Métaphysique et noétique: Albert le Grand by Alain de Libera (review)

474 BOOK REVIEWS he wanted those of us who were Thomists at heart to let Bonaventure speak for himself. LaNave has certainly produced a book in which Bonaventure can speak for himself. And for Thomists, he has produced an especially welcome book. Thomists have something of an advantage over Bonaventurians: the interconnectedness of Thomas's thought is well established even if often violated. Of course for St. Thomas theology is a science, indeed a wisdom, not unrelated to holiness. But the articulation is not that of St. Bonaventure. LaNave has, I can only hope, opened up a new chapter in placing these two masters of speculative synthesis into conversation. His book is an invitation not only to Bonaventurians to think anew about their man, but to Thomists to enter into a new and deeper conversation with Thomas's great contemporary. We need no longer leave our Aquinas at the door. University of St. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota JOHN F. BOYLE Metaphysique et noetique: Albert le Grand. By ALAIN DE LIBERA. Paris: Librarie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin, 2005. Pp. 431. 28€ (paper). ISBN2-7116-1638-X. No less an historian than Etienne Gilson found the problem of the Aristotelianism of Albert the Great so daunting that he declined to undertake its discussion in his monumental History ofChristian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. In particular, he considered Albert's Aristotelian commentaries to be of such great bulk so as to defy analysis. Albert had lived a long and studious life and throughout the whole of it he pursued nearly every field of study. The result, as Gilson remarked, is that the amount of philosophical and scientific information heaped up in Albert's writings is nothing short of amazing. There seemed just too much there to sort out profitably. Moreover, Gilson found that it is not always easy to distinguish Albert's own thought from what he appeared to be merely reporting. Not only did Albert make occasional remarks that seem to imply a desire to distance himself from the claims of the Aristotelian text, but his learned and voluminous discussions of the views of various Greek and Arabic authorities often leave the reader in some doubt as to Albert's own position. It is not surprising, then, that Gilson never undertook the task of working out Albert's place in the history of Aristotelianism, nor that of determining the overall unity of Albert's thought. Scholarship has advanced since Gilson's day and much of Albert's work is now better known and understood. With respect to the Aristotelian commentaries themselves, James Weisheipl and others have successfully brought them into sharper focus as central expressions of Albert's philosophical BOOK REVIEWS 475 contribution. Not only is Albert's role in the revival of Aristotle's research programs in zoology and other natural sciences coming to be better appreciated, but Albert's exegetical contributions to the understanding of Aristotelian form are now recognized. Yet, difficult questions about Albert's Aristotelianism continued to be debated, as does the question of the unity of his thought. One area in which such questions continue to occupy Albert scholars concerns the nature of metaphysical knowledge. Nearly fifty years ago, Weisheipl had identified Albert's opponents, against whom he argues throughout his commentary on the Metaphysics, as the so-called Oxford Platonists, especially Robert Kilwardby. These amici Platonis had claimed that the principles of nature are mathematical and the subsisting figures and numbers that are the proper subject of mathematical science have their source in God, the eternally subsistent divine unity. They identified God, then, as the proper subject of metaphysics, a view repeatedly rejected by Albert. More recently, Albert Zimmermann, in his Ontologie oder Metaphysik? (1998), took this point further, claiming that Albert belongs, along with Thomas Aquinas, to a distinctive tradition that emphasizes the ontological character of metaphysics, placing God outside its subject genus properly understood. Taking a somewhat different tack, Alain de Libera maintained in his Albert le Grand et la philosophie (1991) that Albert's thought on the subject of metaphysics is the product of a distinctive fusion of two traditions : the Greco-Arabic tradition of Aristotelian ontology and the Neoplatonism of the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition...