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2 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SCHOOLS
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Aristotle's work, constituting the
ancient world's greatest encyclopaedia, has exerted an immense influence over
the succeeding centuries. It is proposed in the context of the present section
to trace the course of the several streams of thought which had their source in
Aristotle. |
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The school founded by Aristotle in the Lyceum
in Athens in 335 BC long survived his death. Its members became known as the Peripatetics.
Aristotle's immediate disciples, Theophrastus of Eresus and Eudemus of Rhodes,
devoted themselves to maintaining and to developing his teaching without
altering either its content or its spirit; but after them the school fell
rapidly into a decline as far as philosophy was concerned, and thenceforward
until the middle or later decades of the 1st century BC no one taught as
Aristotle had done. Then at last Andronicus of Rhodes
made it his business to bring to light the long-sequestered treatises of
Aristotle, to classify them according to their subject matter, and to publish
them. His edition started a revival of interest in Aristotelian philosophy, and
numerous commentaries on these texts were produced in the last centuries of the
Hellenistic Age. |
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Andronicus himself interpreted a series
of Aristotle's treatises, especially those of the Organon, and his example was
followed. One of the most important commentators was Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who taught in Athens from AD 198 to AD 211 and was known
as the Second Aristotle because of the clarity of his exposition. Commentaries
by him on part of the Organon, on Metaphysics
I-IV, on the Meteorologica, and on
the treatise On Sensation and the Sensible
are extant; and in an original work of his, On
the Soul, he gives a materialist interpretation of Aristotle's psychology of
man, at the same time identifying the "active intellect" with God. |
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After Alexander, the Peripatetic school
was absorbed by Neoplatonism, under which Platonic doctrines were resuscitated
amid strong currents of Aristotelian influence. The last Greeks of the ancient
world to write commentaries on Aristotle were all Neoplatonists, as follows: |
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Porphyry
(234-c. 305), a pupil of Plotinus,
wrote a very important Isagoge,
or introduction, to the Categories, as
well as a commentary on that treatise. |
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Themistius
(c. 320-390), who taught in
Constantinople, left commentaries on several works of Aristotle's, notably on
the treatise On the Soul. |
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Ammonius Hermiae,
who after studying under Proclus in Athens was head of the school of Alexandria
toward the end of the 5th century, lectured on several of Aristotle's treatises:
transcripts are extant of notes taken down at his lectures on the Categories,
on the treatise On Interpretation, on
the Prior Analytics, and also on
Porphyry's Isagoge. |
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Simplicius,
who was a pupil of Ammonius in Alexandria, wrote ample commentaries on the Categories,
on the Physics, and on the treatise On
the Heavens. |
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Finally John
Philoponus, another pupil of Ammonius but a member of the Christian
community in Alexandria, wrote against certain doctrinal errors that he detected
in Aristotle: fragments of his treatise Against Aristotle are extant; so is most of his book De
aeternitate mundi, which attacks the thesis of the eternity of the world as
elaborated by the pagan Neoplatonist Proclus; and a series of Aristotelian
commentaries is ascribed to him, some of which consist, however, of notes taken
down at Ammonius' lectures and simply filled out by John Philoponus. |
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To sum up, Aristotle's philosophy can
hardly be said to have been maintained in its entirety among the Greeks of the
ancient world after the first generation of his disciples. Andronicus launched a
revival in the 1st century BC, but from the 4th century AD onward
Aristotelianism was submerged in Neoplatonism, which accommodated to its own
peculiar view of the universe whatever Aristotelian doctrine it cared to take
up. |
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Aristotelianism was to have a highly
distinguished history in the world of Islam; but the Arabic philosophers,
who owed their first acquaintance with it to the Neoplatonists' commentaries,
never presented it in its purity or disengaged it from the Neoplatonic context
in which it had been transmitted to them. This is readily understandable:
whereas Aristotle's own metaphysic was too imperfect to satisfy Islamic
monotheism, the Neoplatonist metaphysic of Plotinus supplied an invaluable
complement, to which Muslim thinkers always, to a greater or lesser extent, had
recourse. The tendency to combine Aristotelianism proper with Neoplatonism was
moreover strengthened by the diffusion of a work known as the Theology
of Aristotle: this, originally compiled in Syriac by a Christian monk
availing himself of extracts from the Enneads
of Plotinus, was translated into Arabic c.
840 and was commonly ascribed to Aristotle himself, with the result that the
latter came to be credited with metaphysical doctrines characteristic of
Plotinus. Much later, probably in the 12th century, another pseudo-Aristotelian
work--of Arabic origin this time--was circulated in Spain, namely the work well
known from its prompt translation into Latin as the Liber de causis ("On
Causes"): a commentary on propositions selected from Proclus' Elements
of Theology, it was monotheistic in inspiration and served further to
confirm the habit of attributing to Aristotle creationist doctrines wholly
foreign to him. (see also Islamic
philosophy) |
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The combination of Aristotelianism with
Neoplatonism is already realized in the writings of the first Arabic
philosopher, al- Kindi, who flourished in
9th-century Baghdad. A century later, al- Farabi (died
c. 950), who likewise taught mainly in
Baghdad, similarly linked Aristotle's doctrines with the metaphysic of the last
Alexandrian Neoplatonists, stressing however the independence of philosophy from
religion. |
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The first major thinker of Islam
was the Iranian philosopher and physician Avicenna
(properly Ibn Sina, 980-1037). Besides his personal writings, many
of which are lost, he produced a great encyclopaedia of philosophy, Kitab
ash-shifa` ("Book of Healing"), which consists largely of a
paraphrase of Aristotelian writings but is capped with an emanationist
metaphysic derived from the so-called Theology
of Aristotle and from other Neoplatonic sources. |
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Aristotle's influence in the Arabic
world reached its zenith with the work of Averroës
(properly Ibn Rushd, 1126-98), of Córdoba in Andalusia, who professed a
boundless admiration for the Greek master and regarded him as sent by God to
teach men true philosophy. Often in reaction against Avicenna, Averroës
meant to restore Aristotelianism in its integrity and composed three series of
commentaries on Aristotle's treatises: (1) the "little commentaries,"
short compendiums or epitomes providing a brief analysis of the treatises; (2)
the "middle commentaries," explaining the texts literally; and (3) the
"great commentaries," a more advanced and more profound literal
exegesis. While he is faithful, on the whole, to Aristotle's thought, Averroës
nonetheless, perhaps unwittingly, gives it an undue extension by endowing the
Aristotelian "prime mover" with the characteristics of the Plotinian
and Islamic transcendent God, the universal First Cause. Furthermore, he
often enough supplements Aristotle by advancing his own interpretation of
obscure passages or by developing doctrines that Aristotle scarcely considered
at all. The typical instance is where he propounds his own "
monopsychism": forcing Aristotle to follow his metaphysical principles to
their logical conclusion, Averroës maintains that the two human intellects,
namely the passive or receptive intellect and the active
intellect, being immaterial, cannot be multiplied in individuals; that
consequently both are single substances, entering by their own operation into
relation with human individuals, as the passive
intellect thinks by means of the ideas that the active intellect
abstracts from images in the human brain; and that the human individual is only
a superior kind of animal, altogether mortal. If Averroës won few followers
among the Arabs, his interpretation of Aristotle and, particularly, his
monopsychism were taken up with great interest by Jewish and even more so by
Christian thinkers. |
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Jewish speculative thought in the Muslim
world was long dominated by Neoplatonism, but all Jewish philosophers from the
time of Isaac Israeli (9th-10th century) to the end of the Middle Ages were
subject, more or less, to the Aristotelian influence. A firmer orientation
toward Aristotelianism is discernible in the famous Guide of the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides
(1135-1204), a contemporary of Averroës and, like him, a native of Córdoba.
But here again there is no occasion to speak of pure Aristotelianism: Maimonides
adopts a large measure of Neoplatonic theology (emanation and the via
negativa or "negative way" to knowledge of God), adopts also much
of the Plotinian system of ethics, and furthermore differs from Aristotle on the
question of the eternity of the world. Jewish philosophy in Spain, in France,
and in Italy was influenced by Maimonides throughout the remainder of the Middle
Ages and even longer. (see also "Guide
of the Perplexed, The," ) |
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A Jewish opposition to Aristotelianism
had already manifested itself most distinctly in the first decades of the 12th
century, when Judah ha-Levi denounced the current philosophy. After Maimonides
this anti-Aristotelian reaction persisted, notably among the Kabbalists. |
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During the patristic period, some
Aristotelian doctrines infiltrated Eastern Christianity through Neoplatonic
channels: they can be shown to have affected St. Gregory of Nyssa and Nemesius
of Emesa in the 4th century; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John Philoponus
(whose work as a commentator has already been mentioned) in the 6th; and St.
John of Damascus in the 8th. In the 9th century the Byzantine patriarch Photius
and his disciple Arethas took an interest in Aristotelian logic, and from the
11th century onward there was a major revival of Aristotelian studies in
Constantinople, exemplified particularly by Michael of Ephesus (late 11th
century) and by Eustratius of Nicaea (c. 1050-1120),
who both wrote commentaries on parts of the Organon
and on the Nicomachean Ethics. Further
commentaries appeared in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the 15th century
Cardinal Bessarion argued for the ultimate concordance of Aristotelianism with
Platonism. |
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Aristotle's influence during the
patristic period was even more restricted in Western Christianity than in
Eastern: St. Augustine of Hippo, for instance, was acquainted with nothing
Aristotelian except the Categories. |
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The fountainhead of Aristotelianism in
the Christian West was the Roman philosopher Boethius
(c. 480-524). With the intention of
demonstrating the profound harmony between Plato and Aristotle, he set himself
to translate the works of those two great masters into Latin. He is known to
have succeeded at least in translating all the treatises of the Organon
except the Analytica posteriora, together with Prophyry's Isagoge; and he also produced commentaries on the Categories,
on the treatise On Interpretation, and
on the Isagoge. Though his achievement
fell short of his project, his work was of capital importance for the
transmission of Greek philosophical thought and of Aristotelian logic to Latin
Christendom: the Categories, the
treatise On Interpretation, and the Isagoge
constituted the principal textbooks of logic for the early Middle Ages and so
came, later, to be known as the Ars
vetus or Logica vetus ("old
technique" or "old logic") when the other parts of the Organon,
known as the Ars
nova or Logica nova, had
been rediscovered and published in Latin versions. Boethius therefore well
deserves to be remembered as "the Teacher of the West," particularly
because of the essential role played by Aristotelian logic in the intellectual
formation of the new peoples who arrived in western Europe as barbarian invaders
and remained there to develop a civilization replacing that of the Roman Empire.
With his works on logic Boethius paved the way for the elaboration of the
scholastic method, and in his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge he posed the problem of
universals, which was to figure so prominently
in the controversies of a later age. |
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Charlemagne's educational policy
confirmed the status of Aristotelian logic in the scholastic curriculum during
the literary and scientific revival of the Carolingian
Renaissance: "dialectic," or logic, was in fact the only
philosophic discipline to be admitted among the seven "liberal arts"
that represented secular, or "profane," learning in the program of
teaching authorized by Charlemagne's capitulary of the year 778. Subsequently,
between the 9th and the 12th centuries, more and more work on logic was
undertaken; Aristotle's influence grew continuously as the nature of knowledge
was discussed; and with Peter Abelard
(1079-1142) the moderate realism of the Aristotelians was vindicated against the
extreme realism of the Platonists. With Abelard likewise, and especially in his
book Sic et non,
the scholastic method was perfected. The scholastic method, a product of
Aristotelian logic, contributed much not only to the development of speculative
theology but also to the progress of the deductive sciences and to the
grammatical organization of the European languages. |
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The triumph of Aristotelianism in the
epistemology and in the logic of the 12th-century scholastics prepared the
ground for the Aristotelian domination of the universities in the 13th century.
The middle of the 12th century had seen the start of a massive penetration of
Aristotle's works into western Europe, in Latin translations first from Arabic
versions, then from Greek texts. Most of Aristotle's treatises were known by the
beginning of the 13th century, but it was only gradually, in the course of the
next 100 years, that the consequences of this flood of pagan philosophy became
clear (Aristotle's works were accompanied by those of other pre-Christian
Greeks, as well as by the commentaries of the Muslims). In the universities the
"faculties" of arts (successors of the earlier schools of the liberal
arts) enlarged their curricula from the start of the 13th century, and
Aristotelianism became more and more firmly implanted, both at Paris and at
Oxford, despite opposition from some of the ecclesiastical authorities. The
Paris faculty of arts decided on March 19, 1255, that its students should attend
lectures on every known treatise of Aristotle's, and indeed by that time every
faculty of arts was turning into a faculty of philosophy teaching
Aristotelianism. Already, moreover, in the 1220s, Aristotelianism had broken
into the faculties of theology; and thenceforward until the end of the Middle
Ages (or even later in some establishments) it was to remain fundamental to the
structure of scholasticism, both philosophically and theologically. Of all the
Aristotelian revivals, the most dynamic was that which the 13th century
witnessed in the Christian West. |
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The revived Aristotelianism of the
Christian Middle Ages was no purer, however, than that of the Arabs or that of
the Jews had been: various complementary or corrective elements were always
present, whether religious or philosophical. Philosophically the main influence
was derived, once again, from Neoplatonism. |
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Up to 1250, Latin Aristotelianism
remained very eclectic and, for the most part, Avicennian, so that Aristotle's
doctrine, albeit preponderant, was compounded with secondary importations.
Avicenna's paraphrases were found useful for the interpretation of difficult
texts; the Jewish Neoplatonist Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) was highly esteemed;
Proclus was also available; and in the 1230s the work of Averroës became
known to Christian Europe. For theology, Aristotelianism was combined with
traditional doctrines (derived mainly from St. Augustine and from the
Pseudo-Dionysius) or with the teaching of the 12th-century masters. |
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After 1250, the Aristotelian influence
becomes perceptibly stronger, though at the same time it branches out in various
directions. The several schools of thought can be distinguished from one another
by the differences in their attitude toward Aristotle, but all remain basically
Aristotelian (the Augustinian school in the strict sense of the name did not
come into existence until c. 1270, as
a reaction against heterodox Aristotelianism and Thomism). Thus the
Aristotelianism of St. Bonaventura is of an Augustinian tendency; that of St.
Albertus Magnus is more Neoplatonic, being strongly affected by Proclus, by the
Pseudo-Dionysius, and by Avicenna; that of St. Thomas Aquinas is so profoundly
recogitated as to be converted into a distinct system, Thomism; and that of
Siger of Brabant is heterodox, as it accepts doctrines incompatible with
Christianity. |
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The great doctrinal controversies of the
13th century were largely disputes between champions of the various sorts of
Aristotelianism. Thus, when St. Thomas Aquinas
held his ground against the majority of the Paris theologians (c.
1270), the conflict was not so much between Aristotelianism and Augustinianism
as between the eclectic Aristotelianism for which Alexander of Hales and William
of Auvergne had stood and the more consistent and vigorous Aristotelianism which
Thomas was maintaining. Similarly the conflict between Thomas and Siger can be
regarded as one between the Christian and the heterodox or pagan varieties of
Aristotelianism. |
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From the end of the 13th century
Aristotelianism in philosophy was upheld chiefly by the logicians,
metaphysicians, psychologists, and ethical theorists teaching in the faculties
of arts and was usually "moderate"; i.e., orthodox with respect to Christian doctrines. Thomism became
the established system of the Dominicans and even won adherents outside their
order. The Neo-Augustinianism that had come into being in the reaction against
the nascent Thomism found its definitive expression in Scotism, which in fact
was marked by a reversion to Aristotelianism in certain fields and remained in
many respects dependent on Aristotle. Finally an Averroist Aristotelianism was
launched in Paris by John of Jandun in the first quarter of the 14th century and
was taken up in Italy by Taddeo da Parma and by Angelo d'Arezzo. This Latin
Averroism was still flourishing in Italy in the 16th century, though it was
opposed alike by the Platonism of the humanist Renaissance and by the rival
Aristotelianism of the Alexandrists, who revived the doctrines of Alexander of
Aphrodisias to interpret Aristotle's psychology. |
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The 14th century, however, saw also new
currents of thought running counter to the influence of Aristotelianism. On the
one hand, the Aristotelian system of physics was challenged both at Paris and at
Oxford; on the other hand, moderate realism was battered successively by
Nominalism, by phenomenalism, by Skepticism, and by agnosticism, which, to a
greater or lesser degree, questioned the validity of knowledge and, in
particular, the possibility of metaphysics. Failing to disengage itself soon
enough from the obsolete physics, Scholasticism was brought farther and farther
into disrepute by the successes of the new. One of the reproaches that the men
of the humanist Renaissance cast most frequently at the Scholastics was that of
being excessively obsequious to Aristotle. Nevertheless, Aristotelianism was
still the standard doctrine of some universities down to the end of the 18th
century and even longer. In the 19th and 20th centuries there was a great
revival of Aristotelian studies, most notably in England (Oxford), in Germany,
in France, and in Belgium (Louvain). For some scholars, the interest was chiefly
historical: they saw Aristotle as one of the most brilliant products of Greek
culture and, indeed, of human culture in general. For the promoters of the
Thomist revival, on the other hand, the interest in Aristotelianism was
essentially doctrinal, St. Thomas Aquinas having taken him as the main source of
his philosophy. |
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Very different judgments have been
passed on Aristotelianism in the course of history, and its value as a
philosophy or as an instrument of theological speculation is still debated.
Defenders of religion, whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, have often
denounced Aristotelianism as tending toward empiricism, as defective in its
metaphysic, and as limited to earthly life in its ethic, and they have accused
its followers of being naturalists or rationalists. Platonists and idealists
also object to Aristotelianism on the grounds that it is empiricist, that it
gives a central place to natural philosophy in its scheme of things, and that it
makes excessive use of discursive reason and of abstract concepts. Finally, many
modern thinkers regard the majority of Aristotle's philosophical categories as
out of date. On the contrary side, Thomists maintain that many of the notions
advanced by Aristotle, not only in metaphysics but also in physics, in
psychology, and in ethics, are still really valuable, quite independently of the
evident fact that his "science" is now altogether obsolete. |
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(F.V.Sn.) |
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