Peter Auriol and scholarly inertia

The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (1982) has only two substantial discussions of Peter Auriol (a page each on future contingents and on intentions), though there is also a footnote on his “esse apparens”.  This fairly reflects the state of modern scholarship on Auriol when the CHLMP's chapters were written in the late 1970s.

But since the late 1980s, thanks to Katherine Tachau, historians of 14th-century philosophy have become increasingly aware that Auriol was just as important as his much more famous confrère William of Ockham, and the literature has proliferated accordingly.  Readers might therefore expect him to feature rather more prominently in the brand-new Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (2010).

Alas, no.  Not only is he now mentioned on fewer occasions, but the most substantial discussion of him in any of the chapters reads in its entirety as follows:  “A fellow Franciscan, Peter Auriol, insisted that the infused virtue of charity plays a more important role in salvation.  In his view, infused charity is not simply the consequence of divine acceptance but necessary by its very nature in order to make the soul acceptable to God” (ch. 36, “Virtue theory”, by Bonnie Kent).

In Robert Pasnau's introductory chapter, Martin Stone confidently predicts that “Within twenty years Henry, Giles, Durand, and Auriol will become a part of the canon” (p. 5).  In your own time, folks.

Frustra fit per plura (V)

Here's yet another of Auriol's statements of ontological parsimony:

‘Constat enim quod omnis natura refugit superfluitatem – quanto magis divina?  Pluralitas quidem ponenda non est absque causa, quia frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora.’  (S I.45.iii)

Fractio Aeris: A Cracking Tale of Two Villains

In his excellent book Theology at Paris (2000), Chris Schabel reports Michael of Massa (fl. c.1330–37) as having suggested that God could form a declarative sentence about the future "by the cracking of the sky".  This is a rather melodramatic translation; the Latin phrase ‘per aeris fractionem’ need only mean "by the cracking of air".  But the history of this phrase is the history of a more serious mistranslation.

In De anima II.8, Aristotle says that sound is the result of the collision of solid objects with each other and with the air (or other medium), which "happens when the air remains after being struck and is not dispersed; wherefore it makes a sound if it is struck quickly and violently, for the movement of the striker must come sooner than (φθασαι) the dispersal of the air".  He gives an analogy with a heap of sand: you must hit it quickly, or it will just part around your hand.

The first villain of the piece is James of Venice (fl. c.1125–50), who translated the last clause as  "Oportet enim pertingere motum rapientis fracturam aeris"  (for the movement of the violent snatcher must attain the breaking of the air), thus turning what the speed of the blow was meant to avoid into what it was meant to achieve.

Still, two commentaries from the mid-to-late 1240s gave generous glosses:  "pertingere, id est antecedere" (ed. Bazan 1998);  "pertingere, id est excedere, fracturam aeris, id est: oportet quod velocior sit motus percutientis quam possit esse [fracturam aeris] percussi" (ed. Gauthier 1985).  Even better, in 1267 William of Moerbeke corrected ‘pertingere’ to ‘preoccupare’ (anticipate), and Aquinas presented an accurate account in his De anima commentary the following year:  "oportet quod motus percutientis praeveniat divisionem aeris". 

Enter the second villain of the piece: the influential florilegium Parvi flores or Auctoritates Aristotelis (c.1297–98), which paraphrases the De anima passage as saying that sound is caused by the collision of bodies aerem violenter frangentium (violently breaking the air).

In 1316, Auriol discusses Balaam's talking ass as a challenge to his claim that any form impressible on matter can be impressed on it by a natural agent (S I.42.1.iii.3).  He points out that "similem sonum et fractionem aeris potest causare aliquod agens naturale" (a similar sound and breaking of the air can be caused by a natural agent); what is unnatural is just  "motionem ipsius linguae brutalis ex qua sequitur fractio aeris et sonus in aere" (the motion of the beastly tongue itself from which there follows the breaking of the air and the sound in the air).  This passage is surely sufficient to explain the Massa quotation.

My final exhibit is from the introduction to Jean de Meurs’ Musica speculativa secundum Boetium (1323):  "Ad generationem soni tria necessario requiruntur, scilicet percutiens, percussum et medium percutiendi.  Primum frangens aerem celeriter, secundum corpus sonabile naturaliter, tertium aer fractus violenter. … Est igitur sonus fractio aeris ab impulsu percutientis ad percussum."

This is a patchy story, but I think it will hold water.  Anyone wishing to flesh it out should no doubt seek out (as I have not) Wittmann, Vox atque sonus: Studien zur Rezeption der Aristotelischen Schrift "De anima" und ihre Bedeutung für die Musiktheorie, 2 vols (1987).

Kaye on Auriol on the Semantics of Prophecy

Sharon Kaye's article ‘Some Philosophical Reflections on the Coming of the Antichrist’ (2000) makes more depressing reading than its title might suggest. She erroneously ascribes to Auriol the thesis that what a prophet means in uttering a prophecy is contingent on what happens in the future – and the translation on which she bases this interpretation is the worst that I have ever seen in a learned journal.

Propositiones propheticae aliud significant ex institutione et ex natura propositionum, aliud vero dant intelligere ex intentione prophetae. … secundum autem intentionem prophetae, verae sunt, quia dant intelligere quod in divina notitia est quaedam veritas ineffabilis et quaedam determinatio illius materiae de qua formantur. (Auriol, Scriptum I.38.iii, 1166–71)

Roughly: ‘Prophetic statements signify one thing by convention and by the nature of statements, and give <us> to understand another by the intention of the prophet. … according to the intention of the prophet they are true, for they give <us> to understand that in the divine cognition there is a certain ineffable truth and a certain determination of the matter about which they are formed.’

Kaye's translation: ‘In one way, prophetic statements signify by convention and by the nature of the statement, but in another way, they express the intention of the prophet. … according to the intention of the prophet, they are true. For they express what is in the divine cognition, namely, a certain ineffable truth and a certain determination of the matter about which they are formed.’

This doubly misidentifies what is signified by prophetic utterances as (1) the prophet's intention and (2) something (or rather two things, one of which was supposed to be ineffable) in the divine cognition.

What is most striking here is how straightforward the Latin is. I can understand her immediately subsequent mistranslation of ‘quod a Deo praedicitur ut in pluribus evenit’ as ‘what is predicted by God happens in many ways’, because the correct translation (‘usually happens’) requires some knowledge of the subject-matter. But there is no such excuse for the flagrant errors identified above. O tempora!

Auriol on the Nobility of Things

In S I.2.[2/10].iv, discussing ‘whether God's existence is something per se known’ (utrum esse Dei sit aliquid per se notum), Auriol says that God's existence occurs to man naturally via an ‘imperceptible syllogism’ which involves defining God as the highest thing on the scale of nobility.  Here, then, is how Auriol sees the world:

Omnes naturae sunt secundum nobilius et ignobilius ordinata.  Hanc quidem propositionem assumimus ex sensu.  Videmus namque in universo omnia sic disponi, videlicet quod melior est aqua quam terra, aer quam aqua, ignis quam aer, caelum quam ignis; et similiter ferrum quam plumbum, auricalcum quam ferrum, argentum quam auricalcum, aurum quam argentum; et similiter in animalibus et plantis.

‘All natures are ordered according to greater and lesser nobility.  And this proposition we take from the senses.  For we see universally that all things are thus disposed, namely that water is better than earth, air better than water, fire better than air, heaven better than fire; and likewise iron better than lead, brass better than iron, silver better than brass, gold better than silver; and likewise for animals and plants.’

Was this sort of intuitive hierarchy ever questioned?

Loveland on Auriol on Foreknowledge of the Sunrise

Jeff Loveland's article ‘Buffon, the Certainty of Sunrise, and the Probabilistic Reductio ad Absurdum’ (2001) contains a tantalizing reference to Auriol's take on foreknowledge of the sunrise in S I.30:

The authors Robert Holcot … and Peter de Rivo … – the latter perhaps influenced by Petrus Aureolus (Aureolus, 1312–20 [sic], pt. 1, p. 673) – were among those investigating the status of the assertion sol orietur cras – "the sun will rise tomorrow."  (p. 468)

Alas, if you follow this up in the 1596 edition, you'll find no such thing.  What's worse, the faulty reference doesn't look like a mere typo.  Here's something you will find on that page:

Quarta demum propositio est, quod relationi repugnat in communi ex sua ratione, quod sit res in natura existens.  Dicitur enim de ea, quod acquiritur, et oritur in fundamento sine sui mutatione, sola mutatione facta in termino.  Illud ergo non est res, quod acquiritur in subiecto nullo agente ipsum attingente; sed manifestum est, quod albo existente in oriente, si fiat aliud album in occidente, similitudo intelligitur in esse [inesse] albo, quod praeteriit in oriente, absque hoc, quod aliquod agens ipsum attingat, praeterquam intellectus, qui ipsum comparat ad album aliud, quod de novo producitur in occidente.  Non enim dealbans in occidente actionem suam protendit usque in oriens, et [ut] ibi similitudinem imprimit [imprimat], nec coelum, aut aliquid aliud potest impremere eam, nisi solus intellectus.  Ergo poni non potest, quod aliqua talis res fuerit acquista, et per consequens relationi ex sui natura repugnat habere existentiam in natura. (p. 673, col. 2, A–C)
(The variants are from Henninger's transcription of MS Borghese 329 – which wrongly has 'ullo' for 'nullo' – in his Relations, p. 154, n. 13.)

The context is the ontological status of relations, which Auriol takes to be mental constructs.  Here we find him defending his view with a thought experiment: if there is already a white thing in the east, and a white thing appears in the west, then the former acquires a similarity to the latter without any contact between the two.  (You might say that the pre-existing white thing undergoes a 'Cambridge change'.)

Now, someone could conceivably misconstrue this passage as having something to do with the sunrise.  But to do so he would have to read sola and solus as 'the sun' (rather than 'only') and oriens and occidens as 'rising' and 'setting' (rather than 'the east' and 'the west'); the former is indefensible, and the latter would make no sense in the context.

I hope this isn't the explanation – not just for academia's sake, but because I'd love to know what Auriol thinks about the necessity of the sunrise – but its ready availability would be a striking coincidence.

Frustra fit per plura (III)

Here's another of Auriol's statements of ontological parsimony:

‘multitudo ponenda non est nisi ratio evidens necessaria illud probet aliter per pauciora salvari non posse.  Deus enim et natura nihil faciunt frustra’ (S II.14.1.ii)

(Mark Henninger, Relations: Medieval Theories (1989), p. 156 n. 25.)

Refugium Miserorum

I like Auriol's dismissal of the theory that the generation of substantial forms requires the intervention of higher powers:

‘Hoc est refugium miserorum in philosophia, sicut Deus est refugium miserorum in theologia.’ (S IV.1.1.iii)

‘This is the refuge of the wretched in philosophy, just as God is the refuge of the wretched in theology.’

(Anneliese Maier, Zwei Grundprobleme, 3e (1968), p. 182 n. 29.)

Frustra fit per plura (II)

An update to an older post: I have found in Auriol the exact phrase attributed to him by Ueberweg.  It occurs in S I.9.1.i, where he asks quomodo se habet generare seu dicere ad ipsam intellectionem.  As his third and final negative thesis, he argues quod dicere non sit formam specularem et realem producere, quam intellectus aspiciat:

‘non est philosophicum pluraritatem rerum ponere sine causa, frustra enim fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.  Sed nulla necessitas ducit ad ponendum talem rem ...  Ergo si talis forma ponatur, erit absque omni causa et ratione; et per consequens vanum est ponere eam, et superfluum in natura.’
(ed. Friedman 2003; the 1596 edition, p. 319, has 'inducit')

Moreover, I may have found the source of Ueberweg's mistaken citation: Barthélemy Hauréau, De la philosophie scolastique, II (1850).  In chapter 27, ‘Disciples et Adversaires de Duns-Scot’, pp. 404–410, Hauréau discusses Auriol.  He quotes on p. 406 from Auriol's remarks on prime matter in S II.12.1.i and II.12.1.ii, and then he moves on to discuss Auriol's negative thesis about real specular forms – but unfortunately his subsequent footnotes simply say ‘Ibid.’  And there, on p. 408, is the very phrase quoted by Ueberweg.

Frustra fit per plura

Ocham of Beyond Necessity has spotted an occurrence in Auriol's Scriptum (1316) of the principle still known as Ockham's Razor:

‘Praeterea, non debet poni superfluum aut aliqua distinctio sine causa, quia frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.’
(S I.8.21 §33)

Ocham writes: ‘it may be a Franciscan expression, and I think Scotus used it.’  Well, here is an instance from the Franciscan Ramon Llull's Liber reprobationis aliquorum errorum Averrois (1310?):

‘Quod Deus non agat immediate in istis inferioribus, sic probatur: Impossibile est, quod entia nobiliora frustrentur a suis operationibus.  Sed si Deus in istis ageret immediate, intelligentia et caelum frustrarentur in operationibus suis, quae sunt nobiliora entia.  Ergo impossibile est Deum agere in istis.
Quod autem intelligentia et caelum frustrarentur, patet; quia frustra fit per intelligentiam, caelum et etiam per Deum, quod posset fieri per Deum solum.  Si enim frustra fit per plura, quod potest per pauciora fieri et si sic non haberent operationes proprias, et per consequens non haberent naturas proprias; quod est impossibile.’ (d. 2 pars 7)

Llull – who apparently met Scotus in 1297 – rejects this argument on the grounds that celestial motions would not be in vain if God acted immediately on terrestrial things.  So presumably he accepts the principle.  Did Averroes, too, or at least some Averroists?

Truth and Consequence

Auriol has been leading me a merry dance this month. Besides the disjunction business, he says that verum non sequitur nisi ex vero, i.e. truth only follows from truth.

This principle has to be severely qualified before it can even begin to pass muster. The obvious types of counterexample (‘Grass is blue, therefore grass is coloured’, ‘I have hands and a rhinoceros, therefore I have hands’) can be dismissed if he's talking about formal consequences from one categorical proposition to another. But even then the principle falls foul of the mediaeval insistence on the existential import of universal affirmations, which licenses the inference ‘Every man is white, therefore some man is white.’

Has anyone else come across a similar principle elsewhere?

Time and Thought

This is just a collection of references to passages in Auriol about the relationship between time and thought. I'll update it as and when.

Scriptum I.3.14.ii.b (‘Quid sit memoria in Deo et in nobis’), §§45, 47.

Disjunction and Modality

As part of my attempt to explain Auriol's denial, I've been reading Ray Jennings's refreshingly irreverent book The Genealogy of Disjunction (1994). Jennings makes some interesting points about Latin and about the Stoics, but focuses on English 'or' and says little about our period. But he has suggested to me by email that Auriol might think of disjunctions as listing alternative possibilities, so that his denial might be prompted by the modal status of the disjuncts.

This suggestion is promising, because Auriol is adamant that the truth of ‹Antichrist will be› would entail its necessity, and so presumably the impossibility of ‹Antichrist will not be›. And given that the same reasoning should apply to propositions about the present and the past, this might be taken to corroborate my suspicion that Auriol thinks disjunctions are somehow indeterminate.

I'm now keener than ever to seek out any further remarks of Auriol's on disjunction. Watch this space.

Alone Among Contemporaries?

I mentioned before that Robert Caubraith's Quadrupertitum (1510) explicitly sanctions or-introduction. It turns out that so do Ockham's Summa Logicae II.33 (c. 1323) and Buridan's Tractatus de Consequentiis III.1.5 (c. 1335), not to mention Albert of Saxony's subsequent Perutilis Logica (1350s?). The licence is also implicit in William of Sherwood's Introductiones in Logicam I (c. 1245?) and Walter Burley's Tractatus Brevior 280,285 (c. 1320?) and Tractatus Longior II.3.i 548,551 (c. 1326?).

Does this mean that Auriol stands alone among his contemporaries?

Well, Giles of Rome (d. 1316) is thought to have followed Boethius (De Hypotheticis Syllogismis) in treating disjunction as exclusive, in which case he would have denied or-introduction as a rule of inference. But as I said before, the incompatibility of the two disjuncts in our particular case (‹Antichrist will be›, ‹Antichrist will not be›) renders such considerations inoperative. So this is unlikely to be relevant to Auriol's denial.

A Suggestive Passage in Auriol

In Scriptum I.2.9, Auriol denies that the concept of being is univocal, saying instead that it is wholly ‘confused’ (lacking distinction). He reports the opinion of some others (including, apparently, Scotus):

‘quod conceptus entis includit conceptum substantiae et accidentium disiunctive, et sumus certi de aliquo quod est ens, quia vel substantia vel accidens disiunctive; ignoramus tamen quid sit determinate, sicut audito quod canis est in macello, statim sum certus quod est ibi piscis vel latrabilis canis, non sum autem certus determinate de uno vel de alio. Secundum hoc ergo conceditur quod est alius conceptus entis a conceptibus propriis, sicut disiunctum est aliud a determinato.’ (D.1, §116)

‘that the concept of being includes the concept of substance and of accidents disjunctively, and we are sure of something that it is a being, because <we are sure that it is> either a substance or an accident disjunctively; but we do not know which it is determinately – just as, on hearing that there is a dog in the butcher's, I am immediately sure that there is a dogfish or a barking dog there, but I am not sure determinately about one or about the other. Accordingly, therefore, it is conceded that the concept of being is different from proper concepts in the same way that disjunct is different from determinate.’

Now, this is not Auriol's own opinion. He denies the analogy with the lexical ambiguity in ‘canis’, and he argues that such a disjunct concept could not account for ‹God is a being›. But he does not bat an eyelid at the claim (however taken) that disiunctum is different from determinatum.

Disjunction in Mediaeval Logic

20th-century propositional logic allows ‘or-introduction’: the inference from P to (P v Q) for any Q. This rule is also explicitly stated in Robert Caubraith's Quadrupertitum (1510). But Peter Auriol's Scriptum (1316) denies the inference from ‹Antichrist will be› to ‹Antichrist will be or will not be›. The question is, why?

One answer might be that Auriol takes disjunction to be exclusive, so that (P v Q) is false if P and Q are both true. But although this would invalidate or-introduction as a rule of inference, it would not account for the Antichrist example, in which P and Q cannot both be true.

Another answer might be that Auriol takes ‹P or Q› to have an essential indeterminacy that renders it somehow incompatible with P – perhaps echoing Oswald Hanfling’s complaint in Philosophy and Ordinary Language (2000) that or-introduction falls foul of an ignorance condition: ‘Having been apprised of [P], I am no longer in a position to believe, or to know, that [either P or Q].’

My impression is that Auriol does somehow bind together disjunction and indeterminacy. I intend to investigate this connection.