Abstract
Normore's chapter focuses on the metaphysical issues stemming from Buridan's conception of the union of body and soul, also considered in the broader context of the union of substantial form and matter in general. Normore's argument traces in particular the rather strange metaphysical and mereological ramifications of Buridan's “homogeneity-thesis” of material substances (the thesis that all material substances by themselves, without their accidental dispositions, must be homogeneous: every quantitative part of a material substance is of the same kind as is the whole), as presented in Buridan's difficult discussion in Book II, q. 7.
Thanks to audiences at the Fordham meeting on Buridan’s De Anima, and at the XVII Inter-American Congress of Philosophy in Salvador, Brazil. Special thanks to Deborah Brown, Rodrigo Guerizoli, Peter King, Gyula Klima, Henrik Lagerlund, and Cristinae Negreiros Abbud Ayoub. Very special thanks to Peter Sobol and Jack Zupko who pioneered this field and on whose work this paper relies. I’ve tried to indicate the most pressing debts in the text but there remain many others!
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Notes
- 1.
References to Buridan and to other ‘primary’ works are inserted in the body of this paper and are to works identified in the Bibliography by abbreviation. References to secondary literature are given in forrnotes and are to works identified in the Bibliography by year of publication.
- 2.
Cf. Kupreeva (1999).
- 3.
“Nam secundo Topicorum dicit Aristoteles quod illud dicimus simpliciter quod dicimus sine additamento; et illud dicimus secundum quid quod dicimus cum additamento. Modo quando fit substantia, ut aer vel aqua vel lapis, nos dicimus simpliciter et sine additamento ‘hoc factum est’, quia hoc est et ipsum ante non erat. Sed quando est generatio accidentis, ut si ille lapis fiat albus vel calidus, nos non dicimus simpliciter ‘hoc factum est’, sed cum additamento dicimus ‘hoc factum est album’ vel ‘hoc factum est calidum’. Et causa huius est quia simpliciter et absolute loquendo illud pronomen ‘hoc’ demonstrat substantiam per se subsistentem et non aliquod accidens. Unde si quaeritur simpliciter ‘quid est hoc?’, tu respondebis nomen substantiale, ut quod hoc est lapis aut aer aut aqua” (Streijger et al. 2010, 69).
- 4.
Buridan does frequently refer to matter as ‘pure potency’ (pura potentia), but he means by this not that matter potentially exists but, in line with the analysis of ‘potency’ above, that matter as such can be the subject of any substantial form.
- 5.
For a somewhat more extended treatment of Buridan’s general ontology, cf.Normore (1985). Normore there claims, however, that particular forms and particular parcels of matter “are not substances in the fullest sense” (194). In fact, they are truly substances, though they are not ‘substances per se subsisting’. See more on this issue below.
- 6.
An item foreign to Ockham’s ontology—though whether he can do without it is less clear. Cf. McCord Adams (1985).
- 7.
Cf. Buridan QMETA V, q. 6?
- 8.
In QPHYS I, q. 8, he writes: “were the magnitude removed from the matter through the divine power, still, that matter would have mutually distinct parts, though it would not have parts located outside or inside because the location which is the ground (ratio) of magnitude would have been removed”.
- 9.
“Et causa huius est materia et condicio eius, quia natura primae materiae est quod non potest subsistere naturaliter sine forma substantiali nec potest simul habere plures formas substantiales, ut isti dicerent” (Streijger et al. 2010, 77).
- 10.
For discussion of Buridan’s use of the distinction between two ways of occupying a place, cf. Jack Zupko’s seminal (1993) work.
- 11.
Cf. Buridan QMETA VII, q. 2 (f. 42v) “It is true that Aristotle would not have conceded that matter and form were united and composed together through some disposition added to the subject like whiteness and human, because he thought substantial as well as accidental forms inseparable from their subjects through any power except for the corruption of the subject, but because we hold from faith that they can be separated and conserved separated, therefore it seems necessary to hold an added disposition or inherence, namely an inherence of the form in the matter” (trans. Zupko).
- 12.
And in QDA III, q. 5, n. 19 he adds “As for the second argument it is said that God can supernaturally create, without any matter, or even in matter, many forms or substances of the same kind and of the same most specific species.”
- 13.
One reason this is puzzling is that since Buridan thinks magnitudes have their own being distinct from the being of matter, one would expect that a form separated from matter could have a magnitude, and it is hard to see how this could be so unless it had part outside of part.
- 14.
QDA II, q. 9, n. 25. See the passage quoted in the previous chapter in this volume.
- 15.
For supposition, as it is taken here, is the taking of a term in a proposition for some thing or things, so that when they are pointed out by the pronouns ‘this’ or ‘these’, or equivalent ones, the term is truly affirmed of the pronoun by means of the copula of the proposition. For example, in the proposition ‘A horse runs’ the term ‘horse’ supposits for every horse that exists, for of whichever is pointed out it would be true to say: ‘This is a horse’. And in the proposition ‘A horse ran’ the term ‘horse’ supposits for every horse that exists or existed, because it would be true to say of every such, if it were pointed out: ‘This is or was a horse’; and the same goes for the future. And I say disjunctively ‘is or was’, for although a verb of past or future tense ampliates supposition to past or future things, it does not eliminate supposition for present things. We should speak in a similar manner about possibility, for if I say ‘A horse can walk’, the term ‘horse’ supposits for every horse that exists or can exist, for, while pointing it out, it would be true to say: ‘this is or can be a horse’ (Klima 2001, 886).
- 16.
QDA II, q. 7 “Item non ponimus quod anima sensitiva equi sit composita ex partibus, scilicet ex substantiis diversarum rationum, sed ex partibus eiusdem rationis, sicut erat forma aeris. Sed propter homogenitatem in talibus homogeniis, partes recipiunt praedicationes totius quantum ad praedicata quidditativa. Sic enim quaelibet pars materie est materia, quaelibet pars formae est forma, quaelibet pars quantitativa aeris est aer et aquae aqua, et sic de aliis. Sed ultra manifestum est, si animal solum componitur ex materia partium eiusdem rationis et anima etiam partium eiusdem rationis, quod est totum homogenium quantum ad partes eius.”
- 17.
Robert Pasnau has drawn attention to thinkers like Buridan’s contemporary John of Jandun who thought (as we do?!) that sufficiently small parts of horseflesh would not be horseflesh and so, presumably, not horse. Buridan’s discussion may well be framed with this controversy in mind. Cf. Pasnau (2011, ch. 4).
- 18.
Buridan does insist however, that only substances per se subsisting (i.e.) whole substances are entities properly speaking. Cf. QDA III, q. 4 where he writes: “To the fourth counter-instance it will be said that nothing is called a human being or an animal in familiar and ordinary speech except the whole substance, i.e. that which is not part of another substance. Nor is any substance strictly called an entity, whether by a substantial form, or in another manner (and especially in organic things), unless it is a whole substance.”
- 19.
“because the intellect, sense, and vegetative powers in a man are the same on the part of the soul, as I now assume.”
- 20.
Buridan’s commitment to what Jack Zupko has called the Homogeneity Principle commits him also to the claim that it is in virtue of the way its matter is organized that a living non-human animal manifests its sensitive powers. In another text to which Zupko has drawn attention Buridan writes:
“But you reasonably raise the question whether the soul in the foot of a horse has the power to see. And I say that it does, talking about the principal and remote power, for in itself it is capable of sight, and it would see from the foot if God and nature were to form an eye for it in the foot. But it does not have, in the foot, the proximate power to see, since by a proximate power we are supposed to understand either the dispositions required together with the principal agent or the principal power itself having the dispositions it requires for its operation. And when it is without these dispositions, then it is called a remote power. And this power is not in vain in the foot, for there it carries out other operations...” (QDA II, q. 5, n. 27)
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Normore, C. (2017). Buridan on the Metaphysics of the Soul. In: Klima, G. (eds) Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51763-6_4
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