Kenny Anthony. Medieval Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy. Volume 2

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Wyclif was a leader of the realist reaction. After his death Wyclif acquired

the reputation of being a thoroughgoing determinist. One of the propos-

itions attributed to him and condemned at the Council of Constance was

‘All things happen by absolute necessity’.

In fact, at least in his youth, Wyclif developed a highly subtle and nuanced

theory of the relationship between diVerent types of necessity and contin-

gency. He distinguished no less than seven types of necessity, which we may

crudely catalogue as: logical necessity, natural necessity, eternal truth,

sempiternal truth, inevitable truth, duress, and irresistible impulses. He

insisted that there were some events—e.g. human choices—that were

exempt from every one of these types of necessity.

In defending this, Wyclif had to deal with the following diYculty that he

puts to himself:

Just as no one can prevent the world’s having been, so no one can prevent any

eVect coming to be at the appropriate time. For the following argument is valid:

God ordains A; therefore A will necessarily come to pass at the appropriate time.

The antecedent is outside any created power and is accordingly altogether

unpreventable. Therefore, so is everything which formally follows from it.

(U XIV. 322–7)

Wyclif’s solution to this is to propose that the relationship between the

divine volition and events in the world is a two-way one: if God’s volition

causes things to happen here below, so, in a sense, events here below cause

God’s volition.

On this it is to be noted that the volition of God, with respect to the existence of a

creature, can be understood as a relationship, a mental entity with its basis in

God’s willing the thing to be in accordance with its mental being—which is

something absolutely necessary—and with its terminus in the existence of the

creature in its own kind. And such a relationship depends on each of the terms,

since if God is to will that Peter or some other creature should be it is requisite that

it should in fact be. And thus the existence of the creature, even though it is

temporal, causes in God an eternal mental relationship, which is always in process

of being caused, and yet is always completely caused. (U XIV. 328–44)

The objection that if God’s ordaining is outside our power, then all that

follows from his ordaining is outside our power, is answered in a dramatic

fashion. Wyclif simply denies the antecedent: God’s ordaining is not outside

our power.

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It cannot be said that Wyclif’s solution resolves the problem of the

relationship between determinism and freedom. When he distinguished

God’s decrees into complex relational volitions, one simply wants to restate

the objection in terms of the absolute mental volitions that are one

element of the complex, an element that seems quite beyond human

control. But no other medieval theologian succeeded in giving a satisfac-

tory answer to the antinomy of divine power and earthly contingency, and

perhaps no satisfactory answer will ever be possible. But it is clear that it is a

great mistake to regard Wyclif as the arch-determinist. Where he departs

from his colleagues is not in imputing extra necessity to human actions,

but in assigning unusual contingency to divine volitions.

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Mind and Soul

hilosophers of mind, throughout history, can be grouped into two

main classes: introvert and extrovert. Introvert philosophers believe

that the way to understand the nature of the human mind is to look

within oneself and to pay close attention to the phenomena of introspect-

ive consciousness. Extrovert philosophers start from the observable behav-

iour of human beings and inquire into the criteria by which we ascribe to

others mental capacities, states, and activities. In the second millennium we

could point to Descartes and Hume as paradigms of the introvert school,

and Aquinas and Wittgenstein as illustrating, in diVerent degrees, the

extrovert approach. Extroverts look, in the ancient world, to Aristotle as

their champion; the introvert school can claim Augustine as its founding

father, and to this day one of its most eloquent members.

Augustine on the Inner Life

Augustine often speaks of the ‘inward man’ and the ‘outward man’. This is

not to be confused with the distinction between soul and body. Not only

the body, but certain aspects of our soul, belong to the outward man,

namely, whatever we have in common with dumb animals, such as the

senses and the sensory memory. The inward man is our better part: the

mind, whose tasks include recollection and imagination, as well as rational

judgement and intellectual contemplation (DT 12. 1–3).

The outward man perceives bodies with the Wve senses of sight, hearing,

smell, taste, and touch. Augustine takes vision as the paradigm sense.

When we see something—a rock, or a Xame—there are three things to

be taken into consideration: the object seen, the seeing of the object, and a

third item that Augustine calls ‘intentio animi’, namely, our mental focus

on the object. This third element, Augustine tells us, is something proper

to the mind alone—sight is called a sense of the body only because the eyes

are part of the body (DT 11. 2). The mental element can remai n, as a

striving to see, when vision itself is not possible.

Vision is the product both of the object and the sense: the body when

seen impresses a form upon the sense, and that is called vision. This is a

likeness of the thing seen.

We do not, by the same sense, make any distinction between the form of the body

that we see, and the form that comes into existence from it in the sense of the one

who sees, because the connection between them is so close that there is no room

for distinguishing them. But by our reason we conclude that it would have been

utterly impossible for us to perceive anything, unless some likeness of the body

that was seen came into existence in our sense. (DT 11. 2. 3)

The image is diVerent from the body, even though it does not remain

when the body is removed; just as if a ring is placed in liquid, the

displacement of the Xuid is something diVerent from the shape of the

ring, even if it disappears once the ring is removed. After-images testify to

the distinction between the shape of the object seen and the impression it

makes on the eye; so too does the possibility of producing double vision by

pressing on the eyeball. The impressed form ‘is so closely united with the

species of the thing which we saw that it could not be discerned at all, and

this was vision itself ’ (DT 11. 2. 3).

It is a matter of debate among commentators whether this thesis

commits Augustine to a representational theory of sense-perception.

Most likely it does not, if a ‘representational theory’ is one according to

which the immediate object of perception is an image or sense-datum. The

image formed is not, according to Augustine, at all obvious; its existence

has to be proved by argument. Probably Augustine postulates it as some-

thing that is necessary to explain the causation of memory by sensation

(DT 11. 9. 16)1.

The senses are sources of information about objects in the world; but of

course they are not the only way in which we acquire such information.

1 See Gareth Matthew, ‘Knowledge and Illumination’, in CCA 176. For an opposite view, see

Paul Spade in IHWP 63–4.

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A blind man cannot see, but can Wnd out, by asking others, the things that

they have learnt by sight. What makes the diVerence between sense-

perception and information-gathering? In answer to this question, Aris-

totle long ago invoked the concept of pleasure. ‘Where there is sense-

perception there is also both pain and pleasure, and where they occur there

is also of necessity desire.’ (De An. 2. 413b23). The information acquired

through the senses, and the discriminations performed with their aid, may

be acquired and performed by means other than the senses, and indeed by

agents other than human beings. We can obtain through optical instru-

ments visual information to classify diVerent human beings, and catalogue

visual features of lunar landscapes through distant probes. Such operations

are not sense-perception because they occur without pleasure or pain: the

human beings inventoried with their statistics are not perceived as beauti-

ful or ugly, the landscapes strike neither terror nor awe.

Augustine shows himself well aware of this dual aspect of our concept of

sense, and indeed emphasizes the hedonic rather than the epistemic com-

ponent of sense-perception. In On Free Will he remarks that ‘pleasure and

pain fall within the jurisdiction of the bodily senses’. Sight judges whether

colours are harmonious or clash with each other, and hearing judges

whether voices are melodious or harsh (DLA 2. 5. 12. 49). In book X of the

Confessions he gives a colourful listing of the diVerent types of sensual pleasure

that may oVer us temptation. We must distinguish, he says, between two

diVerent employments of the senses: to bring pleasure and to satisfy curios-

ity. The second element too, of course, can bring temptation: we can sin

through the lust for experience and knowledge (Conf. X. 35. 54).

Among the objects of the outer senses, Augustine makes the usual

distinction between those that can be perceived by one sense only (e.g.

colour and sound) and those that can be perceived by more than one sense

(e.g. size and shape). Besides the Wve outward senses, Augustine believes

that there is an inner sense. In the case of animals, he says, the sense of sight

is a diVerent thing from the sense to shun or to seek what is seen, and so

with the other senses, whose objects are sometimes accepted with pleasure

and sometimes shunned with disgust. This sense cannot be identiWed with

any one of the Wve senses, but must be some other sense that presides over

all the other senses. While it is only by reasoning that we identify this

separate faculty, it is not itself a part of reason, because it is possessed not

only by rational humans but also by irrational beasts (DLA 2. 2. 8).

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In his description of our mental faculties, Augustine dwells longest on

the memory, and indeed he often uses ‘memory’ in a very broad sense,

almost equivalent to ‘mind’ itself. He describes some of memory’s powers

in Confessions X. 13. Even in darkness and silence I can produce colours at

will in my memory, and distinguish between white and black. With tongue

motionless and throat silent, I can sing whatever song I wish.

Memory is something we take for granted: Augustine urges us to

remind ourselves what a very remarkable faculty it is. People gaze with

wonder on mountain peaks, towering waves, and broad waterfalls, on the

encompassing ocean and the rotating starry skies. But they take no notice

of themselves and of their memory, which contains sky, sea, and land and

much else besides. I could not speak, Augustine says, of any of the wonders

of nature unless I could see inwardly the mountains and waves and rivers

and stars—and even the ocean that I have never seen but know about only

from the tales of others. ‘I see them inwardly with dimensions just as great

as if I saw them in the outer world’ (Conf. X. 8. 15).

Augustine describes memory as a huge cavern, full of dark and mysteri-

ous nooks and crannies: true to the introvert tradition he imagines the

inward man exploring this vast storehouse. Within it, I can ca ll for an item

that I want to recall; fetching it may take a shorter or longer time.

Some memories rush out to crowd the mind, and while I am looking and asking

for something quite diVerent, they leap out in front of me saying ‘Are we what

you want?’ With the hand of my heart I chase them away from the face of my

memory until what I want is freed from the murk and comes out of its hiding

place. (Conf. X. 8. 12)

Augustine has a gift for vivid phenomenological description of experi-

ences of calling to mind and forgetting—remembering the face but not the

name, being unable to recall a letter read absent-mindedly, being obsessed

with an unwelcome memory one would prefer to forget (DT 11. 5. 9).

When he comes to give a philosophical analysis of memory, it is modelled

very closely on his account of outer vision. Just as when we see there is the

object seen, the seeing itself, and the mental focus, so, when we remember,

there is the memory recalled, the actual recalling, and the gaze of thought.

The diVerence between a merely dispositional memory (something that we

have learnt and not forgotten) and an episode of remembering is treated by

Augustine as parallel to that between an object out of sight and object in

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full view (DT 11. 8). Remembering is treated very literally as inward seeing,

and in the case of both inner and outer vision Augustine lays great stress on

the voluntary nature of the activity. In talking of mental focus, and the

gaze of thought, Augustine is thinking of the operation of the will (DT 11.

2. 3).

The will can choose whether to concentrate on the outer or inner eye. If

it makes the latter choice, it can produce likenesses of bodies so vivid ‘that

not even reason itself can distinguish whether a body itself is seen without,

or something similar thought within’. Terrifying imaginations can make

one cry out, and sexual fantasies can cause erections. But not all such

experiences are under voluntary control: in sleep and in frenzy images can

force themselves upon the mental gaze by some secret force ‘through

certain spiritual mixings of a spiritual substance’ (DT 11. 4. 7).

I can remember only what I have seen; but I can think of many more

things. Thus I can remem ber only one sun, but I can think of two or three

suns. I can think of the sun as larger or smaller than it is; I can think of it

standing still or travelling to anywhere I will. I can think of it as square and

green. Augustine clearly regards thoughts of this kind as inner seeings: he

insists that what we actually see with our inner eye is derived from our

memory of the one and only sun. But what of when we listen to another

person’s narrative? We cannot then turn our mind’s eye back to memory.

What happens is that we follow the story by calling up the ideas corres-

ponding to the words of his story. But this too depends on memory.

I would never have been able to understand a storyteller the Wrst time I had heard

his words put together, unless I had remembered generically the individual things

that he described. A man who describes to me a mountain rising out of a forest

and clothed with olive trees is speaking to one who remembers mountains, forests,

and olives. If I had forgotten them, I should not at all know what he was saying,

and so could never have followed his narrative. (DT 11. 8. 14)

What is true of listening to another’s narrative is true of inventing a story

for oneself. I can combine remembered images with others and say ‘O that

this or that were so’. Whatever we imagine is constructed out of elements

supplied by memory: thus Augustine models his idea of the walls

of Alexandria, which he has never seen, on his memory of the walls of

Carthage, which are familiar to him. No doubt anyone who really knew

Alexandria, if they could look into Augustine’s mind and see his image of

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it, would Wnd it highly inadequate (DT 8. 6. 9). Anticipating later empiricist

philosophers, Augustine says that it is impossible to have any idea of a

colour one has never seen, a sound one has never heard, or a Xavour one

has never tasted.

The loftiest part of the mind, the reason or intellectual soul, has, for

Augustine, two elements. The superior part of reason is concerned with

the eternal truths, accessible to intellect alone. The inferior part controls

our dealings with temporal and bodily things. It is, Augustine says, a

deputy of the superior reason: a minister for contingent aVairs, as it

were. Both inferior and superior reason belong to the inward man (DT

13. 1). When God created Adam, he found among the beasts no Wt

companion for him; so too, in the human soul, those parts that we have

in common with dumb animals are not enough to make the intellect at

home in the world we live in. So God has endowed us with a faculty of

practical reason, formed out of rational substance just as Eve was formed

from Adam’s body, intimately united with the superior reason just as

Adam and Eve were two in one Xesh (DT 12. 3).

The operation of the lower reason is called by Augustine ‘scientia’,

which he deWnes as ‘the cognition of temporal and changeable things

that is necessary for managing the aVairs of this life’ (DT 12. 12. 17). The

functions of this reason are very close to those assigned by Aristotle to

phronesis, or practical wisdom, and the translation ‘science’ would give a very

misleading impression of what is meant. Science, as we understand it,

hardly Wgures in Augustine’s catalogue of mental activities, and from

time to time he makes disparaging remarks about the pursuit of knowledge

for its own sake. Scientia, like phronesis, is indispensable if we are to possess

moral virtues (DT 14. 22).

The superior reason’s function is called ‘sapientia’. Once again, the

obvious translation, ‘wisdom’, would be misleading, since the English

word is more appropriate to the virtue of practical reason than to the

virtue of theoretical reason. Sapientia, we are told, is contemplation: the

contemplation of eternal truths in this life and the contemplation of God

in the life of the blessed (DT 12. 14). Contemplation is not for the sake of

action, but is pursued for its own sake. Augustine goes out of his way to tell

us that the part of the human mind that is concerned with the consider-

ation of eternal reasons is something ‘which, as is evident, not only men

but also women possess’ (DT 12. 7. 12).

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Augustine on the Will

Augustine devoted much of On the Trinity to seeking, in human beings,

replicas of the divine trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He identiWed

many diVerent triads, but the supreme image of God is in the trinity of

memory, intellect, and will (9. 12, 15. 3). How is this to be related to the

anatomy of the mind we have just summarized? When he is most con-

cerned to draw the theological parallel, Augustine presents his human

trinity as consisting of the mind’s existence, its knowledge of itself, and its

love of itself (9. 12). But he uses the terms of his mental trinity in a broad

variety of contexts, which we can summarize as follows. The memory is the

ability to think thoughts of all kinds; the intellect (whose activity is sapientia)

is the ability to assent to theoretical thoughts as true; the will is the ability

to consent to thoughts as plans of action.

Augustine makes great play with the notion of the will, and som e

commentators have alleged that in doing so he was inventing a concept

that was lacking in the ancient world. The allegation can only be made by a

philosopher starting from an introspective stance on philosophy of mind.

Philosophical discussion of the will may start by considering it as an

introspectible phenomenon, an item of consciousness that makes the

diVerence between voluntary and involuntary actions. Or it may start

with the observable behaviour of agents and ask for external criteria by

which we distinguish between the voluntary and involuntary actions of

others. In the ancient world Augustine is the outstanding exponent of the

introspective approach; Aristotle, on the other hand, had adopted an

extrovert stance, which has led introvert philosophers to deny that he

had any concept of the will at all.2

In fact, there are considerable similarities between the two philosophers.

For Augustine as for Aristotle, all fully human choice originates in the

pursuit of happiness, and for both of them individual decisions are to be

seen as the selection of means to that end. Suppose, Augustine says, I want

to see a scar as evidence of a wound, or look through a window in order to

see the passers-by. ‘All these and other such acts of the will have their own

proper ends, which are referred to the end of that will, by which we wish to

live happily and arrive at that life which is not referred to anythin g else, but

2 See A. Kenny, Aristotle’s Theory of the Will (London: Duckworth, 1979).

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is suYcient in itself for the lover.’ This is quite parallel to Aristotle’s

account of practical reasoning (NE 1112b 18 V.; EE 1. 1218b8–24).

Both Aristotle and Augustine imagine the will, or practical reason, as an

issuer of commands, and both of them are keenly interested in the

possibility of disobedience to these commands, in the sinner (Augustine)

or in the incontinent person (Aristotle, NE 1147a32). But Augustine exploits

the analogy much more fully. He regards every voluntary motion of the

body as an obedience to a command of the will; and he is fascinated by the

possibility of second-order volition, where the will is issuing commands to

itself.

The mind (animus) commands the body, and obedience is instant; the mind

commands itself and meets resistance. The mind tells the hand to move, and all

goes so smoothly that it is hard to distinguish the command from its execution.

Yet the mind is the mind, and the hand is a body. The mind tells the mind to will;

one is the same as the other, and yet it does not do what it is told. (Conf. VIII. 9. 21)

What is really happening in such a case, when, for instance, a man wants to

will to be chaste and yet does not really will to be chaste? How can the will

command itself and yet not obey? The command to will, Augustine says, is

half-hearted: if it were wholehearted, the will to be chaste would already be

there. In his own case, he says, while he was hesitating about the service of

God ‘I who was willing to serve was the same I who was unwilling; I was

neither wholly willing nor wholly unwilling’. Such self-conXict, such inner

dissociation, is possible only because we are the descendants of Adam,

inheriting his sin.

It is the consideration of Adam that leads Augustine to diVer sign-

iWcantly from Aristotle on an important point. Aristotle accepted that a

man may act against the dictates of the rational will, but he envisaged this

as happening through the stress of animal passion. But Adam fell into sin

in Eden, at a time when he had no disordered passions; again, Lucifer and

his angels fell into sin, though they had no animal bodies. So Augustine is

led to postulate uncaused acts of evil will. ‘If you look for an eYcient cause

of such an evil volition, you will Wnd nothing. What is it that makes a will

evil, when it is doing an evil deed? The evil will is the eYcient cause of the

evil deed, but of an evil will there is no eYcient cause’ (DCD XII. 6).

However one tries to trace back the cause of an evil action, sooner or

later one will arrive at a sheer act of evil will. Suppose that we imagine two

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