FREIBURGER MEDIÄVISTISCHE VORTRÄGE
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John Marenbon
The Hellenistic Schools and Thinking about Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Study of Second-Order Influence
Schwabe
The Hellenistic Schools and Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages
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John Marenbon
F R EI BU RGER M EDI ÄV IST ISCH E VORT R ÄGE
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HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM MITTELALTERZENTRUM DER A LBERT-LU DW IGS -U N I V ER SI TÄT F R EI BU RG
SCHWABE VERLAG BASEL
The Hellenistic Schools and Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages
John Marenbon
The Hellenistic Schools and Thinking about Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Study of Second-Order Influence
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John Marenbon
Š 2012 Schwabe AG, Verlag, Basel Layout: Dr. Jochen Conzelmann, Freiburg Satz: Anna Prettl und Michael Schonhardt, Freiburg Druck: Schwabe AG, Muttenz/Basel Printed in Switzerland ISBN 978-3-7965-2837-8 www.schwabeverlag.ch
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The Author
John Marenbon (born 1955) is a Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and, since 2010, Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy in the University of Cambridge. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he received his BA in 1976 and his PhD (for a thesis on early medieval logic and theology) in 1981. In 2001 he gained a LittD from the University of Cambridge and in 2011 he was made Doctor of Theology honoris causa by the University of Helsinki. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009. His career has been entirely at Trinity College, as a Junior Research Fellow (1978), teaching fellow (1979), gaining his present post in 2005. Among his books are studies of Abelard (1997) and Boethius (2003), as well as two more general Histories of medieval philosophy, the latest of which (Medieval Philosophy: an historical and philosophical introduction) was published in 2007. He is editor of the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy (2012) and is at present working on another book about Abelard and a study of Pagans and Philosophers: the problem of paganism from Augustine to Leibniz.
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The Hellenistic Schools and Thinking about Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Study of Second-Order Influence By John Marenbon I. Introduction, p. 6. – II. The Hellenistic Schools in the Shadow of the PlatonicAristotelian Tradition, p. 7. – III. Peter Abelard, p. 12. – IV. John of Salisbury, p. 16. – V. The Thirteenth Century, p. 22. – VI. Dante, p. 28. – VII. Conclusion, p. 38.
I The principal sort of influence investigated by historians of philosophy is what might be called ‘first-order influence’. If, for instance, they are considering the relationship between philosophy in antiquity and that of the Latin Middle Ages, they look at the passages, arguments, ideas, concepts and words from ancient texts used, directly or indirectly, by medieval authors. But it is also possible to examine this relationship in a different way, by asking how medieval authors thought about the ancient authors they were using – what one might call their ‘secondorder influence.’ For example, suppose a medieval writer is talking about the soul and clearly knows Aristotle’s De anima, investigation of the first-order influence would concern the extent to which he is using the Aristotelian arguments, how he alters them and which of them he passes over. Investigation of the second-order influence would ask what were the writer’s views about the arguments as Aristotle’s, and of Aristotle as the originator of these arguments. Clearly, in many passages where a medieval writer is simply using (or even repeating the teaching of) a text from the past, there is no second-order influence; and there is certainly no such influence when the writer has taken up an idea without knowing or caring who was its originator. There are also, conversely, cases where a discussion shows second-order influence with little or no first-order influence: for instance, discussions
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of ancient philosophers, such as the ones in medieval encyclopaedias, which concentrate on the lives and general opinions of their subjects, with little concern for detailed arguments. One theme central to the second-order influence of ancient on medieval philosophy is the contrast between the classical philosophers’ paganism and the medieval writer’s own Christian beliefs.1 The following pages look at this aspect of the second-order influence of Hellenistic philosophy on the Middle Ages. The first section looks at the rather unpromising background to such an investigation. Given the limited first-order influence of Hellenistic philosophy, as compared with Aristotelianism and Platonism, it might be expected that the second-order influence would be slight. Moreover, medieval writers were encouraged by two of their most read late ancient authorities to take a dismissive attitude towards the Hellenistic schools. Surprisingly, however, for a number of medieval writers the ideas of Stoics, Epicureans or Academic Sceptics were important in their reflections about how, as Christians, to approach ancient pagan philosophy. Sections two, three and five will look at three of them: Abelard and John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, and Dante in the fourteenth. The third section examines more broadly the second-order influence of the Hellenistic Schools in the thirteenth century.
II Commonplaces are, at least sometimes, true: medieval philosophy in the Latin West (as also in the Byzantine, Arabic and Jewish traditions) continued from the schools of late antiquity, that is to say, the schools of Athens and Alexandria, which taught a Platonism into which Aris1
This theme forms part of what I call ‘the Problem of Paganism’: for more details on how I conceive the Problem of Paganism, see my “Boethius and the Problem of Paganism”, in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2004), 329-48 and “A Problem of Paganism” in Paganism in the Middle Ages. Threat and fascination, ed. C. Steel, J. Marenbon and W. Verbeke (Mediaevalia lovaniensia. Studia 43), Leuven 2012, 39-54.
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totle had been fully incorporated. As a result, by far the dominant ancient tradition in the Middle Ages was Platonic-Aristotelian. With regard to first-order influence, its dominance was reflected in the ancient texts studied and in the arguments, concepts and themes that were discussed. Despite the restricted knowledge of Plato’s own work – in most cases limited to the incomplete version of the Timaeus translated by Calcidius, a great deal of Platonic material was accessible, not just through Platonizing Church Fathers, such as Augustine, Ambrose and (in translation) Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzen, but also through Boethius, Macrobius and, from the late twelfth century onwards, the Liber de causis, based closely on the late Neoplatonist Proclus’s Elements of Theology. And Aristotle, of course, was known more directly: his logic in part from the eighth century and, by the mid-thirteenth century, almost his entire oeuvre.2 By contrast, the knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy and its first-order influence was much more limited. The best known area of it was Stoic moral thinking, which could be found, not only explicitly in Seneca, but through its influence on Cicero and some of the Church Fathers.3 Other aspects of Stoicism were little known, although Stoic semantics may have exercised some unrecognized influence through the grammatical tradition. 4 Although a few scholars may have seen 2 An
introductory account of the transmission of this mainstream late ancient philosophy to the medieval philosophical traditions is given in my Medieval Philosophy. An Historical and Philosophical Introduction, London, New York 2007, esp. 6-33. 3 On Stoicism in late antiquity, see M. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Leiden 1985. On Stoicism in the Middle Ages, see G. Verbeke, The Presence of Stoicism in Medieval Thought, Washington, D.C. 1983 a survey. Both S. Ebbesen (“Where were the Stoics in the Late Middle Ages”, in Stoicism, ed. S. K. Strange and J. Zupko, Cambridge 2004, 108-31) and M. B. Ingham (La Vie de la sagesse. Le stoïcisme au moyen âge [Vestigia 35], Fribourg, Paris 2007) make the case for a widespread influence of Stoic thought, in the sense of individual Stoic concepts and doctrines, which are used or adapted but not identified as Stoic: the Stoics were, in Ebbesen’s phrase (108) ‘everywhere and nowhere.’ 4 See A. Grondeux, “Res meaning a Thing Thought: the influence of the Ars donati”, in Vivarium 45 (2007), 189-202 and the many studies by I. RosierCatach on Priscian in the early twelfth century: an introduction to them is provided by “The Glosulae in Priscianum and its tradition”, in Papers in memory of Vivien Law, ed. N. McLell and A. Linn, Münster 2004, 81-99.
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Lucretius’s De rerum natura in the early Middle Ages, the doctrines of Epicureanism were known only through the doxographic account of Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae VIII.6.15-16) and reports by other philosophers and Church Fathers, mostly hostile – though Seneca gives a balanced and respectful account.5 As for scepticism, Academic Sceptics were familiar through Cicero’s Academica and Augustine’s Contra Academicos, though Pyrrhonian scepticism remained almost unknown, despite a thirteenth-century translation of Sextus Empiricus.6 The contrast in importance between the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition and the Hellenistic one should have been even sharper with regard to second-order influence, because of further factors. First, the most significant area of first-order influence for Hellenistic philosophy was the surreptitious spread of Stoic moral thought, which was followed without being acknowledged. But such hidden use of a body of thought cannot provide the basis for second-order influence, since it requires explicit reflection on the earlier material and its authors. Second, two of the main authoritative Christian authors from late antiquity, Augustine and Boethius, took a dismissive view of the Hellenistic schools, which would have discouraged medieval scholars from regarding their members as serious philosophers at all. From Book Eight of Augustine’s De civitate dei readers would take the very clear impression that there was just one School of ancient philosophy deserving of serious respect, that of the Platonists.7 Platonism had led Augustine himself on the way to his conversion and was 5 On
the availability of Lucretius in the early Middle Ages, see M. Reeve, “Lu- cretius in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance: transmission and scholarship”, in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. S. Gillespie and P. Hardie, Cambridge 2007, 205-13, at 205-8 and the references there; on the negative view of Epicureanism in the Church Fathers, see H. Jones, Epicurean Tradition, London, New York 1989, 94-116, but cf. also R. I. Jungkuntz, “Christian Approval of Epicureanism”, in Church History 31 (1962), 279-93. 6 See D. Perler, Zweifel und Gewissheit. Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter (Philosophische Abhandlungen 92), Frankfurt 2006, esp. 15-27. On the Latin translation, see R. Wittwer (2002) “Zur Lateinischen Überlieferung von Sextus Empiricus’ PURRWNEIOI UPOTUPWSEIS”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, N.F. 145 (2002) 366-73. 7 For an introduction to these issues, see G. Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie: notes critiques, Paris 1996.
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still followed by some of the most cultivated people of his time. In De civitate dei and elsewhere, Augustine engages in tortuous discussions in order to reconcile his view that the Platonists had succeeded in understanding the true nature of God, even his triunity, with his conviction that Platonism was not a path to beatitude. The Pre-Socratics and Socrates are presented by Augustine as a background to Plato, and the major post-Platonic schools are treated with some hostility. Both Stoics and Epicureans are condemned (VIII, 5), along with the various Pre-Socratics, for having posited bodily principles of nature. In Book IX, Augustine enters into a long critique of Stoic ethics and its claim that the sage is unaffected by any passions, which is contrasted with the position he attributes to both Platonists and Aristotelians. And in his letters he is keen to reject positions in Stoic ethics such as the lack of degree in virtues. At the beginning of his career as an author, when he wrote Contra Academicos, Augustine’s attitude to the Platonists was far less conflicted; he hardly distinguishes between their views and Christianity. But the contrast he makes between Platonism and other philosophical sects is equally sharp. Academic scepticism (which medieval readers learnt about through this book, not Cicero’s, which was hardly read until the fifteenth century) is presented as a distortion of Platonism, which came about in reaction to Zeno, the first of the Stoics, whose thiswordly views Augustine thoroughly repudiates (III.17.38 – 18.41). Although in the Confessiones (IV.16.28), he mentions his achievement in understanding Aristotle’s Categories on his own, Augustine has little to say in general about Aristotle or the Peripatetics. But in Contra Academicos (III.19.42) he mentions the idea that, despite appearances, Plato and Aristotle really did not disagree. Medieval readers would have found this idea reinforced by an author hardly less widely-read than Augustine: Boethius. Boethius had even announced his intention to write a work showing the harmony between these two thinkers (as his favoured Neoplatonic source, Porphyry, had done). 8 Looking at De consolatione Philosophiae, they would have found a view that echoes Augustine’s distinctions be8 See
Boethius, Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri hermeneias, Secundam editionem et indices continens, ed. C. Meiser, Leipzig 1880, 80: 1-6.
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tween the different Schools, though with fewer reservations about the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. For Boethius, Plato, especially, but Aristotle too, were genuine philosophers who taught in ways almost entirely acceptable to Christians, but the other ancient pagan Schools were deviations from this one true path. The clothing which Lady Philosophy wove for herself has been torn because people have tried to tear off bits of it for themselves and hide them away. The culprits, she goes on to make clear, are the Stoics and Epicureans.9 Despite both these factors, Hellenistic philosophy did, in fact, have a considerable second-order influence in the Middle Ages, as the more detailed studies below will show – though it was much less than that of the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. One reason is that even a short doxographical or biographical sketch of a philosopher can form the basis for second-order influence. Another may be that, for some medieval writers, the ancient world – its thinkers especially – were so (though not unambiguously) attractive, that they wanted to include every one of its philosophical schools. Not merely Stoics and Academic sceptics, but also the Epicureans are rated highly in a number of medieval accounts. This judgement may cause surprise. There is a view, often expressed in surveys of the influence of Epicurus, that during the Middle Ages he and his followers were dismissed as lovers of gross sensual pleasure – ‘Epicurean pigs’.10 Such a caricature of Epicureanism goes back to the classical period;11 it was common among the Church Fathers, though some nuanced it, distinguishing a highminded Epicurus from his carnally inclined followers; and it certainly achieved wide currency in the Middle Ages. But, as the studies below show, it was by no means the only attitude taken to this school.12 9 Boethius,
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Philosophiae consolatio, ed. L. Bieler (Corpus christianorum series latina 94), Turnhout 1984, I, pr. 3, 18 (cf. I.1.5): “Cuius [Socratis] hereditatem cum deinceps Epicureum vulgus ac Stoicum ceterique pro sua quisque parte raptum ire molirentur meque reclamantem renitentemque velut in partem praedae traherent, vestem quam meis texueram manibus disciderunt abreptisque ab ea panniculis totam me sibi cessisse credentes abiere.” Metrum 4 of Book Five is an attack on the Stoic theory of cognition. For the common view, see e.g. Jones, The Epicurean Tradition, 117-41. For instance, Horace compares the Epicureans to pigs in Epistulae, i. 4. 15-16. A balanced account of the popular and more learned traditions in the medieval description of Epicureanism, and their classical and patristic background (but
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III From 1117, when after his castration he became a monk of St Denis, and for the first time in his life had access to a large library, Peter Abelard was fascinated by the ancient philosophers. His most extended and explicit treatment of the ancient philosophers is in Book II of his Theologia Christiana, written in the mid-1120s. These pages are a remarkable eulogy of the pagan philosophers, whom Abelard absolutely refuses to see as damned.13 But the focus is very strongly on Plato, with some references to Socrates his teacher and Plotinus, who followed his teaching. The one non-Platonic philosopher to be held up as an example of virtue is Diogenes – but Abelard does not bring out the idea that he led a separate school of Cynic philosophers; he is merely used to illustrate an extreme of philosophical asceticism. The Epicureans are mentioned briefly and slightingly.14 By contrast, in his Collationes, a dialogue in a dream-vision, written probably a few years later, Abelard takes an unusual and subtle approach to the different schools of ancient philosophy. The Collationes consists of two imaginary conversations, one between a Philosopher and a Jew, one between the Philosopher and a Christian. None of the characters is quite what he seems. The Jew is someone who justifies the Old Testament law in Abelardian terms; the Christian is a deft philosopher, but he is not Abelard himself, whose role is that of judge. The Philosopher defines himself by the fact that, whereas his
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without discussion of Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury) is given in M. R. Pagnoni, “Prime note sulla tradizione medievale ed umanistica di Epicuro”, in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di lettere e filosofia 3, 4 (1974), 1443-77, at 1445-57. See J. Jolivet, “Doctrines et figures des philosophes chez Abélard”, in Petrus Abaelardus (1079-1142). Person, Werk und Wirkung, ed. R. Thomas (Trier theologische Studien 38), Trier 1980, 103-20; J. Marenbon, “Abélard: les exemples des philosophes et les philosophes comme exemples”, in Exempla docent. Les exemples des philosophes de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. T. Ricklin (Études de philosophie médievale 92), Paris 2006, 119-31. Peter Abaelard, Theologia Christiana II.61 (Petri Abaelardi opera theologica II, ed. E. M. Buytaert [Corpus Christianorum continuatio mediaeualis 12]), Turnhout 1969, 156: 831; cf. II.101; 177: 1529. In Book III (III.5; 196:49-52), Abelard refers to the ‘heresies’ of the Stoics and Epicureans, which the Peripatetics defeated by their logic.
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interlocutors each has a revealed law, he follows only natural law. To that extent, he is an ancient philosopher redivivus, a figure apparently not unlike those who had been eulogized in the Theologia Christiana brought to loquacious dream-life. But matters are more complicated than this.15 In the course of his discussion with the Christian, in the second dialogue, on the nature of the Highest Good, it becomes apparent that the Philosopher must be a type of Stoic. Abelard gives him, not only a generally Stoic set of doctrines, with an emphasis on the communal good and a Ciceronian account of the virtues, but he makes him propose two characteristically Stoic positions: that the wise should not feel pity (128), and that all virtuous people are equally virtuous (98-99). The Philosopher is made to support this latter view, which the Christian will take to pieces, with an argument derived from Cicero’s Paradoxa stoicorum. Even the Stoicism, though, is Stoicism with a difference. In De civitate dei (VIII, 3), Augustine had distinguished two different views about the Highest Good held by the followers of Socrates: some said it was virtue, some pleasure. Abelard would have known from Seneca and Augustine that the first of these views was held by the Stoics, and the Philosopher in the Collationes explicitly attributes the second to Epicurus and his followers. Unlike Augustine, however, the Philosopher does not think that these are two distinct positions. The Christian asks him how Epicurus understood pleasure, and he replies: Not, as many think, as the unworthy, shameful delights of bodily enticements, but a certain inner tranquillity of the soul, by which the soul stays quiet during good times and bad ones, content with its own goods, and is not gnawed by the conscience of any sin. Far be it that philosophers, the greatest scorners of earthly happiness and the outstanding tamers of the flesh, set up the highest good in the shameful things of this life, as many people ignorantly attribute 15 
For further details about the dating of the work, its form and the characters in the dialogue, see the Introduction to Peter Abelard: Collationes, ed. and transl. J. Marenbon and G. Orlandi, Oxford 2001. References are to the sections of this edition.
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to Epicurus and his followers, the Epicureans, because they do not understand what it is, as I explained, which they called pleasures. (81) Given the proper understanding of what Epicurus meant by ‘pleasure’, it turns out that the difference between his position and that of the Stoics is merely verbal. As the Philosopher puts it (82): ‘this excelling in virtues is this having a tranquil soul, and vice versa.’ The assessment of Epicurus’s true doctrine that Abelard puts into the Philosopher’s mouth was iconoclastic. The view of Epicureanism presented by most of the Church Fathers and much Latin literature was hostile and dismissive. Abelard was the first medieval author to break away from the widely-diffused caricature of Epicurean pigs.16 He did so by reading Seneca, as the comment he gives to the Philosopher immediately after the passage just quoted makes clear: Otherwise […] Seneca – that greatest teacher of good behaviour, whose life, as you yourself have acknowledged, was very continent – would not have frequently brought the views of Epicurus, as if he were his master, into his moral teaching. He would not have done so if […] Epicurus had left the path of restraint and worthiness. (81) Abelard’s rehabilitation of Epicurus was designed to do more than right an historical injustice. The pure Stoic view, that the highest good for humans is virtue, and so a virtuous person is living the best life possible here and now, amidst his or her worldly tribulations, is completely incompatible with the Christian’s insistence that we reach our highest good only when we are free from afflictions such as indigence, sickness and death. By making the Philosopher not a simple Stoic, but a Stoic-Epicurean, for whom the highest human good is not merely the exercise of virtue but something more passive, a state of pleasure, interpreted to mean tranquillity, he gave him a position which 16
See also Collationes, lxix-lxxi. Although the Collationes were hardly read in the Middle Ages, it is possible that John of Salisbury’s balanced attitude to Epicurus (see below) is indebted to Abelard, since John was taught by him. John of Salisbury’s writings were influential on thirteenth-century encylopaedists.
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was not irreconcilably opposed to the Christian’s. The Philosopher, indeed, proposes (92) that ‘the happiness which Epicurus calls “pleasure”, your Christ calls “the Kingdom of Heaven”.’ Although at this point the Christian is not ready to agree with the Philosopher, the dialogue leaves the final impression that the Philosopher is brought to accept the Christian’s position because it is just a development and extension of his own. But why did Abelard choose a Stoic-cum-Epicurean figure? To judge from his Theologia Christiana and almost everything else in Abelard’s writing from the mid-1120s onwards – even from the Christian’s contributions to the Collationes themselves – if Abelard had been trying to present the best representative of ancient philosophy, he would have chosen a follower of Plato. A plausible reason is that Abelard was not concerned here, as he had been in the Theologia Christiana, to champion the cause of ancient Greek and Romen civilization, but rather to engage, helped by his historical knowledge, in a thought experiment. Abelard had taken to heart the Augustinian idea that Christianity was available – if even just through a purely secret inspiration – to some among every people in all places and at all times. For him, the best ancient philosophers, the Platonists, were not simply – in a sense not at all – people living good lives and thinking wisely without revelation. Many of them were genuinely, without knowing it, Christians. As he declares near the beginning of Book II of the Theologia Christiana: All the philosophers were gentiles perhaps by nation, but not by faith […] For how could we mark down as infidels and damned those to whom, as even St Paul attests, God himself revealed the hidden things of the faith and the deep mysteries of the Trinity […]? (II, 15) Although Abelard believed that many Christian truths could be reached by reason, he also thought that the ancient philosophers had benefited from revelation, internal and perhaps external too: he places great emphasis on the Sibylline prophecies.17 In the Philosopher of 17
See e.g. Abelard, Theologia Christiana, I.126-9.
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the Collationes, however, he wanted to imagine what the best rational view of the highest human good would be in the complete absence of revelation. A Stoic-Epicurean thinker serves this purpose, since Abelard always makes it clear (despite the ‘all’ in the passage above) that it was the Platonists whose teachings (because of their theory of the three hypostases) showed knowledge of the Trinity and even perhaps the Incarnation (Theologia Christiana II, 16).
IV John of Salisbury was Abelard’s pupil and admirer, but his intellectual temperament was very different. Where Abelard liked to identify problems and propose direct, radical solutions to them, John tended to skirt round their edges, usually preferring to avoid the point (and often giving the – misleading – impression of having lost it altogether). Yet, through a series of false starts, second-order reflections, changes of direction and internal tensions, he was sometimes able to convey, with the eloquence of a Montaigne, and not a little of his detachment, a complex position, rich in its philosophical implications.18 The two works in which John considers the Hellenistic Schools are his sprawling Policraticus, a prose treatise on political theory and much else besides, written in the latter 1150s, and the verse Entheticus de dogmate philosophorum, the ‘Indicator of the Doctrine of the 18
On John of Salisbury’s thought, there has been no study since H. Liebeschutz, Mediaeval Humanism in the Life and Writings of John of Salisbury (Studies of the Warburg Institute 17), London 1950, and the useful collection of essays on all aspects of his career and writings, The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilkes (Studies in Church History, Subsidia 13), Oxford 1984. A very important study for showing that, behind John’s apparent disorganization and long-windedness, there is an intellectual subtlety is P. von Moos, Geschichte als Topik. Das rhetorische Exemplum von der Antike zur Neuzeit und die historiae in ‘Policraticus’ Johanns von Salisbury (Ordo 2), Hildesheim, Zürich, New York 1988; his “The use of exempla in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury”, in The World of John of Salisbury, 207-61 is an earlier, much shorter version of this study. On John and the philosophers, see also E. Jeauneau, “Jean de Salisbury et la lecture des philosophes”, in The World of John of Salisbury, 77-108.
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Ancient Philosophers’, probably written slightly earlier.19 John does not just consider the Hellenistic Schools: he also discusses Plato, Aristotle and the Peripatetics, Socrates and some pre-Socratic philosophers. But, although he is specially interested in Plato and Aristotle, he gives almost equal space in the Entheticus to the Hellenistic Schools, and it is one of these which he finds the most sympathetic of all the ancient approaches to philosophy.20 The most obvious way to read John’s handling of these themes is to say that it is a mess left by a well-meaning, pious, rambling writer too fond of rehearsing his extensive reading to a wider public. A less obvious, but more just way of interpreting these texts is what might be called ‘the Christian humanist reading’, which fits this aspect of John’s thinking into the common image of his overall character.21 This reading begins from the fact that John’s long description of the teachings of the different ancient Schools is framed by, and also punctuated by, passages in which he emphasizes that philosophy cannot be done properly except by Christians. Before he begins his accounts, John talks of the need for grace in any successful intellectual endeavour. This leads on to a section praising the Bible as the supreme text, which ‘Philosophy recognizes as its head’ (444).22 At the end of the section, he writes: But why do I list the Gentiles, whom error has driven away? For without faith all reason is deficient. Only those who worship Christ are wise and philosophize truly – they whom Scripture gives you as your leaders. (Entheticus 1269-72) 19 20
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For editions, see nn. 22 and 23. On John’s complex attitude to Plato, see J. Marenbon, “Twelfth Century Platonism: old paths and new directions”, in J. Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West (Variorum Collected Studies Series 696), Aldershot 2000, XV, 11-15. See e.g. Liebeschutz, Mediaeval Humanism, p. 83. References to the Entheticus are to John of Salisbury’s Entheticus Maior and Minor, ed. J. van Laarhoven (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 17), Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne 1987. The edition with English translation is in Vol. 1. All references to the Entheticus are to what is here distinguished as the Entheticus maior (the Entheticus minor is a verse preface to the Policraticus); references are to line numbers.
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And, in the course of his treatment, John has made many observations on the same lines, among the most pointed of which, in context, is his statement that ‘the life of monks and nuns is incomparably better than that of the philosophers or rather, what I think more truly, it is the rightest and most secure way of philosophizing’: pointed, because in the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had suggested that the ancient philosophers had set up a manner of communal living which was the equivalent of monasticism as it should properly be practised (II, 45) and that they exemplified the highest degree of monastic abstinence (II, 60). Despite such comments, John is not at all inclined to set the philosophers’ teachings en bloc against the true Christian teachings. On the contrary, he says, for instance, that the Stoic philosopher is following the Bible ‘when he directs himself towards the end of his days and cuts down the shoots of vice with his sickle’ (451-2). And he accepts Abelard’s view that Plato had knowledge of the Trinity and that philosophia, the love of wisdom, is simply another word for the love of God (305-10). If the reader senses that John is writing against an enemy in this work, it is certainly not the pagan philosophers he has in his targets, but the pretentious, logic-obsessed mid-twelfth-century Parisian intellectuals. Yet none of the accounts of the individual schools is straightforward. No School, not even the often despised Epicureans, is found to be without valuable teaching. Equally, none escapes criticism. John follows the accepted view in recognizing Plato and Aristotle jointly as the two greatest philosophers. Plato is the ‘chief of the wise’ (1089), but according to his merits Aristotle should be considered ‘the first’ (852-3). Although the portrait of Plato in the Policraticus is eulogistic, in the Metalogicon, written at about the same time, John is at times ironic about his metaphysical pretensions, contrasting them unfavourably with Aristotle’s sobriety. In the Entheticus, he gives the verdict that ‘he teaches a few things badly and more good things than bad ones’ (1110), but the special reason for praising Plato is, precisely, that he respects the limitations of human knowledge: he ‘distinguishes among what can be known that which a created thing is able to know’ (937-8). Despite the praise he receives, Aristotle is criticized in the En-
The Hellenistic Schools and Pagan Philosophy in the Middle Ages
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theticus (833) for some of his doctrines, which, John contends, do not allow created things free will, and (862) for his immoderate seeking after praise. The accounts of the Stoics and the Peripatetics in the Entheticus are even more obviously double-sided, the one hand taking away the lavish praise the other has bestowed almost as soon as it has been given. John begins his account by saying how Stoic teaching on the virtues is in line with the Bible, and he continues by praising the Stoics for insisting that we think about our deaths, although he goes on to say that, in excess, such meditatio mortis can be harmful. Stoic teaching, however, he also explains, makes all things subject to fate, thereby destroying free will and removing the rationale for reward and punishment. With regard to the Epicureans, John – very probably inflenced by Abelard – does not simply follow the usual condemnation of them. In the Policraticus (VIII, 8; 11) he explains that, contrary to his reputation, Epicurus enjoined moderation, even abstinence, in eat ing and he observes that Seneca thought highly of him. In the Entheticus (527 ff.), John seems at the beginning to be following the Abelardian (and in fact accurate) view that the pleasures which the Epicureans aim at are mental ones, not physical indulgences. John says that he is willing to accept the Epicurean teaching that these ‘joys of the mind’ are the supreme good, so long as they are indeed real joys, which can often be attained only through struggle. Midway through his discussion, however, John turns back on himself, and, contrasting a sober Epicurus, who follows the law, with ‘the same man drunk’, he launches on a traditional attack (such as can be found elsewhere in his work) on Epicurus as a debauched glutton. These accounts seem to fit well with the Christian humanist view of John. Is he not making the point that, useful as the teaching of the philosophers may be, it is always going to contain errors mixed with truth, and Christians should use it just so far as it is not contradicted by the Bible and their religious doctrine, which can be trusted entirely? If this interpretation is correct, then, although John’s main line of approach is not at all unusual, he innovates by including, explicitly, Stoics and even Epicureans along with Aristotle, Plato and their followers, as being ancient philosophers who are worth studying:
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John Marenbon
none of the ancient Schools is to be adopted uncritically, but all have something of value. John’s treatment of another of the Hellenistic Schools seems to reinforce this point. In the Entheticus, he is initially critical of scepticism when discussing Arcesilaus and Zeno (727-38), who are judged to labour long and hard only to know nothing as a result. But his view of the scepticism of Antisthenes (1137-58) is very different. He is praised for declaring that God alone knows all things, and for asserting as absolutely true only what he thinks is necessarily the case, qualifying other judgements with phrases like ‘I believe’ and ‘I think it is so.’ This line of thought becomes very strong in the Policraticus. At the beginning of thee work, he professes himself to be an ‘Academic’: I do not blush to declare myself an Academic, because I follow in their footsteps in those things about which a wise person is in doubt. For, although this School seems to cast darkness over all things, none was more honest in searching for the truth and, according to Cicero, who turned to it in his old age, none is more likely to bring success. Therefore in those things which happen to be said about providence, fate, free will and such things, I would rather be known as an Academic, than as the audacious assertor of things that are doubtful.23 John begins the main section of the Policraticus devoted to the ancient philosophical Schools – the earlier part of Book VII – by saying (VII, 1; W II, 95) that the Academics should be preferred because of their modesty in what the asserted. True, in typical fashion, John then goes on to criticize Academics who went too far with their refusal to give assent – ‘What is more unfitting’, he asks (VII, 2; W II, 96:1-3) ‘than to be changing your mind about everything and not be certain about anything and to go by the name of a philosopher?’ But his main point is clear. The Academics – a School of ancient philosophy that 23
References to the Policraticus are to Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici libri viii, ed. C. C. I. Webb, Oxford 1909, (W). Prol. (W I, 17); cf. II.22 (W I, 122). For the references in this footnote but not the rest, the text is available in the new edition by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Ioannis Sareseberiensis Metalogicon I-IV (Corpus Christianorum continuatio mediaeualis 118), Turnhout 1992, 25:134 – 26:142; cf. 126:28 – 127:37.