The Philosophy of Piers Plowman: The Ethics and Epistemology of Love in Late Medieval Thought by David Strong (review)

This book explores correlations between Piers Plowmanand the teachings of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and other philosophers whose works were prominent in Langland's lifetime. Analysis focuses on the will (allegorically Will, the Dreamer) as possessing freedom and natural dominance within a subordinate matrix of reason and the other cognitive faculties. Following an introduction that announces this thesis and a chapter that surveys relevant aspects of fourteenth-century thought, The Philosophy of Piers Plowmanselectively traces Will's intellectual, moral, and spiritual journey through the B-text. Some of the synergies detected in passing, for example with contemporary contemplative works like The Cloud of Unknowing(pp. 15–16), suggest directions for future research. Meanwhile this study's obvious though unstated foundation on a present-day Christian faith has inspired an interpretation that may prove as fruitful in the long term as sceptical readings drawing on recent literary and social theories. More accessible and engaging in its later chapters, David Strong's book poses a refreshing challenge to the critical status quo.

A compressed version of the argument is as follows: Chapters 3 and 4 consider Piers's earlier Passūs as dedicated to social, political, and legal rights and freedoms, the acquisition of knowledge, and the limits of cognition. Chapter 3 examines Will's encounters with Holy Church, Mede, Conscience, and Reason. Strong understands these as demonstrating, in accordance with Ockham's theory of individual rights, that singular acts of charity 'can supersede socially adjudicated mores' (p. 54). Chapter 4 applies Scotus's and Ockham's distinction between 'intuitive' and 'abstractive' cognition to Will's conversations in the middle Passūs with Piers, the two friars, Study, and Ymagynatyf.

By contrast, Chapters 5 to 7 of this book focus on the affective concerns of later Passūs as privileging the need to love rather than know God (p. 7). In arguing for the will's primacy over reason and the sensory appetites, Chapter 5 compares selected contemporary ideas to Langland's distinctive formulations as mediated by Animaand Liberum Arbitrium. Chapter 6 proceeds to elucidate Will's further encounters in Passūs 16 to 17 as showing how, by privileging charity, 'a properly functioning will' furthers the simple goal of loving God rightly and in himself (pp. 135–36). After arguing for analogies between Scotus's affectio commodiand affectio iustitiae, and the choice that Will must make between personal ambition and working diligently with others, Chapter 6 skilfully articulates Scotus's and Ockham's overlapping views on cooperation between human faculties as producing morally upright actions (pp. 150–58). Application of these ideas to negative examples like the drunken Brewer leads to the conclusion that, since the divine transcends the rational, Langland's characters attain wisdom only when society judges them to be foolish (p. 155). This book's analysis of Passus 20 again opposes the scholarly trend by seeing Will's interlocutor Need as an immoral as much as amoral figure. Countering Need and his effects therefore depends ultimately on human choice, that is, on Will.

The seventh and most articulate chapter of The Philosophy of Piers Plowmanseeks to justify what most critics regard as the anti-climactic ending to Will's quest. Kynde's simple counsel: 'Lerne to love […] and leef alle othere' (Passus 20, line 208), overflows with the plenitude of Will's discoveries throughout his wanderings and the reader's throughout the poem. Will has rebounded from one personified figure of learning to another, only to find that human beings' rational faculties cannot guarantee fulfilment (p. 171). Accordingly, he abandons his quest in Unity, and Conscience—a faculty that transcends reason—takes his place. With a laugh that marks his realization of the underlying goodness of their vocation, Conscience grants entrance also to the friars, whose commitment...