Frederick Copleston, Medieval Philosophy: From Augustine to Duns Scotus in A History of Philosophy, vol. 2
Image Books, 1993, 614 pgs.
Summary: Frederick Copleston (1907-1994) was a Jesuit historian and philosopher appalled by the lack of philosophical knowledge of Roman Catholic seminarians and textbooks, and so he conceived and wrote the multivolume A History of Philosophy.
Volume two briefly touches on the patristic fathers and then summarizes the teaching of Augustine (47 pages) and then purposely builds towards a summary of Thomas of Aquinas’ system (132 pages) and concludes with Duns Scotus (69 pages). On the way to Thomas, Boethius, Anselm, the Muslim Aristotelian commentators—Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes—, Dante’s Averroianism, Bonaventure’s modified Augustinianism (61 pages), and a cast of other philosophers and scholastic theologians are mentioned and summarized. The interrelationship between all the scholars are considered and traced.
Copleston sees the height of Christian philosophy, a philosophical system that does not contradict revelation, as being reached in the Thomist framework. Thus his historical narrative unfolds Christian philosophy as maturing into Thomism through the introduction of “new” secular sources into Christian theology.
Copleston is aware of some tensions in his narrative. The Augustinian school’s approach to philosophy “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) has a different posture or habit of mind than the Thomist school. Thomas allowed a greater degree the autonomy of philosophy independent of revelation, rejects an implicit knowledge of God (cf. his Romans 1 notes in Commentary), and the necessity of illumination for the apprehension of any truth (63, 389).
Cumulatively, the Thomistic shift is a habit of mind away from God as the authority. This does not mean that Thomas rejected God as the ultimate authority, but he established the intellectual framework within Christian scholarship that allows such. Copleston writes;
If one speaks simply as a philosopher who is convinced that philosophy either stands on its own feet or is not philosophy at all, one will not admit the existence of a ‘Christian philosophy’; or, in other words, if one speaks simply as a ‘Thomist’, one will be forced to criticize any other and different conception of philosophy. But if one speaks as an historian, looking on from outside, as it were, one will recognize that there were two conceptions of philosophy, the one that of St. Bonaventure, the conception of Christian philosophy, the other that of St. Thomas and Scotus, the conception of a philosophy which could not properly be called Christian, save in the sense that it was compatible with theology (558).
The main difference between the Thomist and Augustinian is found not in their technical descriptions of God, but rather in their description of man:
In short, Augustine did not play two parts, the part of the theologian and the part of the philosopher who considers the ‘natural man’; he thought rather of man as in the concrete, fallen and redeemed mankind, man who is able indeed to attain truth but who is constantly solicited by God’s grace and who requires grace in order to appropriate the truth that saves. If there was question of convincing someone that God exists, Augustine would see the proof as a stage or an instrument in the total process of the man’s conversion and salvation: he would recognise it as in itself rational, but he would be acutely conscious, not only of the moral preparation necessary to give a real and living assent to the proof, but also the fact that, according to God’s intention for man in the concrete, recognition of God’s existence is not enough, but should lead on, under the impulse of grace, to supernatural faith in God’s revelation and to a life in accordance with Christ’s teaching. Reason has its part to play in bringing a man to faith, and once a man has the faith, reason has its part to play in penetrating the data of faith; but it is the total relation of the soul to God which primarily interests Augustine (48).
. . .[T]he Augustinian attitude . . .enjoys this advantage, that it contemplates always man as he is, man in the concrete, for de facto man has only one final end, a supernatural end, and, as far as actual existence is concerned, there is but man fallen and redeemed; there has been, is not, and never will be a purely ‘natural man’ without a supernatural vocation and end (49).
Further, he notes that the use and contemplation of Aristotle is not the cause of the shift. Different scholars were able to employ Aristotelian elements “in the service of the Augustinian tradition, so that that the resulting philosophy was one in which characteristic Augustinian themes predominated” (227).
The difference between the two postures leads to Copleston conceding: “St. Thomas’s baptism of philosophy in the person of Aristotle could not, historically speaking, arrest the development of philosophy, and in that sense his synthesis contained a latent tension” (430).
Part of the issue is that Thomas’ shift in authority was combined with reading Aristotle in what Copleston calls the in meliorem partem or in the most favorable reading or as if Aristotle intended Christian outcomes. Such a reading allows Aristotle to appear more in agreement with the faith than a reading aiming at his intent (426-427). Thomas granted Aristotle an authority and trustworthy stature in contradiction to his actual doctrine.
Copleston also exhibits the in meliorem partem reading in his discussion of “why Dante, who in the Divina Commedia places Mohammed in hell, not only placed Averroes and Avicenna in Limbo, but also placed the Latin Averroist Siger of Brabant in heaven and even went so far as to put his eulogium into the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a doughty opponent of Siger” (199-200). His conclusion is not that Dante was an Averroist heretic, but rather Siger is the “symbol of ‘pure philosophy.’”
Benefits/Detriments: Copleston’s summary and exegesis of individual philosophers is breath taking, illuminating, and refreshing. His general tracing of the relationship of ideas and their historical place is helpful. His descriptions of the different schools are balanced.
Yet, he’s a Jesuit in both the best and worst sense. As an example: “The sect of the Waldenses, which still exists. . .was originally a sect of dualists, though it was absorbed by the Reformation and adopted anti-Romanism and anti-sacerdotalism as its chief tenets” (183). And then a footnote adding, “The sources for our knowledge of the doctrine of the Albigensians are not rich, and the history of the movement is somewhat obscure.” Somehow, he maintains a degree of academic respectability while tarring both the Waldenses and the Reformation. Yet he also corrects the Catholic Encyclopedia on Raymond Lull without footnotes (457).
Recommended for academically minded pastors and graduate students who are careful readers as long as they remain entrenched in the posture of faith seeking understanding.
Exemplar quotes:
Summary of Anselm’s ontological argument in syllogistic form:
God is that than which no greater can be thought: But that than which no greater can be thought must exist, not only mentally, in idea, but also extramentally: Therefore God exists, not only in idea, mentally, but also extramentally.
The Major Premiss simply gives the idea of God, the idea which a man has of God, even if he denies His existence. The Minor Premiss is clear, since if that then which no greater can be thought existed only in the mind, it would not be that than which no greater can be thought. A greater could be thought, i.e. a being that existed in extramental reality as well as in idea (162).
Summary of one Richard of St. Victor’s argument for the existence of God:
It is a fact of experience that there are different and varying degrees of goodness or perfection, the rational, for example, being higher than the irrational. From this experiential fact Richard proceeds to argue that there must be a highest, than which there is no greater or better. As the rational is superior to the irrational, this supreme substance must be intellectual, and as the higher cannot receive what it possesses from the lower, from the subordinate, it must have its being and existence from itself. This necessarily means that it is eternal. Something must be eternal and a se [self-existent], as has been already been show, since otherwise nothing would exist, and experience teaches us that something does exist, and, if the higher cannot receive what it possesses from the lower, it must be the highest, the supreme Substance, which is the eternal and necessary Being (181).
An excellent reason for being Augustinian:
It is not that Alexander [of Hales] gives the impression of being a polemical writer nor that he confuses philosophy and theology, but he is chiefly concerned with the knowledge of God and of Christ. To say that, is simply to say that he was faithful to the tradition of the Augustine School (239).
Thomas’ Departs from Aristotle:
The virtuous man of Aristotle is, in a sense, the most independent of man, whereas the virtuous man of St. Thomas is, in a sense, the most dependent man, that is, the man who realises truly and fully expresses his relation of dependence on God (411).
Summary of Scotus on the possibility of horizontal eternal causality in a single set but not vertical eternal causality in sets, thus proving the existence of God:
Contingent being, the effectible, is caused by nothing or by itself. As it is impossible for it to be caused by nothing or by itself, it must be caused by another. If that other is the first, we have found what we are seeking; if not, then we must proceed further. But we cannot proceed for ever in the vertical order of dependence. Infintas autem est impossibilis in ascendendo. Nor can we supposed that contingent beings cause one another, for then we proceed in a circle, without arriving at any ultimate explanation of contingency. It is useless to say that that the world is eternal, since the eternal series of contingent beings itself requires a cause. Similarly in the order of final causality there must be a final cause which is not directed to any more ultimate final cause, while in the order of eminence there must be a most perfect being, a suprema natura. These three are one and the same being. The first efficient cause acts with a view to the final end; but nothing other than the first being itself can be its final end. Similarly, the first efficient cause is not univocal with its effect, that is, it cannot be of the same nature, but must transcend them; and as first cause, it must be the ‘most eminent’ being (523).