Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 3Ol One of Professor Fakhry's major contributions is that he includes ideas stemming from Islamic pietism rather than confining his presentation to the technical HellenisticIslamic philosophical and scholastic traditions. Nevertheless, one senses that technical philosophical ethics still provides the criterion against which Professor Fakhry measures other areas of Islamic ethics (Part Three fills almost half the book). It would be interesting to take another area, scripturalism or mysticism, for example, as a defining criterion and see what picture of Islamic ethics would emerge. Studies that engage in a greater degree of explicit comparative analysis would also be fruitful. Professor Fakhry explains how theories differ, but he says very little about why they differ. Successive generations of Muslim thinkers were obviously somehow dissatisfied with and tried to improve on the efforts of their predecessors. More detailed investigation of why they did so and analytic comparison and evaluation of the strengths and weakness of their specific theories would be welcome. Professor Fakhry explicitly and justifiably (one cannot do everything) eschews examination of historical context. Future researchers, however, should reinstate this context. Ideas can and should be perceived both in abstraction and in the historical context of individuals and societies that use them. Finally, Professor Fakhry's book deals only with thinkers up to the sixteenth century . Islamic thought did not cease in the year 15oo, however, and studies that deal with the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods of Islamic thought are obviously necessary. In each of these and other courses of inquiry, researchers will be greatly aided by Professor Fakhry's book. This volume is a noteworthy achievement that will be the obvious first recourse for students in this field for many years to come. PETER HEATH Washington University M. J. F. M, Hoenen. Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Vol. 5o. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993. Pp. xii + 987. Cloth, $77.a4. In a landmark essay published nearly two decades ago, John Murdoch remarked that in the fourteenth century, "some of the very best--indeed, the best--philosophy was done by theologians and in their theological works."' The present volume illustrates the accuracy of this assessment. In it, the author traces the evolution from 195o-14oo of theological debates at Oxford and Paris concerning the divine attributes, God's knowledge of creatures, divine ideas, and God's knowledge of future contingents. Though only a third of the book is actually about Marsilius of Inghen (d. x396), a Paristrained philosopher and theologian who later went on to help found the University of ~John Murdoch, "From Socialinto Intellectual Factors:An Aspectof the Unitary Character of Late MedievalLearning," in The CulturalContextofMedievalLearning,ed. John Murdoch and Edith Sylla,Boston Studies in the Philosophyof Science,Vol. 96 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975),274. 302 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:2 APRIL 199 4 Heidelberg, his views are presented as a kind of capstone for the period. Specifically, the author intends to place Marsilius's account of divine knowledge "in the historical and systematical context of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries" (l), by demonstrating its "various lines of development" from Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham (3o). One of the things this book brings out very nicely is the influence English theology and logic came to have upon Parisian thought after 134o. This movement, whose importance has only recently begun to be appreciated, saw the entire theological agenda transformed by problems and methods imported from philosophy. On the one side, the author shows how Parisian commentators on the Sentences reacted to Ockham, Adam Wodeham, and other English theologians by focusing their efforts on the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free will, to the detriment of other, more "traditional," problems. On the other, he illustrates the changes in methodology that occurred once theologians became acquainted with the analytical techniques of English logic. This is revealed in Marsilius's own use of the compound/divided sense distinction in propositions (corresponding roughly to our de d/cto/de re readings of modal operators), which is applied in his Sentences commentary in the new way, to identify syntactically distinct propositions, rather than in the...