Averroes and the Plurality of Forms

AVERROES AND THE PLURALITY OF FORMS* Two issues regarding the nature of human beings divided Aristotelians from the thirteenth century until the end of the sixteenth century, first, whether the human body is determined by one or by a plurality of substantial forms,2 and, second, whether, according to Aristotle, the human mind [or, in the language of Averroes, the possible intellect] is a single separated and eternal substance that is common to all human beings.3 Opposing positions on these issues can be employed as identifying marks of three distinct thirteenth-century camps, viz. the pluraliste, who held the then common view that substances have a plurality of substantial forms, the monomorphists, who maintained that it is impossible for there to be more than one substantial form in any substance, and Averroist monopsychists (recently sometimes identified as radical Aristotelians), who adopted Averroes's view of the human possible intellect described above.4 1I gratefully acknowledge that research for this project was partially supported by a fellowship from the Ethyle R. Wolfe Humanities Institute at Brooklyn College. AU translations are my own unless otherwise noted. I wish to thank several referees of an earlier version of this paper for many helpful suggestions. 2For an excellent study of this medieval controversy, along with texts of particular pluraliste, see Roberto Zavalloni, O.F.M., Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralité desformes (Louvain, 1951). For discussion of this controversy, with detailed consideration of the Thomistic opponents of pluralism, see Frederick J. Roensch, Early Thomistic School (Dubuque,Iowa: The Priory Press, 1964). 3An excellent discussion of medieval monopsychism is provided in various works of F. Van Steenberghen. See, for example, Fernand Van Steenberghen, Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1980); Maitre Siger de Brabant, Philosophes médiévaux, No.21, (Publications Universitaire, 1977). 4Siger of Brabant has come to serve as the archetypal monopsychist of the thirteenth century, although in his later years he seems to have abandoned this view. See, for example, E.P. Mahoney, "Sense, Intellect, and Imagination in Albert, Thomas, and Siger," The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Kretzman, Kenny, and Pinborg (Cambridge University Press: New York, etc., 1982), esp. 611-22. By the middle of the thirteenth century all the important writings of Averroes were translated into Latin and known to scholastics at Paris. After this, the drive towards understanding the "pure" Aristotelian doctrine grew, as did a correlative alarm over heterodox theses associated with Averroist Aristotelianism. Measures taken in the 1270s include the condemnation of thirteen propositions, in 1270, by E. Tempier, Franciscan Studies 92 (1992) 156 EMILY MICHAEL The debate of the thirteenth century over whether in things there is but one or a plurality of substantial forms played a central role in the articulation of fundamental theses that, until the demise of Aristotelianism, divided two opposing camps. In the thirteenth century, the theory of the unicity of substantial forms came to associated with St. Thomas and his Dominican followers, and that of the plurality of forms, with the Franciscan followers of St. Bonaventure (often identified, since F. Ehrle coined the term in 1889, as Augustinians).5 Members of this latter group were united by a clear platform of common doctrines, e.g., the plurality of substantial forms, matter has a positive reality, and matter is not the principle of individuation.6 The followers of St. Thomas maintained instead that each substance has but one substantial form; that prime matter is pure potentiality and so, since form is the object of cognition, matter is incognizable even by God; and that matter signed by quantity is the fundamental principle of individuation.7 bishop of Paris; in 1272, arts professors were forbidden to discuss theological issues in their teaching; and, in the Great Condemnation of 1277, E. Tempier, bishop of Paris, at the prompting of Pope John XXI [Peter of Spain], conducted an investigation that led him, in turn, to condemn two hundred and nineteen propositions. For discussion of the impact of this condemnation, see, for example Roland Hissette, "Note sur la Reaction 'Antimoderniste' d'Etienne Tempier," Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 22 (1980): 88-97. 5Members...