofever more exalted objects: from the earthly you pass to the heavenly,etc. This way of thinking with its strict hierarchy of beings gained newimpetus in the thirteenth century. Avicenna’s theory of emanation fromThe First played a major role and the anonymousBook about Causes(based on Proclus’Elements of Theology) helped cement the notion ofa hierarchically structured universe in which each species of thing wasultimately conditioned by its relative proximity to The First (Cause),no two species being equidistant from The First. Averroes’ and Greekauthors’ panegyrics of the blessings of the theoretical life lent supportto the belief that an intellectual ascent up the ladder of being waspossible, and when Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethicsbecame commonlyknown after 1250 everybody could see in Book X that ultimatehappiness for man consists in theoretical insight.Such intellectualism appealed to an age which had reasons forepistemological optimism in view of the rapid growth of knowledge,as all the disciplines treated by Aristotle plus some more were comingto the artists’ attention. It was, of course, agreed on that no man canknow all particular things, but both Siger of Brabant and others heldthat a human intellect may in principle achieve exhaustive knowledgeof all genuine objects of knowledge. This would be impossible if theproper objects of knowledge were infinitely many, or if there wereinfinitely many avenues to knowledge, or if knowledge of some objectcould be more or less clear on a scale going on to infinity. But none ofthese cases obtain, they held. There is a limited number of properobjects, the natural species; there is a limited number of avenues toknowledge: demonstration and definition; demonstration does not goonad infinitumand definition provides an insight which is not justoptimal in the sense that we cannot manage better, but in the sensethat it exhausts what there is to be known about the object.The climate was there for claiming that immaterial beings (‘separatesubstances’), and even The First, are not outside the reach of thehuman intellect. Proud assertions to this effect almost became acommonplace in introductions to Aristotelian commentaries;mastering the theoretical sciences is what makes a man a man in thefullest sense, says one artist, echoing Averroes. Simon of Favershaminvokes the support of Proclus for the claim that all things strive toassimilate themselves to the things that are one step higher up theontological ladder, and that it is therefore natural for man to desireknowledge, which is the means through which we may assimilateourselves to the separate substances. Radulphus Brito also repeatedlysays that philosophizing can make us godlike, and gives the thoughta special twist by also stressing Seneca’s Stoic description of the effectsof philosophy: it makes a man free. Such exaltations of theintellectual’s life hardly ever contain any reference to the standarddoctrine of two types of highest good, one obtainable in this life,another obtainable only afterwards. Few appear to have beenshocked.There is no sign either that any authority was shocked by Boethius’disparaging remark that ‘laymen…are only quasi-human(deminutihomines)since they do not have the human perfection bestowed bytheoretical sciences’. But Stephen Tempier did not like Boethius forsaying that ‘when a man is occupied with this [the best and most perfectof the operations of the intellective power] he is in the best state possiblefor a man. And the people [who get into that state] are the philosophers,for they spend their life in the study of wisdom.’ The formulation isprovocative because it seems to allude to the theological notion of a‘state of perfection’ attaching to the taking of religious vows. Moreover,Boethius’ views on perfection enter into a fairly coherent set of viewsabout human knowledge, and he also declares thatthere can be no question which is debatable with reasons andwhich nevertheless the philosopher ought not debate anddetermine how it is with truth in the matter as far as it [i.e.the truth] can be grasped by human reason. This is sobecause all reasons by means of which the debate is carriedout are derived from reality, or else they would be a figmentof the mind. Now, the philosopher teaches the natures of allthings, for as philosophy teaches being, so the parts ofphilosophy teach the parts of being… Therefore it is thephilosopher’s job to determine every question that isdebatable with reasons, for every question which is debatablewith reasons falls in some part of being, and the philosopherinvestigates every being, the natural, the mathematical andthe divine alike.Boethius’ philosopher is the perfect man, he studies and gains anunderstanding of all sections of reality and in particular the most nobleof all, the First Cause; his is human happiness in this life. On oneoccasion Boethius says that such earthly perfection also brings itspossessor closer to happiness in the next life. Only the repeated phrase‘debatable with reasons’ suggests there may be questions about whichit is no use to reason.Up to the early 1270s there had been some intense debates aboutthe compatibility of certain Aristotelian doctrines and Christianity, andwhether un-Christian doctrines could be refuted without usingarguments from faith. By the early 1270s it must have been clear tonearly everybody in the arts faculty that Aristotle did not think theworld as a whole or any of its biological species has once begun to be.It was further clear that his sempiternalism is logically coherent,anditwas clear that creationism is so too. This had not always been obvious;Siger of Brabant seems to have realized only gradually that the mainargument against creationism relies on an unwarranted subsumptionof the un-Aristotelian concept of creation under the Aristotelian notionof change(mutatio);considered as a species of change, creation is aninconsistent concept, since change presupposes the existence beforethe change of that which was changed.But does not Aristotelian science require the sempiternity of theworld? If scientific axioms are necessary, and necessity means beingalways true, a biological axiom like ‘every man is an animal’ wouldseem to require sempiternal existence of men to act as verifiers. Astandard question in our period was ‘Is the proposition “every man isby necessity an animal” true if no man exists?’ Some answered ‘Yes’and held it was enough if some intelligent being still had a concept ofman and animal; some used the Avicennian idea that existence is anaccident of essences to hold that even with no men around the essenceof man could be, though could not exist, and could act as verifier.Siger thought the question involved a pragmatic inconsistency, for thecondition that there exists no man can never be fulfilled, he held. In anAristotelian universe any species is always represented by existingmembers, and so there are always individuals to verify the proposition.Boethius answered ‘No’. He accepted the permissibility of thehypothesis that there might at some time be no men, and firmly heldthat with no existents around there would be no essences, and thatanalyticity is no guarantee of truth; with no men in existence even‘man is man’ would be false. He held a simple correspondence theoryof truth; an affirmative proposition is true if and only if such things asits subject and predicate signify are actually combined in the way theproposition indicates; a negative proposition is true if and only if suchthings are not combined. This means that all negative propositionsabout non-existents are true and all affirmative propositions aboutnon-existents are false.As ‘every man is an animal’ would be false in the case posited, so‘every man is by necessity an animal’ woulda fortioribe so. But evenwhen men exist the modal proposition is false, for there can be nonecessary, i.e. unchangeable, truths about changeable and corruptiblebeings.Apparently, then, God and the separate substances (intelligences,angels) are the only objects about which there can be scientificknowledge. But Boethius holds that natural science is possible, forscience only requires a weaker form of necessity, namely that the causalrelationships stated in its propositions obtain without failpresupposingthat such things as the propositions are about exist. Whenever there isa man there is in him a cause why ‘animal’ should inhere in him.Boethius does not go so far as to call categorical scientific propositionscovert conditionals (‘man is an animal’=‘if there is a man, he is ananimal’)—that was left for the next century—but he comes close to sodoing.Natural science takes the existence of the physical world with itspopulation of natural species for granted. And it has to do so, Boethiusthought, for every science must presuppose the existence of its subjectand the truth of its axioms. Aristotelian natural science is a scienceabout the material world and thus cannot incorporate a theory ofhow things may come to be otherwise than through matter acquiringa form.Boethius stresses that each science is an autonomous system ofprimitive terms, axioms and derived theorems. There is, he admits,more to be said about the structure of reality than natural science cansay, and in fact there are causes stronger than those proper to thesublunary sphere and thus capable of eliminating the work of naturalcauses. Hence in a particular case, the expected effect may fail to followits natural causes, or an effect may be due to other causes than naturalones. Reality is organized in a hierarchy of entities of increasing causalpower the closer one gets to the First Cause. When doing natural sciencewe deal with cause-effect relationships that hold invariablyprovidedno superior, non-natural cause intervenes. Similarly within naturalscience there may be sub-sciences, it seems, the causal laws of one ofwhich may occasionally annihilate the effects of those of another.The important thing for Boethius’ scientist is always to rememberwhich science he is doing at the moment; whatever he may know as ametaphysician, for example, he is not permitted to use it in any otherscience unless it is incorporated in the principles of that science. Andmen have access to information which simply cannot be incorporatedinto the principles of natural science, because it would turn it into aninconsistent set of propositions. This is the case with some informationwhich only faith provides, such as that the world started its existence adefinite time ago and there was a first couple of humans. Such revealedinformation the Christian has to accept; but when he is doing biologyhe has to stick to the principle that every human being has two parents,and, Boethius expressly says, he has to deny the allegation that someonewas the first man.Boethius’ terminology suggests that to him a scientist at work waslike someone participating in one of the formalized ‘games’ ofdisputation practised at the university. Doing science, then, is partakingin an activity governed by rules about what you have to concede ordeny, these being the ‘principles’ of the science in case. In a dialecticaldisputation it is a rule that only generally accepted propositions betaken as premisses, and Boethius explicitly says that a disputant commitsa mistake and ‘lies’ if he uses a premiss which is not generally acceptable,although it may as a matter of fact be true.In other words, saying that a universal theorempis true in scienceAdoes not amount to a claim thatpis true in the fundamental sense ofcorresponding with particularized reality. It only means that it followsfrom the rules (axioms) of that science and will apply to particularcases if no causality the description of which belongs in another scienceintervenes. Scientific truth is truth relative to some assumptions, nottruthsimpliciter.The superior cause could impede the applicability ofpby failing toprovide entities of the sortpdescribes or by making some of themhave other causal relationships than described byp.It could not, ofcourse, make all instantiations ofpfalse, for thenpwould be a theoremof a pseudo-science whose axioms could not be based or tested onobservation.But wouldn’t it be possible to create a super-science that would takeall causes into account? Couldn’t metaphysics provide an adequatedescription of all matter-less causes, including the First Cause? No,Boethius holds, metaphysical reasoning can lead to some knowledgeof The First, but given the assumption of a Free Divine Will, there is noway to give a full account of causation. It can be rationally inferredthat the world is created, but not that it is not co-eternal with its creator.The First Cause endowed its creation with a causal structure that wecan partly understand; but part of a correct understanding is therealization that at the head of the causal chain stands an inscrutablecause.Thomas Aquinas would allow no genuine conflicts between scientificpropositions and articles of faith; apparent conflicts arise from flawsin the scientific argumentation; in principle a unified system ofknowledge must be possible. Scripture is an answer book which cantell us if a rational theory needs revision. Thomist man may have ahard job to spot the flaw in the theory, but he is not troubled by thespectre of an inconsistent world.Siger of Brabant rather took the attitude that there are irresolvableinconsistencies between the data of revelation and correctly derivedscientific theorems. To Sigerian man the clash between science andrevelation is catastrophic, because he has to sacrifice one of the two; ifhe does not want to become a heretic, he must decide that the results ofrational enquiry are wrong though he cannot see how they could be so.To Boethian man it comes as no surprise that historical facts do notalways exemplify the causal mechanisms described in scientificpropositions. It is exactly what scientific metaphysics should make usexpect: it leads to the assumption of a first cause, but cannot possiblytell exactly how this cause wields its power. Boethian man bows toScripture without abandoning any scientific theorems.Boethius toiled to find a philosophically tenable way out of theapparent contradiction between Christian dogma and philosophy. Hisdeference to faith was probably sincere. Siger’s is more suspect; histrue belief may have been that philosophy was right but that Christianitycould be shown to conform with philosophy if properlydemythologized. In hisQuestions on the Metaphysicshe followsAverroes in holding that man-made religions(leges)containmythological elements, falsehoods designed to scare the plebs and makethem behave. As an example the Pythagorean doctrine is mentionedthat a good man’s soul will migrate to that of a good body after death,while a bad man’s will enter a beast’s body. It is easy to see a parallel toChristian doctrines about purgatory, heaven and hell, and, in fact, Sigeronce tried to show that fire could not affect a disembodied soul. StephenTempier did not forget to condemn that view, just as he rememberedone that Siger did not openly profess, but very nearly did so, namelythat there are mythological falsehoods inallreligions, including theChristian one.Sometimes the reader feels that Siger is mocking would-be censorsor other philosophical opponents. Investigating whether there must bejust one first principle and cause, he refutes all serious arguments forthe necessity of this and then presents various bad arguments for it asif they were conclusive. When discussing whether any natural desirecould be in vain, he introduces the class of those desires which aredirected to aims that cannot possibly be achieved, like immortality.Isn’t that mocking the idea espoused by, among others, Thomas, thatthere must be an eternal life since men have a desire for it and nonatural desire can be in vain?The debate about philosophy versus faith did not stop in 1277, butfor a long time it was rather low-key. Philosophers avoided anyBoethian attitudes that were provocative, while generally followingthe trail he had blazed, considering creation and other unpredictablemanifestations of divine power as irrelevant to the construction ofscientific theories.Important as the collision between philosophy and religion was, itshould be stressed that there is no sign that the driving force behindthe philosophers was a wish to do away with traditional Christiandoctrine. Their primary occupation was with a rational enquiry intoall aspects of reality, including the divine. They just happened to arriveat conclusions that did not harmonize well with standard beliefs.The ‘invention’ for which Radulphus Brito was best known toposterity is a good example of theologically neutral everyday workfrom the arts faculty. Radulphus invented a fourfold division of‘intentions’ to account for the genesis and ontological status ofuniversals.There was a well-entrenched distinction between primary intentionssuch as ‘horse’ and secondary ones such as ‘species’, which presupposethe primary ones. Some would say that ‘species’ etc. are concepts ofconcepts, but Brito wished to tie them more securely to extramentalreality. He then divided both primary and secondary intentions intoabstract and concrete ones.The abstract primary intention is a formal concept like ‘humanity’.It is based on the modes of being or manifestations(apparentia)ofsome essence (or ‘nature’); reasoning, for example, is a manifestationof human nature. An abstract primary intention is a mental entity, athought(cognitio)whose object is man, but it does not include itsobject.The concrete primary intention is the object of the abstract one, butit is not a purely extramental thing. It is the thing (man, for instance)quathought of by means of the formal concept (humanity).The concrete primary intention has one foot in the mental and onein the extramental world. Brito also describes it as an aggregate of thething out there and the thought by which we grasp it. This ontologicalduplicity was often criticized in later times, but Brito’s theory was atleast a brave attempt to secure the lifeline between concepts and theirobjects without moving the objects into the mind. True, he wouldneed a mechanism by which an essence can function as quiddity, i.e.basis of understanding, via its manifest modes of being, but such amechanism was provided by fairly standard theory of sensation andabstraction.Apart from the primary intentions Brito operates with a set of twosecondary ones; once again the modes of being form the basis ofconcept-formation, but this time we are not dealing with modes properto some nature but common ones, as follows.The abstract secondary intention, universality for instance, is aconcept derived from the common feature (mode of being) of beingcapable of occurring in several individuals or types; this feature is sharedby man and donkey, for example, both of which can occur in severalindividuals, and also by animal which can occur in several species.Our intellect can grasp this, and it can do so without comparison: itcan construct a Porphyrian tree on the basis of sensory acquaintancewith a single individual, recognizing, for instance, that sensing (whichcharacterizes animals) is a trait apt to be shared by more beings than isreasoning (which is reserved for humans).The corresponding concrete secondary intention (in our example:‘universal’) is the thing (man, for example)quaconceived of by meansof the formal concept of universality.Concrete secondary intentions like universals and syllogisms are thesort of things logic is about—that was commonly agreed. Some fortyor fifty years before Brito, Robert Kilwardby had said that secondaryintentions are thus called because they arise from inspection andcomparison of things already grasped by the mind. Brito wants togenerate secondary intentions through direct inspection of the entitiesthat gave rise to the first intentions. Why will he not allow the mind tooperate on the products of its primary inspection, and why will heallow no comparison? Because this might leave the mind too muchpower over which secondary intentions there are to be and make themmuch too mental—thoughts of thoughts.If secondary intentions were mere mental constructs, the whole oflogic would be so. And it could quickly be shown that grammar, physics,in fact any science would be in the same situation, for all theoreticalentities—modes of signifying, causes, effects, whatever—must have agenesis similar to that of the secondary intentions of logic.If one endeavour pervaded the work done by Parisian artists in thesecond half of the thirteenth century it was the endeavour to secure anextramental anchoring of scientific knowledge by deriving its categoriesfrom features of reality. That was what the modistic triad of ways ofbeing, understanding, and signifying was all about, and that was Brito’scentral preoccupation. He tried relentlessly to mend the cracks thathad appeared in the edifice of theories built with and around themodistic triad. There was no easy way to fix the cracks, the complexityof Brito’s own theories showed that; the time was ripe for a radicallynew approach such as the one that John Buridan was to introduce inParis about the 1330s.BIBLIOGRAPHYOriginal Language Editions12.1 Ebbesen, S., Izbicki, T., Longeway, J., del Punta, F. and Stump, E. (eds)Simonof Faversham, Quaestiones super Libro Elenchorum(Studies and Texts 60),Toronto, PIMS, 1984.12.2 Fauser, W.F.Der Kommentar des Radulphus Brito zu Buch III De anima(BGPTM n.f. 12), Münster, Aschendorff, 1974.12.3CIMAGL(journal with a large number of relevant text editions).12.4 Enders, H.W. and Pinborg, J. (eds)Radulphus Brito, Quaestiones superPriscianum minorem(Grammatica Speculativa 3.1–2), Stuttgart, BadCannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 1980.12.5 Roos, H., Otto, A., Pinborg, J. and Ebbesen, S. (eds)Corpus PhilosophorumDanicorum Medii Aevi,Copenhagen, Gad/DSL, 1955–. (Contains severalrelevant works, including those of Boethius, John and Martin of Denmark.)12.6 Pinborg, J. ‘Radulphus Brito’s sophism on second intentions’,Vivarium13(1975): 119–52.12.7 Van Steenbergen, F. (ed.)Philosophes Médiévaux,Louvain, Institut Supérieurde Philosophie de l’Université de Louvain, 1948–. 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La semiotica dei Modisti(Nuovi studi storici 26), Rome, Istitutostorico italiano per il medio evo, 1994.12.14 Pinborg, J.Die Entwicklung der Sprachtheorie im Mittelalter(BGPTMA 42.2),Münster and Copenhagen, Aschendorff and Frost-Hansen, 1967.12.15 ——Logik und Semantik im Mittelalter,Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt,Frommann-Holzboog, 1972.12.16 ——Medieval Semantics: Selected Studies on Medieval Logic and Grammar,London, Variorum, 1984.12.17 Rosier, I.La Grammaire spéculative des Modistes,Lille, Presses Universitairesde Lille, 1983.12.18 Van Steenbergen, F.Maître Siger de Brabant(Philosophes Médiévaux 21),Paris and Louvain, Publications Universitaires and Vander-Oyez, 1977.