Mente divina e contingenza in Pietro Aureolo

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of divine knowledge of individuals and future contingents in Peter Auriol’s Scriptum in I Sententiarum. It begins by reviewing the Divine’s attributes of Perfection and Immutability in Auriol’s theory of God’s ways of knowing. It then tries to explain the epistemic notion of the so-called modes of (modi cognoscendi) in the light of a mental theory of paronymy (denominative). In this theory lies the solution to the problem of relating abstracted and temporal knowledge of God and to that of temporal cognition of individuals by the human intellect and imagination (phantasia). It is argued that cognition is, rather, a feature of the phantasia’s way of designating and placing things known in a mental space (res cognitae) and within a temporal succession of events. The analysis leads to establishing the existence of an analogous relationship between, on one side, non-discursive, abstract and indeterminate divine foreknowledge and, on the other, human cognitive abilities to understand, in a true or false way, propositions that refer to future contingents and events that occur in a determined time and space.