ARISTOTELIANISM.

Aristotelianism is the tradition that stressed the theoretical "sciences" rather than the practical disciplines in Aristotle's encyclopedia of the disciplines, and within the theoretical disciplines the systematic presentation of "true and certain" knowledge rather than the inductive search for its principles.

Greek Aristotelianism

The edition of Aristotle's works made by Andronicus of Rhodes (fl. c. 70–c. 50 b.c.e.) established the knowledge of a comprehensive, structured body of demonstrated conclusions as Aristotle's ideal of science. The works of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. 200), the first great commentator on Aristotle, complemented this view of the philosopher's scientific corpus. The Neoplatonic movement attempted to harmonize the thought of Plato and Aristotle as the two great representatives of the Greek tradition. The tradition of commentary on Aristotle as an introduction to the higher wisdom of Plato was represented at Athens by two works that transformed Aristotle's encyclopedia into an idealistic system. The Elementatio theologica (Rudiments of theology) and the Elementatio physica (Rudiments of physics) of Proclus (410?–485) exhibit all forms of substance as deriving from a single first principle, the Platonic One.

Alexandrian exegesis of Aristotle's text, following Ammonius Hermiae, a pagan (fl. c.550), was more independent. John Philoponus, a Christian (fl. c. 529), even contested various Aristotelian notions. His introduction of the Judeo-Christian idea of creation into philosophy rendered Proclus's entire system questionable. These Alexandrian developments determined, in large measure, the approach to Aristotle's philosophy in the Byzantine world. Plato and Aristotle were regarded as representatives of "Hellenic philosophy," as part of a pagan tradition, generally opposed to "our (Christian) philosophy." The interest of Christian theologians in Aristotle was mostly limited to the parts of his logic necessary in theology, although under the dynasty of the Komnenoi (11th–12th century), Aristotle's practical philosophy enjoyed a rebirth with the commentary on the Ethics put together by Eustratius of Nicaea (1054–c. 1117). After the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders in 1204, the necessity of answering the challenge of an increasingly sophisticated Latin theology led to the composition of compendia of Aristotelian doctrine, although the debate regarding Aristotelian methods of proof continued.

Arabic Aristotelianism

By the ninth century practically the entire corpus of Aristotle's works, together with those of his Greek commentators, had been made available in Islam. Aristotle's classification of the natural sciences supplied the structure for an encyclopedia in which classical authors like Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 377 b.c.e.) and Galen (129–c. 199), Euclid (fl. c. 300 b.c.e.) and Ptolemy (second century c.e.) also found a place. The understanding of science as a body of strictly demonstrated conclusions was decisive for Islamic Aristotelianism. In their commentaries on this enormous body of new doctrine, Arabic philosophers tended to comment on the logic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy as parts of a philosophical encyclopedia; few commentaries on the practical philosophy were written. Muslim thinkers opposed studies concerned with their own way of life, called the "Arabic or traditional sciences" (the Koran; traditions; kalam, or dialectical theology; and the like), to the "Greek or rational sciences," associated for the most part with Aristotle's name. Kalam's task was to supply the faithful with logical proofs for their belief, but its methods of proof forced the Aristotelian philosophers to refine their idea of scientific methodology.

In his Catalogue of the Sciences, the Persian philosopher, al-Farabi (c. 878–c. 950) attempted to fit the "traditional sciences of the Arabs" into the Aristotelian division of the sciences. The doctrine of God is taken up under the theoretical science of metaphysics, whereas kalam is regarded as a part of politics, with the function of defending the articles of faith. Al-Farabi demanded that the theologians provide strict demonstrations in defense of Muslim doctrine. About a century later, another Persian philosopher, the famous physician Avicenna (980–1037), undertook to reform kalam in accordance with the Aristotelian theory of demonstrative science and understood kalam not as a part of politics, but rather as metaphysics. Through the Persian theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111), Avicenna's conception of logical proof was influential in Muslim theology. Averroës (1126–1198), writing in Muslim Spain, also confronted the theologians with Aristotle's idea of demonstrative science, stressing the truth and certainty of Aristotle's presentation of theoretical science.

Medieval Jewish Materialism

Medieval Judaism also needed Aristotelian science and the logic that went with it. Where conflicts between philosophy and the Jewish faith appeared, some thinkers—of whom Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) was the most significant—held that philosophical speculation must proceed according to the theory of demonstrative science, without regard for theological doctrine. Only when the philosophical and theological doctrines have been clearly defined can one ask how the two realms are related. In spite of this view, an increasingly critical evaluation of Aristotle's doctrines in the light of the Jewish faith appeared in the fourteenth century.

Medieval Latin Aristotelianism

The works of Aristotle were made available in the Latin West in three clearly distinguishable stages. The first stage opened in the sixth century with Boethius's (c. 480–c. 524) translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, along with some notions transmitted by Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.). Such works had but little effect upon the monastic life of the early Middle Ages. The second stage began in the twelfth century with the gradual translation of the entire corpus of Aristotle's works. Working in the tradition of the concordia discordantium (reconciliation of disagreements), Scholastic teachers made the epoch-making decision not to try to separate—as the Byzantines and Muslims before them had done—their own religious disciplines from the profane sciences inherited from the ancients. They attempted rather to situate theological teaching within the Aristotelian classification of the sciences. The masters were guided at first by Boethius and then by Euclid. In his De hebdomadibus (Concerning the weekly conferences), Boethius described the organization of scientific knowledge much as Aristotle had done, and early authors sought to develop a general theory of scientific method from it. Gilbert de La Porrée (1076–1154) maintained, for example, that first principles can be established for all the liberal arts and in the same way for theology itself. Nicholas of Amiens (fl. c. 1190) in his Ars fidei catholicae (Art of the Catholic faith) attempted to present theological doctrine in accordance with Euclid's geometrical model.

The condemnation in 1210 and 1215 of Aristotle's libri naturales (books of natural philosophy) at Paris was followed by an intense effort to axiomatize the quadrivial sciences. The attempt was most successful in the science of optics, a science subalternate to geometry. But the philosophers also turned their attention to Aristotle's theory of science. Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175–1253) commented on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, explaining that "science" means true and certain knowledge derived by syllogistic demonstration from first principles. Accordingly, the theologians undertook to transform their discipline into an Aristotelian science. In his Summa aurea (Golden compendium), William of Auxerre (c. 1150–1231) proposed taking the articles of faith as the principles of theological demonstration, on the basis of which Catholic theology could be presented as a structured body of strictly demonstrated conclusions. This lead was followed in particular by the Dominican theologians of the early part of the century.

By about 1230 the Latins had at their disposal the complete body of Aristotelian teaching together with Averroës's commentaries. The Aristotelian paradigm for science was established institutionally in the year 1255, when Aristotle's works were prescribed for the lectures in the Paris arts faculty. Working within this paradigm, the Latins made, in the course of the next two centuries, enormous progress not only in mathematics and the physical sciences, but also in the Aristotelian practical philosophy, following new translations of the Ethics and Politics. Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280) was among the first to turn his attention to the complete Aristotelian encyclopedia. His paraphrases of all of the fundamental works in Aristotle's encyclopedia prepared the way for the vast commentatory literature through which the Middle Ages assimilated Aristotelian science.

The Aristotelian paradigm was also taken up by the theologians, most prominently by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). At this period the theologians were faced with the same problem as that which confronted the masters of arts—the systematic presentation of a body of traditional knowledge. In Thomas's view, theology should present the teaching of Scripture and the church fathers deductively, taking its departure from the indemonstrable, but to the Christian evident, articles of faith. Thomas sought to establish a concord between Aristotle's conclusions and revealed doctrine. While Christian doctrines could not be proved, their acceptance was thought to be able to be shown at least reasonable because congruent with basic philosophical conclusions that Aristotle was thought to have demonstrated.

Anomalies in this paradigm appeared even in the thirteenth century. About the year 1250, as Averroës's real position on the immortality of the human soul became known, the Latins came increasingly to distinguish between the teaching of Aristotle and that of Averroës. But in the year 1277 the bishop of Paris condemned 219 propositions—of which the majority represented Aristotelian positions—because they entailed consequences contrary to revealed doctrine. In the light of the condemnation, John Duns Scotus (1266?–1308) proposed a new conception of the theoretical sciences. His claim that the first object of the intellect is not sensible reality, but, rather, being as such, made it possible to study corporeal reality in a metaphysical way in contradistinction to the corporeal reality studied by the Aristotelian physics. The fact that many of Aristotle's doctrines were in apparent conflict with Christian teaching helped the philosophers to adjust the metaphysical assumptions that lay behind many of his positions, especially in astronomy. Aided by the Aristotelian idea that the individual sciences are autonomous in their own realm, philosophers like John Buridan (c. 1295–c. 1358) were able to develop theories in physics that were independent of Aristotle's treatment, while mathematicians like Nicole d'Oresme (c. 1325–1382) turned to areas that Aristotle had neglected.

Renaissance Aristotelianisms

During the third and final stage in the evolution of Latin Aristotelianism, the traditional conception of the Aristotelian encyclopedia of the sciences became increasingly untenable. This period began in the year 1438 with the arrival of the Greeks at the Council of Florence. The aged philosopher George Gemistus Plethon (c. 1355–1450 or 1455) charged the Latins not only with being unacquainted with Platonic philosophy, but also with misunderstanding Aristotle's teaching. These misunderstandings arose because the Latins had been misled by Averroës to believe that the philosopher's works contained a demonstrative summary of scientific truth. Nevertheless, the Renaissance witnessed a vast increase in the literature of commentary on Aristotle's works. But at the same time Aristotelianism became but one among many philosophies, with Platonism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism also claiming attention. And the hierarchically unified worldview offered by Scholastic Aristotelianism had by the sixteenth century broken down, so that we must speak, in this period, not of one, but of several Aristotelianisms.

Catholic Aristotelianism.

The encounter of the Christian Aristotelianism adumbrated by Thomas Aquinas with a secular Aristotelianism that had arisen in the Italian medical faculties resulted in the radical transformation of the Aristotelian speculative sciences in the sixteenth century. The Scholastic understanding of Aristotle's science of human nature was challenged in particular by Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), who maintained that according to Aristotle the doctrine of the soul belongs to physics as a part of the doctrine dealing with corpus animatum (animated physical bodies). Because the soul is a material form, it is impossible to prove its immortality. The proponents of Christian Aristotelianism took up this challenge. They sought to retain Aristotle's deductive theory of science but were forced to modify radically Aristotle's ideas of the subject matter of natural philosophy. Their efforts were based on the search for metaphysical rather than physical proofs for the soul's immortality. Dominicans like Tommaso de Vio (Cajetan, 1469–1534) and Crisostomo Javelli (d. c. 1538) and Jesuits like Benito Perera (c. 1535–1610) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) constructed a new science of metaphysics based on the revealed idea of creation. The high point of this development was reached with the publication of Suárez's Disputationes metaphysicae (Metaphysical disputations) at Salamanca in 1597. Suárez retained the Aristotelian–Scholastic understanding of science and used the Scotist distinction of reality into ens infinitum, ens creatum immateriale, and ens creatum materiale (infinite being, immaterial created being, and material created being) to render the growing crisis of the Aristotelian physics as the science of corpus mobile (changeable physical bodies) irrelevant to Scholastics.

Italian secular Aristotelianism.

Constrained by the immense amount of scientific material that the Renaissance had recovered, Aristotelian authors in Italy wrote increasingly during the sixteenth century about the teaching of this new body of doctrine and sought to situate Aristotle's theory of science within a broader context. Jacopo Zabarella (1533–1589), professor at Padua, was the author who brought these developments together most successfully in his tract De methodis (On method) of 1578. He distinguished scientific "method" from "orders" of presentation. There are two "methods" of discovery: (1) the compositive or synthetic method, which is the demonstrative method of "science," as Aristotle had conceived it; and (2) the resolutive or analytic method belonging to the operative disciplines or "arts," which begin with the end of an action and seek to discover the means and principles by which this end may be attained. "Orders" of presentation are simply ways of presenting the available material clearly. There are two "orders" corresponding to the two "methods" described above.

Lutheran Aristotelianism.

Despite Luther's rejection of Aristotle, the Aristotelian conception of science gained a central place in Protestant universities. Lutheran authors of the late sixteenth century tended to regard theology as a practical science and, following Zabarella, came to think that theological doctrine should be presented according to the analytic "order." In his Epitome theologiae (Epitome of theology) of 1619, Georg Calixt (1586–1656) first applied Zabarella's idea of the analytic method to theology. But the Formula concordiae (Formula of concord) of 1577 established a Lutheran orthodoxy, and philosophical textbooks, like the Exercitationes metaphysicae (1603–1604; Metaphysical exercises) of the Wittenberg professor Jacob Martini (1570–1649) and the Metaphysica commentatio (1605; A metaphysical commentary) of Cornelius Martini (1568–1621) of Helmstedt, turned to the metaphysics proposed by Suárez, which all those who admitted the idea of creation could accept. Their understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology opened the way for the free development in Lutheranism of a natural theology as a theoretical science, presented in accordance with Zabarella's synthetic order. The first independent treatise on Theologia naturalis (Natural theology) was published by Christoph Scheibler (1589–1653) at Giessen in 1621.

Calvinist Aristotelianism.

Reformed theologians of the early seventeenth century regarded their science as essentially theoretical. In the works of authors like Bartholomew Keckermann (1571/73–1609) of Heidelberg and Danzig, Clemens Timpler (1567–1624) of Heidelberg and Steinfurt, and Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) of Herborn, the idea of a synthetic presentation of doctrine was maintained, but the encyclopedia of the disciplines was enlarged and transformed by a theory of the arts, a "technology." Reformed theologians began to use the term "system" for ordered compilations of Christian teaching. For the Marburg professor Rudolph Goclenius (1547–1628), who used the word for the first time in his Lexicon philosophicum (1613; A philosophical lexicon), "ontology" has the role of assigning to each of the scientific disciplines its proper place in this new encyclopedia of the practical, productive disciplines.

Neo-Scholasticism.

The last edition of the Latin text of Aristotle's works was published by the Jesuit Silvester Maurus (1619–1687) in the year 1668. After the Thirty Years' War, Protestant Aristotelianism generally disappeared. But Catholic Scholasticism continued to enjoy a shadowy existence in the seminaries decreed by the Council of Trent (1545–1563). A new literary form appeared, the cursus philosophicus, a summary of Scholastic teaching in philosophy, generally written in the form of disputations on the works of Aristotle. The purpose of the cursus was to provide the basic philosophical knowledge necessary for the study of Catholic theology, and it tended increasingly to return to the teaching of one of the great thirteenth-century doctors, like Thomas Aquinas (Thomism) and Duns Scotus (Scotism).

Modern Study of Aristotle

The Neo-Scholasticism of the nineteenth century thought of Aristotle's philosophy as a response to the Enlightenment's rejection of a worldview in which revelation appeared necessary and its acceptance reasonable. The cursus found the support of the Catholic Church in Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris of 1879 and various pieces of legislation concerning the instruction in seminaries. The Dominican and Jesuit orders followed the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, while the Franciscan order followed that of Duns Scotus, both emphasizing Aristotle's metaphysics, even for cosmological and psychological questions.

The publication by the Berlin Academy of the Aristotelis opera between 1831 and 1870 and of the Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca between 1882 and 1909 has supplied the basis for the modern study of Aristotle and the Greek tradition of his philosophy. The Aristoteles latinus, undertaken by the Union Académique Internationale in 1939 for the edition of the medieval Latin translations, two collections of the Latin translations of the Greek commentaries, as well as a series of English translations of them, have contributed to a new understanding of Aristotelianism in the twentieth century.

See also Greek Science ; Islamic Science ; Logic ; Metaphysics ; Natural History ; Natural Law ; Natural Theology ; Philosophy and Religion in Western Thought ; Platonism ; Scholasticism .

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Charles H. Lohr