Abstract
This chapter introduces the three key philosophical positions illuminating Will’s sojourn: natural rights, intuitive cognition, and a voluntarism founded upon the will’s freedom to act against reason’s dictates and initiate a moral action. After discussing their applicability to the sojourn, a discussion of Scholasticism’s historical import provides a foundation to show the innovation of Scotus and Ockham. Their epistemology and theories of the will establish new ways of conceiving cognitive surety and how this knowledge aids in generating charitable acts. Isolating one theory from another one limits their full meaning, for each acquires a greater significance when understood in relation to the other. This matrix of thought generates a profound understanding of the individual, namely Will, and what he is capable of achieving. Their interdependence not only serves as a vital hermeneutic for Piers but also proves that a literary expression of philosophy works bilaterally, fostering a deepened awareness of the other discipline. The text’s overriding question, thus, lies not in how faith drives Will’s search forward, but which choices respond most efficaciously to God’s goodness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Aers’s critical interest, however, sidesteps the scholastics and rests upon the Augustinian elements. David Aers, Beyond Reformation? (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2015); Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-century Theology (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2009); Harwood, Problem of Belief.
- 2.
Aers, Beyond Reformation?, 159
- 3.
Middleton, “Narration and Invention,” 100.
- 4.
Nicolette Zeeman, Piers Plowman and the Medieval Discourse of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 202.
- 5.
Patrick J. Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997).
- 6.
Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway, “Christian Philosophy in Piers Plowman,” The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman, eds. Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 139.
- 7.
Ibid., 139.
- 8.
Aers, Salvation and Sin.
- 9.
Augustine’s view of the will gradually shifts from a Greek intellectualism toward a voluntarism, though this voluntarism never acquires the powers that Scotus and Ockham accord it. His earliest discussion lies in On Free Choice of the Will, which interprets the will as the basis of moral responsibility. “[M]an obtains virtues by adapting his spirit to the immutable rules and lights of those virtues which dwell incorruptible in truth itself and in common wisdom, to which the virtuous man has adapted himself and fitted his spirit. The man seeking virtue has determined to imitate this spirit, because it is endowed with virtue” (Free Choice, bk. II, ch. 19, p. 82).
- 10.
Augustine, On Order, I.11, n. 32; City of God, VIII.2.
- 11.
Joseph Wittig, “Piers Plowman B, Passus IX-XII: Elements in the Design of the Inward Journey,” Traditio 28 (1972): 211–80; In Beyond Reformation, David Aers writes extensively upon the poem’s reliance upon Augustinian elements as they pervade late medieval thought.
- 12.
Schmidt, “Scholastic Philosophy,” 232–47.
- 13.
Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
- 14.
Janet Coleman, Piers Plowman and the Moderni (Roma: Edizioini di Storia de Letteratura, 1981); D. Vance Smith, The Book of the Incipit: Beginnings in the Fourteenth Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Harwood, Problem of Belief.
- 15.
Coleman, Moderni, 25.
- 16.
Smith, Book of the Incipit,172, 202.
- 17.
William of Ockham, Sent. I, d. 1, q. 6 (OTh I, 503). Thomas Aquinas maintains that the will, a positive inclination toward good, necessarily wills its final end or beatitude. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 82, a. 1–2. Hereafter cited as ST.
- 18.
Robert Adams, Langland and the Rokele Family: The Gentry Background to Piers Plowman (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 30.
- 19.
William J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 378.
- 20.
Lawrence Clopper sees the poem as a testament to a keen understanding of Franciscan ideology and history. Lawrence Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”: Langland and the Franciscans (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997; also see, Karnes’s work on Bonaventure in Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 63–110.
- 21.
Saint Bonaventurae, Opera omnia, vol. 2, Comm. II Libr. Sent., 25, eds. The Fathers of the Collegii S. Bonventurea, (Quaracchi, 1885), 603.
- 22.
Aquinas, ST I, q. 83, a. 1. Although he prioritizes practical rationality, the relation between the intellect and the will is a nuanced one where the will can acquire temporal priority in certain circumstances. See ST I, q. 82, a. 4.
- 23.
John Duns Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics 9, q. 15; Allan B. Wolter, trans., Duns Scotus On the Will & Morality (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 142
- 24.
Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1995), 147.
- 25.
William of Ockham, Opus Nonaginta Dierum, ed. J.G. Sikes and H.S. Offler, Opera Politica vols. I-II, (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1956–1974), 562; hereafter cited as OND.
- 26.
Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 27.
- 27.
For a detailed study of Kynde’s divers meanings, see Nicolette Zeeman, “The Condition of Kynde,” ed. David Aers, Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), 1–30.
- 28.
Ockham, Ordinatio I, d. 1, q. 6 (OTh I, 505), trans. Vesa Hirvonen, Passions in William Ockham’s Philosophical Psychology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), 116.
- 29.
Ockham, Quaest. variae, q. 5 (OTh VII, 179).
- 30.
In Quaest. variae, q. 5 (OTh VIII, 177–8), Ockham claims that it is evident that the human being does cognize his reflective acts in the intellect.
- 31.
Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, q. 3.
- 32.
Scotus, Rep. III, d. 27, q. un., n. 4.
- 33.
William of Ockham, Quodl., VII, q. 15 (OTh IX, 754).
- 34.
William of Ockham, Quodl. III, q. 14 (OTh IX, 257).
- 35.
Aristotle, On Interpretation, 17a37.
- 36.
Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence ch.2.11, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968), 42.
- 37.
The common nature signifies what is first presented to the intellect as something in its own right. The mind understands the nature of the object for what it is in itself before and apart from being a universal or particular. As such, it lacks any ability to exist. Properly speaking, it is no object at all. This metaphysical state enables it to be in some other singular than that in which it is; it is that by which distinct things formally agree. Scotus explains that “individuals [in the same species] differ, properly speaking, because they are diverse beings that are yet something the same” (Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1, q. 5; Spade, Problem of Universals, 101–2). For a scholarly view of this theory, see Richard Cross, “Divisibility, Communicability, and Predicability in Duns Scotus’s Theories of the Common Nature,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11.1 (2003): 43–63; Peter King, “Duns Scotus on the Common Nature,” Philosophical Topics 20 (1992): 50–76.
- 38.
Although this individual difference is usually referred to as haecceitas, Scotus employed the term “differentia individualis” more frequently. For a study into these usages, consult Parthenius Minges, Ioannis Duns Scoti doctrina philosophica et theologica, tom. I (Ad Claras Aquas: Ex typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1930), 66–7.
- 39.
Scotus expounds upon common nature, the individuating factor, and their relation in four works: Ordinatio II d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–6, Lectura II d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–6; Reportatio Parisiensis IIA d. 12, qq. 5–11; Quaestiones subtilissimae super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis VII q. 13.
- 40.
Scotus, Ordinatio II d. 3, p. 1, q. 1; Spade, Problem of Universals, 64. The nature is not of itself determined to singularity but is naturally prior to the aspect that contracts it to that singularity. And insofar as it is naturally prior to that contracting aspect, it is not incompatible with it to be without that contracting aspect.
- 41.
Ockham, Ordinatio, d. 2, q. 6; Spade, Problem of Universals, 171.
- 42.
Ockham, Ordinatio, d. 2, q. 6; Spade, Problem of Universals, 181.
- 43.
Ockham maintains the distinction between the parts and unity of the human being by positing a union among the parts of the substance which still enables the parts to remain really distinct. See Rep. III, q. 1 (OTh VI, 10).
- 44.
Scotus, Ordinatio II, d. 3. See John Duns Scotus, Early Oxford Lecture on Individuation, trans. Allan Wolter (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005), xxi.
- 45.
Philipp W. Rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought With Foucault (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 46.
- 46.
In Paris, a Statute of the Faculty of Arts (March 19, 1255) lists which texts are read: The Old Logic consisting of the Introduction of Porphyry, Categories, and On Interpretation; The New Logic consisting of Aristotle’s Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and Prior and Posterior Analytics; the Nichomachean Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, On Animals, On the Heaven, The Meteorology (Bk. 1), the Short Natural Treatises (On Sense, On Memory, On Sleeping and Waking. See Julius R. Weinberg, A Short History of Medieval Philosophy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 157.
- 47.
1 Corinthians 1.19–20.
- 48.
Timothy B. Noone, “Scholasticism,” in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, eds. Jorge J.E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 55. Even the Latin Averroists, who flexed their influence in the Paris Arts Faculty, seem to lie outside these bounds, they are still highly conscious of Scholasticism’s schema. This school of thought strove to separate the two disciplines, scrutinizing the value of philosophy as a necessary propaedeutic to Christian faith. Still, this approach did not undermine Christian intellectualism for all its practitioners. A prime example is Siger of Brabant; see John F. Wippel, “Siger of Brabant: what it means to proceed philosophically,” Was ist Philosophie in Mittelalter?, eds. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997), 490–6.
- 49.
For a critical review of the challenges to date this period, see Kent, Virtues of the Will, 1–94.
- 50.
Aquinas, ST I, q. 1, a. 2.
- 51.
Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3; q. 3, a. 4.
- 52.
Ibid., q. 1, a. 2 in Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason and Theology, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987), 22
- 53.
Ibid., q. 2, a. 3, p. 48.
- 54.
Leland Edward Wilshire, “The Condemnations of 1277 and the Intellectual Climate of the Medieval University,” The Intellectual Climate of the Early University: Essays in Honor of Otto Gründler, ed. Nancy Van Deusen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), 151–93.
- 55.
Bonaventure, Quaestiones disputatae de perfection evangelica, q. 2, a. 3; Op. Om. V, 162a.
- 56.
Steven P. Marrone, “Aristotle, Augustine and the Identity of Philosophy in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris: The Case of Some Theologians,” After the Condemnation of 1277, eds. Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery, Jr. and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28 (Berlin: Walter Gruyter, 2001), 278.
- 57.
Martin W.F. Stone, “Moral Psychology After 1277: Did the Parisian Condemnation Make a Difference to Philosophical Discussions of Human Agency?” After the Condemnation of 1277, eds. Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery, Jr. and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28 (Berlin: Walter Gruyter, 2001), 825.
- 58.
Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics IX, q. 15; Wolter, On the Will, 148.
- 59.
Mary Beth Ingham writes, “Scotus creatively interprets the metaphysical distinction between rational and irrational causes in order to attribute rational causality to the will and irrational causality to nature and, by extension, to the intellect” (“Self-Mastery and Rational Freedom: Duns Scotus’s Contribution to the Usus Pauper Debate,” Franciscan Studies 66 [2008]: 338).
- 60.
Cruz González-Ayesta, “Scotus’s Interpretation of the Difference between Voluntas ut Natura and Voluntas ut Voluntas,” Franciscan Studies 66 (2008): 383.
- 61.
Claudia Eisen Murphy, “Aquinas on Voluntary Beliefs,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2000): 576.
- 62.
Aquinas, ST I, q. 82, a. 4.
- 63.
González-Ayesta, “Scotus’s Interpretation,” 387.
- 64.
Wolter observes, “This affection for the advantageous is also characteristic of all human sense appetites. Hence it is not something proper or peculiar to a rational creature possessing intellect” (On the Will, 12).
- 65.
John Boler stresses that the affectio iustitiae should not be considered as the inclination of a nature higher than the intellectual, but rather as the capacity to transcend nature. “But while the affectio commodi is said to be ‘natural and necessary,’ neither affectio iustitiae nor the combination of the two affections is so described. One must be careful, therefore, not to treat affectio iustitiae as a higher appetite that realizes the potential of a higher nature” (“Transcending the Natural,” 117).
- 66.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 28; Wolter, On the Will, 287–91.
- 67.
Allan B. Wolter, “Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus,” The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 152. In this context, “nature” denotes a potency that is always determined by outside forces. The intellect exemplifies this potency, for it is determined to understanding and does not have it in its power to both understand and not understand (Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics Bk. IX, q. 15; Wolter, On the Will, 136–50).
- 68.
Ockham, Quodl. III, q. 1 (OTh IX, 207–8).
- 69.
Ockham, Quodl. VII, q. 15 (OTh IX, 754).
- 70.
Ockham, Quodl. III, q. 22 (OTh IX, 291).
- 71.
Hirvonen, Passions in William Ockham’s Philosophical Psychology, 96.
- 72.
Ockham, Sent. III, 11 (OTh VI, 389–90).
- 73.
Ockham, Quodl. III, q. 16 (OTh IX, 263).
- 74.
Frederick Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 225–9.
- 75.
Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 1–2.
- 76.
Kent, Virtues of the Will, 34.
- 77.
In his Rule of 1221 Francis writes, “In that love which is God, I entreat all my friars, whether they are given to preaching, praying, or manual labour, to do their best to humble themselves at every opportunity; not to boast or be self-satisfied.… We must all be on our guard against pride and empty boasting and beware of worldly or natural wisdom. A worldly spirit loves to talk a lot but do nothing, striving for the exterior signs of holiness that people can see, with no desire for true piety and interior holiness of spirit” (Omnibus of Sources, vol. 1, 44–5). David Burr addresses how learning becomes perceived as a possible threat to the Order after Francis’ death. See Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 2001), 19–22.
- 78.
For an extensive study of the kinds of sermons studied, see Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 272–97.
- 79.
William J. Courtenay, “The Academic and Intellectual Worlds of Ockham,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. Paul Vincent Spade (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1999), 18.
- 80.
While little biographical information exists about Langland as a person, the poem itself reveals some telling points of interest. In the C-text (5.1–103), the Dreamer tells how he lived with his wife in a small house in Cornhill in the city of London.
- 81.
Roest, History of Franciscan Education, 118–52.
- 82.
Bonaventure, Works of Saint Bonaventure: On the Reduction of the Arts of Theology, vol. 1, trans. Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1996), 61.
- 83.
Roest, History of Franciscan Education, 56–110.
- 84.
Wolter, Philosophical Theology, 2.
- 85.
Recent scholarship includes Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,”; Wendy Scase, “Piers Plowman” and the New Anticlericalism,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Penn R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
- 86.
Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221, ch.9 in Saint Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, vol. 1, ed. Marion A. Habig (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1991), 39.
- 87.
Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 3.
- 88.
Disputations find their basis in the lectio, which is a careful reading and commentary on authoritative texts. The disputation, however, focuses upon a systematic rather than a textual question. The quodlibetal question, as opposed to a disputation, was brought forward by students rather than masters. A disputed or quodlibetal question is a regular form of teaching “presided over by a master, characterized by a dialectical method which consists of bringing forward and examining arguments based on reason and authority which oppose one another on a given theoretical or practical problem and which are furnished by participants, and where the master must come to a doctrinal solution by an act of determination which confirms him in his function as master” (Bernardo Bazánet, Les Questions Disputées et Les Questions Quodlibétiquesdans les Facultés de Théologie, de Droit et de Médecine [Turnhout: Brepols, 1985], 22).
- 89.
If the disputant does not possess an academic license, he has to gain special dispensation. Alfonso Mairù, University Training in Medieval Europe, vol. 3, trans. Darleen N. Prydsd (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 28.
- 90.
An example is Bertram von Ahlen’s Excerpta ex operibus Henrice Gandavenis, Godefridi de Fontibuset Iacobi de Viterbio. This collection prints questions from the 15 Quodlibeta and the Summa Theologiae of Hendrik van Gent, the Quodlibeta V-XIV of Godfrey of Fontaines and the Quodlibeta I-III of Giacomo of Viterbo.
- 91.
Brian Green, Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaesio Disputata” (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 16.
- 92.
Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4.
- 93.
Frank N. Magill, ed., The Middle Ages: Dictionary of World Biography, Vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1998), 310.
- 94.
Adams, Rokele Family, 127.
- 95.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 29; Wolter, On the Will, 292.
- 96.
Mary Beth Ingham, Scotus for Dunces: An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2003), 120.
- 97.
William of Ockham, De connexione virtutum, a. III; Rega Wood, Ockham on the Virtues (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1997), 139.
- 98.
Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 12.
- 99.
Aquinas, ST, I-II q. 94, a. 1–6.
- 100.
Porter, Nature as Reason, 53.
- 101.
Tierney, Natural Rights, 33–4.
- 102.
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 6, a. 8.
- 103.
William of Ockham maintains that conformity with right reason by itself does not make an act virtuous, for if God, being omnipotent, produced in my will an act conforming to right reason without my will taking any part in it, that act would not be virtuous or meritorious. The goodness of the act requires that it be done under the control of the will (Reportatio III, q. 11 (OTh VI, 389).
- 104.
Aers dedicates an entire chapter to Ockham’s theology as well as another chapter exploring the theological implications of just acts as epitomized by the Samaritan in Piers. See Salvation and Sin, 25–54, 83–132.
- 105.
Ockham, De connexione virtutum, a. II; Wood, Ockham on the Virtues, 83.
- 106.
William of Ockham, Quodl. I, q. 16 (OTh IX, 87).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strong, D. (2017). The Interconnection Between Langland, Scotus, and Ockham. In: The Philosophy of Piers Plowman. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51981-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51981-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51980-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51981-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)