Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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7
De ente actu et potentia; 8 De
priore et posteriore; 9 De
principio et eo quod dependet
ex
principio; 10 De ente simplici
et composito; 11 De necessario
et contingente; 12 De
immateriali et materiali; 13 De
infinito et finito; 14 De ente
completo et incompleto; 15 De
universo et particulari
1.16
De divisione entis in
substantiam et accidens
17
De substantia
18
De accidente
in De
attributis
coniunctis et
respectivis
i De principio et principiato; 2
De
causa et causato; 3 De
subiecto et adiuncto; 4 De signo
et signato; 5 De toto et parte; 6
De
identitate et diversitate; 7 De
prioritate et posterioritate
iv
De substantiis
1 De substantia in genere; 2 De
substantia increata; 3 De
substantia creata;
4 De angelis; 5
De
forma substantiali; 6 De
corporibus
v
De accidentibus
1 De accidenti in genere; 2 De
quantitate; 3 De qualitate; 4 De
motu;
5 De relatione; 6 De
privatione
19
Modi orti; 20 Causano; 21
Prioritas et posterioritas; 22
Nιcessitas;
23 Contingentia; 24
Possibilitas;
25 Facilitas et
difficultιs;
26 Identitas et
convenientia; 27 Diversitas; 28
Pugna seu oppositio
29 Modi instar
graduum;
30
Universalitas;
31 Singularitas seu
individuado (divisio substantiae:
spiritualis/corporea);
32
Totalitas;
33 Partialitas
11
De accidente: 1 In genere
2
De accidente perfection
sive
abstracto; 3 De quantitate; 4 De
qualitate; 5 De actione; 6 De
passione
7 De accidente
imperfection, in genere; 8 De
accidente concreto; 9 De situ; 10
De
habitu; 11 De ubi; 12 De
quando; 13 De relatione
[Modus ortus divisus:] 13 De actu
et potentia; 14 De simplicitate
et compositione;
15 De ente per
se et per accidens; 16 De
universalitate et singularitate;
[Ab
unitate:] 17 De toto et
parte; 18 De prioritate,
connexione et posterioritate;
19
De
infinνtate et finitate; 20 De
absoluto et respectivo; [A
ventate:]
21 De realitate et
intentionalitate; 22 De
abstractione et concretione; 23
De
mensura et mensurato; 24
De
subiecto et adiuncto; 25 De
signo
et signato; [A bonitate:] 26
De
principio et principiato; 27
De
causa et causato; 28 De
necessitate et contingentia; 29
De
identitate, diversitate et
distinctione
11
De praedicamentis
1 Numerus praedicamentorum
2
De substantia
3-8 De accidentibus
11
Disputationes ni De non-ente
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Metaphysics
which
is the most fundamental law of thought. The subject-matter of
metaphysics is, therefore, divided into an intelligibile
negativum
and an
intelligibile
p
o
sitivum, into nihil and aliquid. The latter is divided into essentia,
that
through which a being is
that
which it is, and ens, which is in
turn
divided
into ens reale and ens rationis. In Timpler's derivation of the
attributes of being
there
appears clearly the Calvinist emphasis on the
gulf
which
separates the infinite from the finite. Only existence and duration
apply to all reality. Not-being enters into all other attributes. Timpler even
subsumed the traditional transcendentals under the conjunct attributes,
allowing
them no absolute validity. Because they are attributes of finite
being only, they admit of contrariety: unity and multiplicity,
truth
and
falsity,
goodness and malice. Timpler's system
of
metaphysics
thus
explains
the immanent distinctions of the intelligible, then derives the simple and
conjunct attributes
of
reality and finally concludes by presenting its ultimate
divisions
into substantia increata, substantia creata immaterialis and substantia
creata materialis.
In these Reformed treatises no attention is paid to the question whether
anything outside the mind corresponds to such systems. They are purely
rational constructions; the burden
of
verification
is placed on the discipline
of
revealed theology. In this regard they recall the dilemma with which the
history
of
medieval
metaphysics closed. Shortly before the Council
of
Basle
Jean
Gerson had maintained
that
metaphysics can only establish contact
between the intra-mental world of the sciences and extra-mental reality
through the concept
of
being,
but at the same time
that
an adequate concept
of
being is only possible with the concept of God, for which revelation is
necessary. Timpler and his colleagues also stood at the end of an epoch. In
the first years
of
the Thirty
Years
War Heidelberg and Marburg were lost to
the Reformed Confession; the former university became Catholic, the
latter, Lutheran. Steinfurt and Herborn suffered disastrous losses and were
unable to maintain their position.
After
the war Calvinist philosophy
disappeared from the German territories, while the problem of grounding
metaphysics without revelation became more and more acute.
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XI
PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND
ACTION
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17
FATE,
FORTUNE, PROVIDENCE AND
HUMAN
FREEDOM
These concepts constitute one of the fundamental philosophical problems
about human destiny in general and about human actions in particular. Is
the individual a rigidly defined link in a universal chain of being in which
birth,
life
and death have been entirely preordained by physical cosmic
forces?
Or can the individual control his
life
and, by means of more or less
independent decisions, direct it to some consciously chosen goal? Such
questions are as old as humanity itself. Sometimes they are coloured by
religious
beliefs or magical and astrological superstitions and scarcely emerge
into popular awareness. At other times they stimulate the philosophical
reflections which are humanity's first steps away from a dark and fearful fate
towards a rational understanding of
natural
and historical events.
THE
PROBLEM
IN
ANTIQUITY
AND THE
MIDDLE
AGES
In antiquity philosophy could not entirely disburden
itself
of
eLfjLapfjievrj,
the
mysterious fate which ruled men and gods, impervious to protests and
invocations. Except for thinkers like Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, who
achieved
a profound and rigorous grasp of the first principle, the bulk of
Greek,
Hellenistic and Roman thought tended to be drawn by its monistic
and materialist metaphysics into a kind of cosmic necessity which denied
human freedom and excluded providence (irpovoia) and the contingency of
events (rvx^j). The first centuries of the Christian era teemed with
tracts
about fate. One
current
was represented by Alexander
of
Aphrodisias,
who,
following
Aristotle, asserted the possibility of contingency,
that
is,
ivSexoftevov. By contrast, evolving Neoplatonism petrified the causal
links between the degrees of being,
thus
unleashing a frenzy of magical-
mystical
practices which profoundly affected the purity of man's religious
relationship with the divine. The Church Fathers, steadfast in their biblical
conception
of
a personal deity who created the world out
of
love
and whose
intelligence guides each single being according to its own
nature
towards its
own
good, reacted against fatalistic theories
that
subjugated human
life
to
641
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642
Problems of knowledge and action
the stars. According to the Fathers, fate was an empty word, a diabolical
deceit designed to
strip
man
of
any awareness
of
personal responsibility for
his actions. Augustine, who had run the gauntlet
of
such theories, hated the
word
'fate' itself: 'abhorremus praecipue
propter
vocabulum, quod non in
re vera consuevit intelligi.'
1
Against Epicurean atheism and Stoic immanen-
tism, he asserted free
will,
the
efficacy
of prayer and the dominion of
providence in the world and in human affairs.
Boethius somewhat softened the psychological, not to mention theoreti-
cal,
aversion of earlier Christian thinkers towards fate. He regarded it as
nothing more
than
the movement and disposition imprinted by the divine
mind onto created beings situated in a providential scheme directed to a
particular end.
2
In De consolationephilosophiae, the masterpiece he composed
in prison, Boethius drew heavily on classical sources to produce a rational
and Christian synthesis of the topics associated with fate, namely fortune
and chance, divine foreknowledge and providence and freedom
of
the
will.
Boethius'
eirenic approach and solutions were an influential
legacy
to the
Middle
Ages
and Renaissance.
Scholasticism,
which had begun to tackle more strictly theological
problems like predestination as early as the
ninth
century with Gottschalk
(d. c. 870) and Anselm,
3
aimed to systematise the whole field. According to
Thomas Aquinas, with whom this process culminated, nothing here below
is
determined by fate, either in the pagan mythological sense or because
subject to astral bodies. No events, even so-called chance occurrences, can
escape God's intelligence and loving
attention
to the secondary causes of
nature
and to human
will.
Even if astral and demonic forces occasionally
affect
and change our understanding (whose functioning is structurally
linked to our sensations), any such influence is indirect and is, in any case,
entirely blocked by the interior decisions taken by free
will.
4
Into
the
general scheme of a providence which maintains the particular mode of
action of the individual
natural,
necessary or free causes, Thomas also
reintroduces the predestination of the elect to paradise and
of
the sinners to
damnation. This provoked much later confusion and, as we shall see, an
indignant refutation by Pomponazzi in his De fato.
5
Apart from these
theological
complications, two further positions trace their philosophical
roots in Christian thought to a
belief
in God's absolute transcendence and
1.
Augustine,
De civitate Dei v.9.
3. See
Gottschalk
1945. For
Anselm,
see De libertate
arbitrii
(c.
1080-5);
De concordia praescientiae et
praedestinationis et
gratiae
Dei cum libera arbitrio
(1107-8).
4.
Thomas
Aquinas,
Summa
theologiae 1, q. 115, aa. 3-6; q. 116, aa. 1-4. For a
comparison
with
Boethius
see
Mauro
1981. 5.
Thomas
Aquinas,
Summa
theologiae 1, q. 22, a. 4; q. 23, a. 5.
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Fate,
fortune, providence and
human
freedom 643
his loving freedom in creating the universe out
of
nothing: the liberation of
human freedom from cosmic influences and from 'secondary deities', and
the declaration
that
eternal divine foreknowledge can coexist with the free
positing of future contingents by human judgement. The consequence of
this radical metaphysical conception is two-fold: God is not bound by
physical
laws and may freely intervene wherever and whenever he chooses,
and man is not the passive victim of irrational forces extraneous to laws
divinely
incorporated into the universal order of being. No one realised
more clearly
than
Duns Scotus just how innovative this was for Christian
thought.
6
He discerned the unfolding of a supreme freedom and assigned
primacy in man's psychological make-up to the spontaneous volitional
tension of
love
rather
than
to the cogent objectivity of intellective
judgements.
HUMANIST
DISCUSSIONS
In some respects the fragmentation
of
scholasticism
was
well
under
way by
the second half of the
thirteenth
century. More
than
anything else, Latin
Averroism
helped to reactivate a number
of
ancient and deterministic ideas.
Several
propositions censored by Etienne Tempier at Paris in
1277
7
indicate
a revival
of
astrology
and a denial
of
personal responsibility and freedom of
choice
at all social
levels.
Fourteenth-century Dominican and Franciscan
theologians stopped building on tradition and
fell
into sterile controversy
about the priority
of
the intellect and the
will.
8
At the same time Ockhamist
nominalism was undermining the possibility of a metaphysical account of
being,
tending instead to concentrate on the immediate perception of
phenomena in their ceaseless becoming. This signalled an interest in
scientific
knowledge for its own sake, though
that
knowledge took hybrid
and simplistic forms. In the astrology
of
the period, for instance, it is not easy
to distinguish the fruits of observation and mathematical calculation from
information derived from the traditional judicial astrology of horoscopes
and elections.
Notwithstanding the methodological rigour of individuals like Pietro
d'Abano
and the analyses made by Nicole Oresme, works such as those of
Guido
Bonatti,
Cecco
d'Ascoli
and Ristoro
d'Arezzo,
as
well
as the teaching
of
Blasius
of Parma in various
north
Italian universities,
9
were profoundly
6. See
Gilson
1952, pp.
3i6fF.;
Poppi
1966, pp.
67-92;
Regnum
hominis 1978,1, pp.
277-302
(Poppi).
7. See Chartularium
1889-97,
1, PP-
543fF.
8. See Cambridge
History
1982, pp.
629-41
(Korolec).
9. See
Federici Vescovini
1979, 1983,
especially
chs. 7 and 8.
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644
Problems of knowledge and action
equivocal
about astrological determinism and the possibility for man and
society
to choose their own destinies. Only later, with
Galileo,
Kepler and
Newton,
when the heavenly bodies were finally reduced to
matter
sustained by the universal laws of gravitation did people begin to lose their
belief
in astrology.
10
The
fourteenth century marks a
sharp
break with the past and points
unmistakably to the modern era. The
entire
continent of Europe was
convulsed
by immense social, political, economic and religious changes as
well
as
natural
calamities like the
Black
Death. Every corner
of
society
was
infiltrated by new anxieties: people wondered whether they still had any
freedom or whether they had fallen
under
the tyranny
of
occult,
stellar and
irrational forces. In this situation individuals like Dante, Petrarch and
Salutati were the effective defenders
of
man's dignity and freedom from the
newly
translated Greek and Moslem astrology and from the determinism of
the Averroist physicians and physicists. Precisely these problems are the
subject of Salutati's lengthy De fato,
fortuna
et casu.
In the Divina commedia Dante personifies fortune mythologically as an
intelligence which, in accordance with God's instructions, moves the
celestial
sphere
that
brings blessings and other'
worldly
splendours'.
11
In the
sixteenth canto
of
Purgatorio, while refuting the false insinuations of Guido
del Duca, Marco Lombardo expatiates on the causes of the universal
corruption of society in his day. The malice of men cannot be ascribed to
stellar influences, or to some fatal necessity which compels them to
evil,
because God has endowed each man with the intelligence and the
will
to
perceive
the good ('light is given to you for good and for ill') and to
follow
it in his actions. Virtue
thus
conquers even those inclinations to
evil
which
are subject to some degree of stellar influence.
12
Petrarch is already marked as a 'new man' by his discerning choice of
classical
sources and
of
teachers such as
Cicero,
Seneca,
Vergil
and Plato. His
letters and other writings reveal an
innate
distaste for the philosophical
views
of his contemporaries
—
English terminist
logic,
Arab medicine, the
empty abstractions of the Aristotelians, fatalism and
that
naturalistic
rigidity which suffocates human freedom and immobilises history by
denying the inexhaustible creativity of the spirit.
In a celebrated letter to
Boccaccio
he accuses astrologers of brazen
ignorance and foolish profanity. In
another
letter, addressed to Francesco
Bruni in plague-ridden Venice in 1362, he notes
that
fate does not consist in
10. See A.
Maier
1966, pp.
219-50.
11.
Dante,
Inferno
vn.67-96.
12.
Dante,
Purgatorio
xvi.64—81.
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Fate,
fortune, providence and
human
freedom
645
the motions of the
stars
but in divine decrees and
natural
causes. 'What', he
asks,
'is the use
of
the soothsayers? What is the point
of
the astrologers? Why
do the
mathematici
waste their time in useless speculations?' To be sure, they
can predict eclipses, rainfall and the direction of the wind, but only God
knows
what
will
be our freely
willed
decisions.
Mockingly
he bids the
fools
to pay no
attention
to the circlings
of
the stars. The
stars
have no power, or
at least, no power
that
we clearly
understand.
It is
pure
chance if the
mendacity of the astrologers produces some small morsels of
truth.
Let
them therefore leave us alone and stop trying to
trap
people in the abyss of
ignorance.
13
Petrarch's position in respect to fortune
—
a notion which pervades his
writings
—
is less clear. He explores a wealth of classical imagery, but his
conception
of
fortune shifts uneasily between the philosophical notion
of
an
orderly, causal necessity and the popular idea of a blind, irrational and
instinctive force.
14
In his De remediis utriusque fortunae, however, he builds
on Boethius to develop a greater awareness
of
how
human virtue and reason
can withstand fortune's relentless claims. This humanist approach was to
enjoy
a remarkable ascendancy over thinkers and literati from
Boccaccio
(for
example, in the second day of the Decameron) down to the
Renaissance.
15
Patristic and scholastic doctrines and the new insights from classical
antiquity find a more
mature
synthesis in the work and indeed in the
life
of
Coluccio
Salutati, Chancellor of Florence.
Like
his venerated master
Petrarch, he makes a cult of human freedom and activity. These are
articulated through the acquisition
of
a sapientia
closely
linked to eloquentia,
because beyond individual moral growth and the contemplative ideal, each
man is a citizen who must work for the common good of his city or state.
Though
full
of admiration for the moral heroism of the
Stoics,
Salutati is
mindful
that
we are neither ruled by fate nor blindly led by
natural
forces. It
is
through our commitment to overcoming the adversities of fortune and
historical circumstances
that
we become virtuous: 'virtuosi non
natura
sed
operibus efficimur'.
16
The myth of Hercules - the central theme of
Salutati's De laboribus Herculis - recurs in humanist celebrations of man's
constructive capacities and
of
the dignity which raises him to the
level
of
the
stars,
that
is, to the
level
of a divinity.
13.
Petrarch,
Epistolae seniles m.i (to
Boccaccio,
1363);
1.7 (to
Bruni,
1362).
14. See
Heitmann
1958,
especially
p. 43 and the
general
bibliography
on p. 25, n. 2.
15.
For the
development
of the
literary
theme
of
fortune
and its
various
symbols
(wheel,
storm,
sail,
etc.)
from
antiquity
to the end of the
Renaissance
throughout
Europe,
see
Doren
1922-3.
16.
Salutati
1891-1911, 11, p. 106.
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Problems
of
knowledge
and
action
Despite having praised
the
astrologer
who had
calculated
the
horoscope
for
the
victory
at
Cascina
in
1365, Salutati soon became harshly critical
of
astrology.
In a
treatise composed between 1396
and
1399
he
addressed
the
question
- put to him by the
Cistercian prior Felice
Agnobelli
-
whether
the
violent
rivalries which were tearing
apart
the
city
of
Perugia should
be
ascribed
to
human
will
or to a
fatal conjunction
of
other, external causes.
Although
not
particularly original, this work is coherent
and
draws upon
an
astonishing range
of
sources, summarising Christian
views
on the
theme
De
fatojortuna
et
casu
in a
cogent
and
discriminating fashion.
17
Granted
that the
hierarchy
of
beings
is
irradiated
by a
fundamental divine causality, fate
is
merely
the
organisation
and
interrelationship
of
secondary causes
as
these
are thought
and
willed
by
divine providence. Fate, therefore, does
not
change
the
essential
nature or the
specific causality
of
beings,
but
coexists
in
a necessary fashion with agent beings
and in a
contingent fashion with
operative beings. Salutati
thus
defends personal human responsibility
theologically
and
metaphysically. Astrology
and
other occult divinatory
arts,
he
shows, should
not
have
any
credibility because
of the
enormous
complexity
and
variety
of
astral interrelationships, because
of the
extreme
unreliability
of our
observational
instruments
and
finally because
of the
impossibility
of
calculating
the
reactions
of
individual people (books
1
and
11).
Like
his
treatment
of
fate, Salutati's
treatment
of
fortune
and
chance
reveals
an
erudite philological sensitivity
to
classical usage. However,
he
restricts fortune
and
chance
to
natural
situations
and
choices. Though
unforeseeable
and
beyond
the
scope
of our
choices, such circumstances
are
still
contained within
the
providential plan governing
our
lives
(books
in
and
iv). In
conclusion, Salutati firmly underlines human freedom
and
responsibility, saying
to the
Perugians
at one
point:
'The
cause
of
your
ills
is
neither fate
nor the
stars
above,
but is in
your
own
sinfulness. People
of
Perugia,
the
cause
is in
yourselves.'
18
By
the
first half
of the
fifteenth century
the
energetic quest
for
classical
sources
and the
thirst
for
new,
or
more faithful, translations from
the
Greek
had
given
scholars
a
direct
and
almost complete knowledge
of
classical
17.
Salutati 1985- See
also
Gasperetti 1941; Riiegg 1954. A similar treatise, De
fato,
attacking poetic
myths and astrological misconceptions, had been written a few years earlier (between 1381 and
1
3
8
5) by Francesco de Caronellis, a Franciscan in the convent of S. Antonio at Padua. The work is
dedicated to Antonio della Scala, the ruler of Verona, and makes abundant reference to classical
writers and medieval theologians; see Griffante 1983, p. 15.
18.
Salutati 1985, p. 216:'Non est. . . constellatio celi vel fatum vobis imminens tot malorum causa, sed
vestra vitia, Perusini! In vobis causa est . . .'
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