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.

Blackburn's Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

Simon Blackburn's endearingly idiosyncratic Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy first appeared in 1994 and received an expanded second edition in 2005.  I've just bought the 2008 revision, and I'm pleased to report a substantial improvement in the coverage of mediaeval philosophers compared to the first edition: not only is Peter Lombard included, but the number of biographical entries for the 13th and 14th centuries has risen from 14 to 34.  Specifically:

13th century.  The first edition contained 7 entries: Aquinas, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Ramon Lull, and Siger of Brabant.  The second edition adds 11 names to this list: Alexander of Hales, Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, Peter of Spain, Philip the Chancellor, Richard Rufus, William (of) Sherwood, William of Auvergne, William of Auxerre, and William of Moerbeke.

14th century.  The first edition contained 7 entries: John Buridan, Dante, Duns Scotus, Gersonides, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, and John Wyclif.  The second edition adds 9 names to this list: Albert of Saxony, Thomas Bradwardine, Hasdai Crescas, Meister Eckhart, Gregory of Rimini, Richard Kilvington, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Paul of Venice, and Petrarch.

Now, any such selection is bound to disappoint, but the omission of Peter Auriol and Marsilius of Inghen is particularly surprising.  One might also have expected to see an entry for Walter Burley, since he is mentioned in Kilvington's entry.  Stranger still, a new entry on the Oxford Calculators fails to mention William Heytesbury and even Richard Swineshead, the Calculator par excellence.

Those interested in natural philosophy will miss Francis of Marchia and Nicole Oresme, but they will be more galled to read in the new entry on Aristotelianism that ‘the Schoolmen were more interested in defending the truth of Aristotle's dynamical and physical system, which they saw as substantially compatible with Christianity, than in promoting the empirical and scientific method that he championed, with the result that to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Aristotle was regarded as little but an obstacle: the author of fossilized and dogmatic scholastic nonsense.’

Still, I suppose such treatment beats a damnatio memoriae.

Henninger on Fiorentino on Rimini

Francesco Fiorentino's book Gregorio da Rimini: Contingenza, futuro e scienza nel pensiero tardo-medievale (2004) is riddled with errors.  For example, here is n. 16 on p. 9 of the introduction:

‘C. Normore, Peter Aureoli and his contemporaries on future contingents and the excluded middle, "Synthèse", 96 (1993), pp. 83-92.  Nel 1999 C. Normore è ritornato sul tema secondo una prospettiva più ampia; cf. C. Normore, Contingenti futuri, in La logica nel Medioevo, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, a cura di N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, J. Pinborg, Milano 1999.’

An attentive reader working on future contingents will immediately spot three mistakes in this one footnote.  The first two are comparatively insignificant: the title of Normore's article begins with ‘Petrus’ and does not contain the definite article.  The third is more worrying: the CHLMP was published in 1982, so Normore's 1993 article appeared after his CHLMP chapter, but Fiorentino (presumably using a 1999 translation) tells us that in the latter Normore ‘returned to the theme from a wider perspective’.  The worrying thing is that the CHLMP has been the standard handbook of mediaeval philosophy since its appearance over 25 years ago.

Both author and publisher deserve a rap on the knuckles, so I was pleased to discover that Mark Henninger had already reviewed the book in Gregorianum.  Pleased, that is, until I read the review.

Henninger is grateful for ‘certain logical principles he wisely provides in the introduction [actually Chapter 1]: the principle of bivalence, i.e., in whatever statement, either its affirmation or its negation is true; the law of contradictories, i.e., for every affirmative statement there exists its contradictory, and vice versa’.  Unfortunately, both of these are more or less obvious howlers on Fiorentino's part.

If the meaning of ‘bivalence’ in a logical context is not clear enough from the etymology, even a standard dictionary will define it as the existence of only two truth-values, the corresponding principle being that every statement is either true or false.  Worse, Fiorentino goes on (p. 24 n. 23) to cite Łukasiewicz's insistence on distinguishing between the principle of bivalence and the law of excluded middle.  A reader following this up will be astonished, given Fiorentino's formulation, to read on p. 82 of Łukasiewicz, Aristotle's Syllogistic: ‘…the so-called principle of bivalence, which states that every proposition is either true or false, i.e. that it has one and only one of two possible truth-values: truth and falsity.  This principle must not be mixed up with the law of the excluded middle, according to which of two contradictory propositions one must be true.’

As for the law of contradictories, Fiorentino refers only to Aristotle, De int. 9, 18a28-31.  The reader following this up will find a discussion of the truth or falsity of an affirmation and its corresponding negation – not the mere assertion that there is a corresponding negation.  And I think the reader checking in Rimini and Auriol will find that the law of contradictories is that if one part of a contradictory pair is false then the other part is true (Rimini), or vice versa (Auriol).

Henninger's verdict is that ‘Fiorentino provides a well-researched, thorough and balanced investigation of the teaching of Gregory of Rimini … In the introduction, Fiorentino sets the context with a helpful historiography of the problem of future contingents and divine foreknowledge as treated mostly by researchers in the last century, as well as a survey of the literature on Gregory of Rimini. … This is a fine work by a fine scholar.’

Sadly, then, Fiorentino's book still awaits a properly critical review.