Peter Auriol Research Articles

What’s the Matter with Angels? Angelic Materiality and the Possible Intellect in Some Early Fourteenth-century Franciscans

While the question of whether angels are composed of matter and form, may seem, to the modern reader, somewhat odd, medieval thinkers saw it as a genuine puzzle. On the one hand, angels are purely intellectual creatures, which, according to some (perhaps most famously Aquinas), seems to imply that they are altogether devoid of materiality. On the other hand, however, angels are capable of change, which, according to the broadly-speaking Aristotelian framework, seems to imply an underlying material substrate. This paper traces the views of some early fourteenth-century Franciscan texts, according to which angels are material: the Disputed questions by Gonsalvus of Spain, a De Anima question-commentary sometimes attributed to the early Duns Scotus, and the Sentences commentaries of Peter of Trabibus and of Peter Auriol. As will be seen, the question of angelic materiality gave ample opportunity for these thinkers to elaborate on what they meant exactly by ‘matter’, and to hint at the ways in which this metaphysical principle is related to other important metaphysical notions in the neighborhood, such as change, corporeity, or potency.

Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) on Intentional Identity: A Revisionism of Peter Auriol’s Thought

This article is aimed to study Antonio Perez’s criticism against Peter Auriol’s theory of intentional identity. Pérez’s theory of cognition is clearly in debt with Auriol’s theory of intentionality. The Spanish Jesuit often uses the same linguistic expressions of Auriol (such as apparent being) and agrees with him about the intentional identity between the cogniser –conciding in act with the act of cognition–, and the cognised object, which is the same thing existing outside the intellect. Both Pérez and Auriol ground their theory of intentional identity on Aristotle’s De anima, but the Spanish Jesuit highlights an inconsistency in Auriol’s doctrine which contradicts what succinctly stated by Aristotle about the identity between the cogniser and the cognised during the act of cognition. By reviewing in-depth Auriol’s theory of intentional identity, conceived as a kind of identity of indistinction, Pérez points out an inconsistency between Auriol’s description of the act of cognition and his conception of the identity of indistinction. Furthermore, Pérez seems to consider insufficient Auriol’s identity of indistinction used to describe the intentional identity characterising the act of cognition. Consequently, he offers a new definition of the identity of indistinction in order to present the apparent being as an undetermined reality which can be determined by any intelligible content. This Perezian review of Auriol’s theory of the apparent being, on the one hand, can be considered as a case of the early modern scholastic revisionism applied to a medieval thinker and, on the other hand, finds a wider application in Pérez’s metaphysics and philosophical anthropology.

Intuitive cognition in the Latin medieval tradition

ABSTRACT This paper explores some key features of Medieval accounts of intuition, focusing on Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274), on the one hand, and on Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308), Peter Auriol (c. 1280–1322), and William Ockham (c. 1287-1347), on the other hand. The first section is devoted to the type of intuitive cognition which is accepted by all these authors, namely, the immediate and direct grasp of some present material object by the senses. It is from this basic sensory intuition – they agree – that human cognition starts. The second section turns to intuitive intellectual cognition and to the much greater disagreements which divide these philosophers. Notwithstanding these important differences, the paper’s conclusion draws attention to the similarities in the conception of intuition which cut across the otherwise significantly different accounts of the authors discussed. I end with an invitation to recover their older way of thinking of intuition.

Can Accidents Alone Generate Substantial Forms? Twists and Turns of a Late Medieval Debate

This paper investigates the late medieval controversy over the causal role of substantial forms in the generation of new substances. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, when there were two basic positions in this debate (section II), an original position was defended by Walter Burley and Peter Auriol, according to which accidents alone—by their own power—can generate substantial forms (section III). The paper presents how this view was received by the next generation of philosophers, i.e., around 1350 (section IV), and how, even though some of the initial theoretical motivations for this view were quickly abandoned, the view was still defended by several philosophers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (section V). It is finally shown that this theory, still discussed by Suárez and early modern scholastics, and despite being generally rejected, contributed in its own way to the evolution of hylomorphism in the late Middle Ages and, to a certain extent, its gradual decline (section VI).

A Case of Aristotelian-Scholastic Nonrealism about Sensible Qualities: Peter Auriol on Sounds and Odors

This paper presents the defense by the medieval philosopher Peter Auriol of the thesis that sounds and odors have no real, mind-independent being, but exist only as mental correlates of acts of hearing and smelling. Auriol does not see this as an idiosyncratic position, as he claims to be following not only Aristotle, but also Averroes on the issue. Since it is often thought that nonrealism about sensible qualities was “inconceivable” for medieval authors and was made possible only by the early modern scientific revolution led by Galileo, it is crucial to bring Auriol’s position to the fore. Auriol’s view and its alleged roots in Arabic philosophy invite us to reassess our standard narrative in the history of philosophy and science.

Is Matter the Same as Its Potency? Some Fourteenth-Century Answers

Abstract Is prime matter the same as its potency (potentia), its readiness to take on the entire gamut of corporeal substantial forms? This question, arising from a passage in Averroes, lies at the core of later medieval hylomorphism and was hotly debated. The present article looks at three answers to the question by figures from the first half of the fourteenth century: Gerald Ot who takes a Scotistic approach to the issue, John of Jandun and Peter Auriol taking an Averroan tack, and John Buridan with a nominalistic outlook. The discussion reveals a diversity of positions on the nature of potency and its relation to actuality, and in the case of Buridan an unusual view at the heart of his matter theory: the direct inherence of accidental forms in prime matter.

Conception, Connotation, and Essential Predication: Peter Auriol’s Conceptualism to the Test in II Sententiarum, d. 9, q. 2, art. 1

This paper comprises two parts. The first part is an introduction to Auriol’s moderate conceptualism, as it is presented in his Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, distinction 9, question 2, article 1. The second part is an edition of the text. In the introduction, I focus on Auriol’s use of the noetic tool of connotation. My thesis, in particular, is that connotation is a necessary prerequisite to his moderate conceptualism. To this purpose, the first part of this introduction will be devoted to a brief presentation of Auriol’s conceptualism. In the second part, Auriol’s theory of essential predication will be presented. In the third part, I will present my claim that Auriol’s theory of essential predication can only be made sense of when read against the background of his theory of connotation as applied to intellectual cognition. Finally, I will offer a collation of Auriol’s Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, distinction 9, question 2, article 1, obtained by collating eight manuscripts, which hand down Auriol’s text, that is, Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, ms. Conv. Soppr. B.6.121, Firenze, ms. Conv. Soppr. A. 3.120, Napoli, Biblioteca nazionale, ms. VII.C.3, Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, ms. 161, scaff. ix, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, ms. latin 15867; Pelplin, Biblioteka Seminarium duchownego, ms. 46/85, Vaticano (Citta del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Borgiano 404, Vaticano (Citta del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Vat. lat. 942.

What Is an Action? Peter Auriol vs. Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Causality

What Is an Action? Peter Auriol vs. Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Causality

Le statut ontologique du plaisir

The aim of this paper is to study some aspects of the Medieval Latin reception of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure (Eth. Nic. X). First, I introduce Aristotle’s position, with special attention to the problem of the ontological status of pleasure and the relationship between pleasure and the different genera of causes (viz. formal and final causality), as well as the somehow ambiguous exegesis of Michael of Ephesus. Second, I take into account the interpretation given by Albert the Great in his first commentary on the Ethics. Finally, I present some theological issues raised by Albert’s interpretation, in the discussions about beatific vision. The authors taken in account are James of Viterbo, Radulphus Brito, Peter Auriol and William of Ockham.

«Omnis res, eo quod est, singularis est». Pietro Aureoli sulla composizione metafisica dell'ente singolare

Peter Auriol was one of the most influential authors of the generation after Scotus. He developed an anti-realist ontology (he denied the extra-mental existence of common natures and consequently the necessity of a principle of individuation) and a new epistemology. In his view, the mental world is somehow richer than the extra-mental one, since our mind can abstract general notions (such as humanitas) that are not matched by general objects in reality. The article is aimed to show how, according to Auriol, the individual things existing outside are the grounds on which all our notions (even the general and abstract ones) are based. Accordingly, the first section analyzes the internal composition of the individual things: material suppositum and singular form, which are interrelated as potency and act. The second section deals with Auriol’s theory of knowledge. In particular, it focuses on the relation between our notions, both concrete and abstract, and the metaphysical parts of extra-mental individuals. The general, abstract notions originate from the formal parts (the singular substantial form) of extra-mental individuals, while the concrete notions from the whole individuals.

Das Maßlose Begreifen. Gott als Gegenstand der Theologie bei vier scholastischen Autoren (13./14. Jahrhundert)

AbstractThis article examines four medieval views on the subject of theology. Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol were all confronted with an idea based on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge according to which any scientific discipline is unified by its proper subject. In defining this subject of theology, however, the theologians had to confront one thorny problem: God, whom they considered to be the subject of theology, cannot be grasped by any concept accessible to the human mind. In their respective discussions, two distinct strategies to solving this puzzle emerged. Aquinas and Giles, on the one hand, argued for a concept proportionate to human cognition. This concept or ratio functioned as a placeholder for the quidditative concept of God. Scotus and Auriol, on the other hand, elaborated on a concept which they believed grasped God’s quiddity, albeit in a somewhat approximative way. Their theories, therefore, figure as attempts to find a concept, that is, the concept of being, that in itself was as boundless as to grasp God’s immensity.

Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes by Han Thomas Adriaenssen

Reviewed by: Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes by Han Thomas Adriaenssen Walter Ott Han Thomas Adriaenssen. Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. pp. viii + 279 Cloth, $64.99 hc. It is by now a truism that early modern debates are heavily indebted to their medieval antecedents. Just in what way, and to what degree, is controversial. Han Thomas Adriaenssen's excellent book follows its topics from the medieval controversy over species (according a chapter each to Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, Peter Auriol, and Ockham) through the early moderns (Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and the English anti-Cartesian, John Sergeant). A final part gives an overview of the debates. Throughout, Adriaenssen's work achieves a high level of clarity and insight. The chief subject of controversy is indirect realism, the view that an extra-mental object x "is cognized in virtue of the apprehension of a representational device y that is different from x" (21). Adriaenssen divides the problems it faces into two categories: criteriological and representational (222). The representational problems fall into two groups. First, we have the question whether an intermediary can direct the mind beyond itself. Critics argue that indirect realism slides toward idealism, with mental objects serving as the termini of acts of perception. Second, we find philosophers arguing that representations cannot resemble their objects to the degree necessary to serve as representations at all. The criteriological problem is the worry, familiar from Berkeley to Putnam and Rorty, that indirect realism interposes a "veil of ideas" between subject and world and provides a launching pad for skepticism. But as Adriaenssen argues, following Steven Nadler and others, direct realism is no better off. As long as it allows for the possibility of illusion and error (which any theory must), direct realism is just as vulnerable to skeptical doubts as its counterpart. Each time one of his philosophers claims epistemic advantages for his form of direct realism, Adriaenssen is quick to point out its limitations (see, e.g. 53, 176, and 243). Adriaenssen argues that the medievals' epistemic optimism explains their comparative neglect of the criteriological problem; only with the rejection of the largely common-sensical ontology of the Aristotelians in the modern period do we see skeptical issues take a leading role. Adriaenssen begins with Aquinas, arguing that, although at times equivocal, Aquinas's texts point to indirect realism, with species serving as the apprehended device. Nevertheless, these species are formally (if not materially) identical with those instantiated in the external world. In Adriaenssen's telling, Aquinas's critics treat species instead as "devices that, like imprints in sand, need to be interpreted by the subject" (107). This means their arguments often miss their target. Moreover, most of these figures (with the possible exception of Ockham) substitute their own apparatus to deal with non-veridical perception, imagination, and memory (witness Olivi's "memory species" (77), or Auriol's "apparent being" [98]). One is left with the impression that many of these departures from Aquinas are terminological and that there is not much substantive difference between the direct and indirect realisms of the medieval period; what differences there are appear to be primarily theological (79). The second part of the book takes up the debate among the moderns. And here we reach the book's only weak point: Adriaenssen's attempt to resurrect the direct realist reading of Descartes. I was never clear exactly what Descartes's alleged direct realism was meant to consist in, nor why the interpretive maneuvers Adriaenssen shows are logically possible should be thought at all plausible. Adriaenssen rightly points out that Cartesian ideas are not a veil but a window; ideas "disclose the world" (54). But that is, of course, just what the indirect realist wants to say. Adriaenssen is at his best in reconstructing arguments and showing how they persist, or are transformed, across figures and periods. To give just one example: Ockham questions the ability for species to serve as representations with his example of the statue of Hercules. The statue cannot serve as a representation of Hercules for anyone who has not already, by some other means, acquired...

Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages by Zachary A. Matus

Reviewed by: Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages by Zachary A. Matus Sybil M. Jack Matus, Zachary A., Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017; hardback; pp. 216; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$59.95, £50.00; ISBN 9780812249217. Recognition that medieval alchemy was more than just a dream of transmuting metals has resulted in an upsurge of academic interest in the subject in recent years, with new information being discovered and published in multiple-language specialist literature. This, by putting alchemy in a wider intellectual, social, philosophical, technological, religious, and experimental context, has revised ideas about its position in the development of science and philosophy and its role in medieval culture. Zachary Matus, in this work that is a revision of his doctoral [End Page 223] thesis, considers one aspect of the medieval attitude to alchemy—its relationship to the material world—, through the works of three particular Franciscans. Roger Bacon and John of Rupescissa are the focus of many other studies, although his third friar—Vitalis of Furno—has been less frequently considered. The recent historical research on alchemy is divided into conflicting historiographical approaches depending on the background of the historian. Matus belongs to the mainly Catholic group, which sees the Church and theology as the key factor in comprehending the philosophers’ understanding of the topic. He is also concerned to demonstrate how the particular religious morality of the Franciscans ties into their ‘scientific’ ideas. He seeks to show how these friars’ thinking about the nature and role of God in the world explains their overall incorporation of ideas about the matter that God created: how it can be manipulated, and its potential for regeneration in a period where they, like many philosophers, were expecting the imminent arrival of the apocalypse. The specificity of Matus’s approach can be determined by comparing his views on the interplay of philosophy, theology, and alchemy in Bacon and Rupescissa with those of Athanasios Rinotas. The friars were concerned with medicine, hoping to produce a panacea for all ills. They drew on different approaches for their analysis, mainly from the Islamic treatises they had available. Matus, however, is not concerned with the practical details of their work and the medicinal products they created but with the way in which the quintessence, the elixir of life, in philosophical reasoning related to the essential goodness of creation. In many ways, and although there are some vital insights, for the nonspecialist this is a frustrating book. Indeed, Matus has chosen not to provide a chronological introductory setting, as a context against which his interpretation of these three individuals’ approaches can be estimated. Instead, each idea is housed in its own partial account, which is chronologically confusing and often repetitive. It is not assisted by his preference for technical language and unfamiliar, newly defined terms such as ‘subjunctive science’, which is a method of looking at rituals. In providing a setting for his chosen friars, Matus has to refer to their relationship with other Franciscans, in particular to Joachim of Fiore, Peter John Olivi, and Nicholas of Lyra, although Alexander Minorita and Peter Auriol are apparently ignored. Given the complexities of the internal divisions of the Order, this does not always clarify the issue at hand since there is no overall account of the intellectual development of Franciscan thought. Matus offers no explanation of what he chooses to include or omit, so that his omission of some aspects of thought normally seen as fundamental to the ideas of one of his subjects seems surprising. In discussing ritual as a formative part of Bacon’s philosophy, for instance, Matus does not discuss the function of music in Bacon’s thought, although this has usually been seen as critical to his concept of the Mass and the liturgy, and their function as part of human penitence. [End Page 224] This is a work for specialists which forms part of a substantial recent output of publications on abstruse aspects of the subject. It cannot be recommended for general reading, particularly...

Peter Auriol on the Metaphysics of Efficient Causation

Abstract According to Peter Auriol, ofm (d. 1322), efficient causation is a composite being (ens per accidens) consisting of items belonging to three distinct categories: a change (or, more generally, a produced form), an action, and a passion. The change (or produced form) functions as the subject bearing action and passion. After presenting Aristotle’s account of action and passion, which constitutes the background to Auriol’s theory of causation, this paper considers Auriol’s interpretation of Aristotle’s account in contrast to an alternative interpretation defended by Hervaeus Natalis and William of Ockham. Finally, it shows how Auriol, on the basis of his interpretation of Aristotle, develops his own account of efficient causation as a composite being.

The Notitia Intuitiva and Notitia Abstractiva of the External Senses in Second Scholasticism: Suárez, Poinsot and Francisco de Oviedo

This paper analyzes the theories of three representatives of Second Scholasticism, namely Francisco Suárez, sj, John Poinsot, op, and Francisco de Oviedo, sj, on the issue of the intuitive and abstractive cognition of the external senses. Based on a comparison of their theories, linked to the historical starting point of the debate in the first decades of the fourteenth century (Peter Auriol, John Duns Scotus, Francis of Meyronnes, William of Ockham and Walter Chatton), the paper argues that the doctrinal and argumentative matrix of these authors’ texts is significantly ‘present’ in the Second Scholastics as well. 1) As far as naturally produced sensation is concerned, all these authors, including Poinsot, follow the Scotistic justification of the natural infallibility of the external senses; 2) regarding the possibility of supernaturally caused objectless perception, Poinsot’s position can be labelled, surprisingly, Scotistic; 3) Suárez’s theory, although partly similar to the doctrine of the late Ockham, is an idiosyncratic stance; 4) Oviedo’s conception, even more distant from that of Ockham, can be characterized as ‘Auriolian’ and ‘Chattonian’.

Ontology and Logic: The Case of Scholastic and Late-Scholastic Theory of Relations

This paper investigates the reason (or reasons) why, in the tradition of Western philosophy, a logic of relations was developed only in the second half of the nineteenth century. To this end, it moves along two different but interconnected paths: on the one hand, it attempts to reconstruct the main views concerning the ontology of relations during the middle ages; on the other, it focuses on the treatment of so-called oblique terms (termini obliqui) in the logical works of some preeminent authors belonging to the scholastic and late-scholastic tradition. From the ontological point of view, realists and nominalist both denied that polyadic expressions of the language (spoken, written or mental) signify polyadic properties in the world extra. Some authors, such as Peter Auriol, claimed that polyadic expressions signify something merely mental (as contrasted with ‘real’), thus recognizing, even though in a limited ontological domain, the existence of full-fledged relations, that is, of ‘things’ simultaneously ‘inhering’ in a plurality of subjects. These authors too, however, were unable to produce a logic of relations analogous to that developed in the nineteenth century by De Morgan. If we look at the treatment of so-called ‘oblique inferences’ in the scholastic and late-scholastic tradition, we find that the validity of the inferences in which oblique terms (relations) are involved, does not depend on specific properties of relations but on some general principles on which the syllogistic theory is based. This is true even of the logical work of Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606–1682), a Spanish Catholic scholastic, who wrote extensively on oblique inferences and who is credited with having introduced a kind of ‘proto-logic’ of relations. Thus, whereas medieval thinkers, from the ontological point of view, attributed to relations understood as polyadic properties a very poor role in the ‘fabric of the world’, from the strictly logical point of view, they made no attempt to develop a systematic analysis of the main properties governing inferences composed by relational sentences. In the case of relations, thinkers belonging to the scholastic and late scholastic tradition did not develop something analogous to the theory of consequences: in other words, they did not possess a logic of relations.

Peter Auriol on Free Choice and Free Judgment

Some medieval authors defend free choice by arguing that, even though human choices are indeed caused by the practical judgment about what is best to do here and now, one is nevertheless able to freely influence that practical judgment’s formation. This paper examines Peter Auriol’s account of free choice, which is a quite elaborate version of this approach and which brings its theoretical problems into focus. I will argue in favor of Auriol’s basic theory, but I will also propose an emendation to his theory in order to respond to some problems he leaves unresolved.

Truth and Certainty in Peter Auriol

This paper investigates the nature of truth and certainty according to the French Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol (1280-1322). In the first section, I attempt to harmonize a few different sections of Auriol’s Scriptum on book i of the Sentences: the accounts of truth as conformity in question 2 of the Prologue and question 10 of distinction 2, and the account of truth as quiddity in question 3 of distinction 19. In the second section, I explore the notion of certainty in question 1 of the Prologue. Here, Auriol’s taxonomy of propositions is explained, and the difference between scientific certainty and the certitude of faith is outlined. God works in the background in the context of both truth and certainty, and the fact that our cognitive processes are generally trustworthy makes Auriol’s epistemological position into a species of reliabilism.

Mente divina e contingenza in Pietro Aureolo

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.

John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol on the Ontological Status of Relations

In this article, the problem of the ontological status of real relations is first examined as it was generally formulated by the scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that is, within a solid and defining Aristotelian substance/attribute framework. I then examine John Duns Scotus’s strong realism on relations, giving his key arguments for his teaching, as also his arguments against the rival non-realist, conceptualist view. This latter view was championed most strongly and extensively by Peter Auriol, and I examine both his arguments for his novel conceptualist theory of relations, along with his counter-arguments to Scotus’s criticisms. I conclude by showing how some early fourteenth- century thinkers were beginning to reject key traditional assumptions of the scholastic debate.