CHAPTER XXX

THE SCHOLASTIC ARISTOTLE, PLATONISM, AND NICHOLAS OF CUSA

I

THE Catholic philosophy of the Middle Ages through the whole course of its development evinces general characteristics which never were more strongly marked than at its culmination in the system of Aquinas. Still with the great Dominican, as before him, Scholasticism was acceptant, reverential, largely engaged in appropriation and re-expression; it was extremely formal through its endeavor to appropriate and re-express, and because the formal logic of Aristotle had been the chief moulding instrument. Furtherance of salvation was still the supreme sanction of knowledge; and the highest task of the philosopher was still to use his knowledge in the service of theology, and demonstrate philosophy's handmaidenly accord with revealed Christian truth. The system of Aquinas exemplified this hardly won and soon to be lost coöperation between authority and reason, so necessary for a philosophical theology which had to digest the solid facts of revelation.

Intellectual conditions, past and present, contributed to the achievement of Aquinas, and conspired to render his Summa (along with Gothic cathedrals and the Roman de la Rose!) the typical constructions of the time. Much of humanity's best intelligence had long been consecrated to the Catholic or scholastic theology-philosophy. In spite of controversies and divergencies of attitude among its thoughtful, academic, and usually quite orthodox, promoters, the lines of progress had tended to draw together towards a common method and unity of system. This unity finally was established through the action of the

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two closely connected intellectual forces which were promoting the advance of knowledge in the thirteenth century. One was the growth of Universities, facilitating the exchange of thought, and making for its academic ordering. The other was the introduction, first, of the full logical Organon of Aristotle, and then of the body of his substantial philosophy. As a result a genuine, and the most comprehensive, classic system of philosophy replaced the current heterogeneous Augustinian Platonism. It brought a revolutionary enlargement of Scholasticism, and led to that final attainment of form and method, through which these mighty Dominicans recast the Stagirite's philosophy in a Christian scheme.

The scheme of Aquinas seemed complete: seemed to be such that nothing could be added or taken away. It might be criticised, its premises might be impugned, its method attacked, its conclusions shattered. But to augment or develop it as a whole was not possible. Moreover, from the close of the thirteenth century, the times were unfavorable even for the continuance of the scholastic unity. There was an effective difference between the Papacy at Rome and the Papacy broken by the French king and domiciled at Avignon; there had come a corresponding change in the attitude of Europe. The universal unity of ecclesiastical Catholicism no longer reflected convincingly the power of God above. This depotentiation of the principle of Church universality affected Scholasticism, and was in turn affected by the modification of scholastic principles.

Two men half blood

one of the full blood, the other of the of the scholastics were fatally to impugn the joinder of dialectic and authority as supporters of Theology. Duns Scotus proved, through tomes of metaphysics, that Theology was not a speculative science, but a pragmatic means for salvation, and that it was based (however rational its contents) upon revelation and not on dialectic. Occam, more unreservedly than his master Duns, argued against the testing of Theology by reason, and restricted further the sphere of demonstrable truth: the verities of Scripture are absolute, and neither require

nor admit the proofs of reason; Theology stands upon faith.

There was matter in Occam's teaching which could be turned to uses scandalously destructive of human certitude. Had he not shown how difficult was the proof of any correspondence between the propositions formed by the mind and the material realities of the world? Occamism was very popular; at Paris, for example. It was condemned time and again before as well as after the middle of the fourteenth century; but it was held by men of high repute for propriety of thought. Not against these were the papal censures directed, but against such an independent thinker as Nicholas of Autrecourt, who was affected by Occam's doctrines. Almost from his student years at Paris, his ideas began to disturb the authorities, and his opinions were finally condemned by the Avignon Papal Curia in 1349. Before then, this disturber of accepted thought had fled to Louis of Bavaria. Nicholas criticized the principle of causality, by holding positively that from the existence of one thing, the existence of another thing could not validly be deduced. He also denied the possibility of any certain knowledge of Substance, as something underlying the impressions made upon our senses. We have, therefore, no sure criterion. of the truth of our perceptions, nor any certain knowledge as to the existence of material things. Likewise as to the soul; we experience its acts, but have no knowledge of its substance, of any spiritual substance. He scouted the authority of Aristotle at every turn, and, apparently adopting the doctrines of the ancient atomists, would regard all natural processes merely as the coming together and dispersion of atoms.1

After the deaths of Duns and Occam, scholasticism became decadent, overloaded with logic, and inflated to perdition with words and sterile subtleties. There was no originality or progress left in it; and if men who were recognized scholastics, like Albertus of Saxonia or Meis

1 See Joseph Lappe, Nicholaus von Autrecourt, etc. (Baeumker's Beiträge, Munster, 1908); Rashdall, Nicholas de Ultricuria, a mediaeval Hume. (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N. S., Vol. VII, 1906–7.)

ter Eckhart, were thinking and observing progressively, it was outside, rather than within, the circle of Catholic philosophy. There were still to be hundreds of profes sors teaching scholastic doctrines, who may be classed as Thomists, Scotists, Occamists. But they could not satisfy the insistence upon actuality which was dawning about them. Neither the understanding of life nor the sense of reality was with them: Non ragioniam di lor — let us not discourse of them. One merely need remember that even in the sixteenth century the universities still philosophized mainly from this same manifold volume of mediaeval thinking; while more independent thinkers drew from it their philosophic education, and found difficulty in divesting themselves of its categories and forms of expression.

Inspired by the revival of classical studies, and strengthened with the new knowledge of Greek, some men in the fifteenth and others in the sixteenth century sought to correct the mediaeval Aristotle with a better knowledge of his unadulterated doctrines, or were inclined to replace him with bits of the older Greek philosophies, or the teachings of Zeno, Pyrrho or Epicurus; while some would reinstate the blessed Plato and his Neo-platonic school. This independent or haphazard levying upon remote and noble sources was another factor in the philosophy of these centuries.

It would not have come into play but for the increase of knowledge and the development of taste and faculty which had taken place. If this human growth was shown in the Platonic revival and a more promiscuous levying upon the Ancients, it manifested itself more vitally and potently in the time's own philosophic contribution, its more original thinking. There had been a goodly lifting of men's eyes from parchment scrolls, and a fresh directing of them to natural phenomena; while the mind, with renewed freedom, was also reflecting upon humanity. A more independent view of the data and doctrines of philosophy, a more living conception of the forces of nature, and at last a reversal of the whole vision of the

universe, became vital elements in the philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The scholastic Aristotelianism of the period was an academic waste, where men delivered expositions of the great schoolmen, or compiled commentaries upon Aquinas, altogether adding little to the world's understanding of life. In them dwelt the "instruction obtainable at the leading universities," in France, England, Germany, Italy. The reviving currents of Platonism had little effect upon this scholastic backwater; nor, until the seventeenth century, was it stirred by the new science and philosophy. Aristotelianism still was needed to steady men's minds, and as the source and stay of philosophic method. The most valuable Aristotelian labors were not those of the Dominican Cajetan (1468-1534) with his commentary upon the Summa of Aquinas, but rather (those of the Protestant Melanchthon (1497-1560), seeking to simplify and utilize Aristotle's philosophy for the advancement of education in Germany, and as an aid to morals. This paragon of scholarship and eclectic thinking, with his genius for simplification, worked into his epoch-making text-books not only Aristotelian doctrines, but others which suited him from the store of antique thought. He deemed Aristotelian method of utmost importance, saying: "magnam doctrinarum confusionem secuturam esse, si Aristotles neglectus fuerit, qui unus ac solus est methodi artifex."2 Certainly such a confusion did come upon the thought of the period, from the cult of various Greek philosophers, and an uncritical heaping together of their diverse opinions.

II

The revival of Platonism makes a picturesque and interesting story; one must not be beguiled into overestimating its importance. Plato had never ceased to be a name to conjure with. He was treated with reverence

2 Cited by Ueberweg-Heinze, Ges. der Philosophie, p. 27 (10th ed.), B'd III, from Speech of 1536, in Corp. Ref., XI, S. 282.