Klara von Assisi. Schattenfrau und Lichtgestalt by Martina Kreidler-Kos (review)

332BOOK REVIEWS knowledge: the determination of what contingent complexio (or what we would call since Leibniz a "possible world", the semantic of which is clearly conceptually indebted to this Scotistic breakthrough) will obtain, and hence be true, depends on the determination of the divine will. Before the will's decision, all possibilities are known as "neutral", and the will plays the role of a "truthmaker" (p. 173). Most enlightening is Dr. Söder's explanation of how this allows Scotus, in an analysis recorded chiefly in Reportatio IA dist. 38, to describe a more dynamic relationship between divine eternity and temporal beings, which can be known directly in their temporal difference, without having to be reduced to some form of presence (p. 186). In order to establish his claims, Dr Söder's study looks at several related problems, and he thereby provides the reader with a good introduction to the Scotistic logic of relations, his doctrine of transcendentals, the emergence of a notion of freedom understood in terms of self-determination (although one misses here a clearer statement of Scotus's debt to Henry of Ghent, who had already questioned the Aristotelian principle of the omne quod movetur ab alio movetur), and more generally to the relationship between intellect and will. It will, therefore, not only be of use to those who fashion the logical intrinsicacies of future contingents, but also to anybody more generally interested in ethical or metaphysical issues. Université Libre de Bruxelles & Institut Catholique de LilleJACOB SCHMUTZ Martina Kreidler-Kos. Klara von Assisi. Schattenfrau und Lichtgestalt. (Tübinger Studien zur Theologie und Philosophie 17.) Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 2000. 350 pp. I must begin by insisting that the German subtitle, Schattenfrau und Lichtgestalt, cannot be rendered "Shady Woman, However Bright." Lichtgestalt means figure of light. Clare is still our Clara claris praeclara meritis, as Pope Alexander IV so brilliantly put it, and Martina Kreidler-Kos argues persuasively for the phrase's validity, today still. And Schattenfrau means woman obscured, seeing as Clare BOOK REVIEWS333 has not yet emerged from Francis's shadow. Of Clare's reduction to a female Francis Kreidler-Kos makes short and repeated shrift in the course of her chapters. Kreidler-Kos's Klara von Assisi has three qualities that make it a milestone in Franciscan history. Two we expect; she interrogates the sources critically and she takes careful account of what previous writers have said. (At times she reports on past studies to excess: she mentions H. Feld's every willful remark.) Kreidler-Kos also intends to produce a feminist's account of Clare's story. She intends to study Clare from Clare's point of view and see how she fares as a woman. Insofar as she brings that off, insofar as she can tell Clare's story as a woman who faced and wrestled with the roadblocks thrown up against her, Kreidler-Kos connects the story with the same struggle today. Then the story will add to the long past of women's consciousness in support of today's feminist struggles. Others have tried to approach Clare's story in this way. Kreidler-Kos has done it more explicitly and she has done it successfully, and therein lies the particular achievement of Kreidler-Kos's Klara von Assisi. In solid support of that purpose, the book is well organized, it progresses surely, and it is clearly written. Kreidler-Kos has one sentence that needed follow-through. On page 153 she writes: "Seeing as Clare had already promised Francis obedience at the Porziuncola, we can suppose, in full accord, moreover, with Clare's subsequent actions, that she looked on her association with Francis and his brothers as the basis of her community, with all the spiritual and juridical implications." Kreidler-Kos does not do the history which her sentence requires. She does not explain the dissociation from the world of Assisi and Umbría that lay at the origins of Franciscan life. In the Early Rule the first Franciscans worked out the terms of their dialectical relations to the world about them. They shared the results with a large audience in the Message of Encouragement (2EFi). That text refers to...