Conservare la retta volontà, l’atto morale nelle dottrine di Filippo il Cancelliere e Ugo di Saint-Cher (1225–1235) by Riccardo Saccenti (review)

Riccardo Saccenti’s book focuses on two important figures for the theological and philosophical debate in early thirteenth century: Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1160–1236) and Hugh of Saint-Cher (1200–1263). Philip was chancellor of Notre Dame in Paris since 1217, and he had an intense activity of teaching and theological study; his famous Summa de bono was written around 1225 to 1228. He conducted an intense activity as preacher, as attested by his almost four hundred sermons that remain with us today He officially worked for the papal curia for issues related to the fight against heresies, and he also had the power to release the licentia docendi, the teaching credentials, at the university of Paris. There, Hugh of Saint-Chair received the duty to read and comment Peter Lombardus’s Sententiae, which resulted in his work Super Quatuor Libros Sententiarum, and he became professor of theology from 1230 to 1235.

The study of their writings is important to contextualize and understand how western thought developed toward humanism. According to Saccenti their work involves the discovery of subjectivity, and plays an essential role in the reflection around the freedom and free will in the history of western philosophy. The main interest for this study is ethics and moral philosophy, and it is contextualized by the work of Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII at XIII siècle, and Gauthier’s works on the reception of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the further studies that continued in a more detailed way in the twenty-first century. Fundamental for this time is the institution of the university of Paris, where a new curriculum studiorum started to develop and create a new status to the teachers involved in the different course of studies. University became the place where a new cultural awareness rose, and where secular investigation would accompany the religious one. Philip and Hugh were among the greatest masters of theology active in Paris between 1225 and 1235. Saccenti notices that in these authors there is a wider reception of a new lexicon that comes from new translation from Greek and Latin of the classical philosophers.

This volume is organized in four chapters, and starting from various sources, historicizes in a balanced way the two theologians and contextualizes their doctrinal expositions in that philosophical debate regarding the ethics that was ongoing between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Chapter 1, I termini del dibattito morale. La discussione sull’agire umano fra XII e XIII secolo, focuses on the terminology used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the debate about ethical issues. Saccenti clarified the meaning of ratio (reason) and voluntas (will), and free will, and contextualize these basic concepts in relation to the translations into Latin of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and John of Damascus’s De fide Othodoxa. Chapter 2, Facoltà dell’anima e atto morale, still contextualizes other critical concepts, such as the soul and its faculties, the intellect and its practical role, the classification of psychology of the human acts, and an Aristotelian interpretation of John of Damascus’s works. Chapter 3, Libero arbitrio e libertà, focuses on the concepts of free will, and liberty and relates Philip’s and Hugh’s argumentations with the authorities of Abelard, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Petrus Lombardus. In particular it considers the speculations of William of Auxerre in Summa Aurea (around 1220) and compares to Philip’s and Hugh’s theorizations. Both Philip and Hugh, following Aristotle’s and John of Damascus’s theoretical line, consider “the will” as a rational desire, and therefore a component of the same reason excluding a dualism between will and reason. Therefore for them the responsibility of moral act is given only to one faculty of the soul. Chapter 4, Scintilla conscientiae, La natura della synderesis e il suo ruolo nella vita morale...