§28. 219 Execrable Errors
The newly recovered Aristotle was warmly received among students and teachers in the arts faculties at Paris and Oxford, though the reception by the theology faculties was cooler.
What could a pagan like Aristotle say to Christians? In 1210 they arranged a ban at Paris. “Neither the writings of Aristotle on natural philosophy nor their commentaries are to be read at Paris in public or private, and this we forbid under penalty of excommunication.” The prohibition was repeated in 1215 and 1231, though Aristotle’s popularity continued to grow. In 1270, the bishop of Paris condemned thirteen propositions from Aristotle as heretical; then in 1277 he condemned 219 “execrable errors which certain students of the Faculty of the Arts have the temerity to study and discuss in the schools.” Some of the condemned propositions were from Aristotle, some from Islamic commentators, and a few from Thomas Aquinas himself, who was no saint in the years shortly after his death (1274).35The anathemas make a mixed bag, though all are more or less closely associated with the new Aristotelianism. Four condemned propositions promise natural knowledge independent of revelation and valuable in its own right, including the first on their list:
1. That there is no more excellent state than to study philosophy.
2. That the only wise men in the world are the philosophers.
4. That one should not hold anything unless it is self-evident or can be manifested from self-evident principles.
216. That a philosopher must not concede the resurrection to come, because it cannot be investigated by reason.—This is erroneous because even a philosopher must bring his mind into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
A theme in the proscriptions is the worry that natural necessity limits divine omnipotence, which is absurd, since the Creator cannot be constrained by the creation.
42. That God cannot multiply individuals of the same species without matter.
188. That it is not true that something comes from nothing or was made in a first creation.36
Although the condemnations seem to assert the priority of theology over natural philosophy, Hans Blumenberg argues that they open the way to a natural philosophy independent of theology. “Raising theology to its maximum pretension over against reason had the unintended result of reducing theology’s role in explaining the world to a minimum, and thus of preparing the competence of reason as the new organ of a new kind of science that would liberate itself from the tradition.” Before that could happen, however, Europeans had to accommodate a new concept of natural knowledge, different from prevailing norms, whether of theological authority or the absolute cognition Aristotle promised so lightly. New natural philosophers had to teach first themselves, then their time to dwell productively in the provisional and hypothetical.37
Looking back, historians associate philosophers who developed this new idea of natural knowledge as nominalists. A no less apposite name would be moderns, but moderns balk at the idea that modern philosophy began three hundred years before Descartes. Latin cognates of the expression “nominalism” were in use since the twelfth century. After Ockham it became an appellation for thinkers who seemed to say what Ockham said. These nominalistae or terministae were also called the moderni, and their approach to Aristotle the via moderna. The via antiqua designated philosophical and theological preparation based on Aristotelian commentaries by Albert Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome, and the via moderna was based on commentaries by William Ockham, John Buridan, and Marsilius of Inghen. It was at this time that Ockham’s name became connected with the
“modern” approach, and he became an authority for the nominalistae at Paris and in Germany (Marsilius was the first rector at Heidelberg). Ironically, Ockham himself referred to his opponents as “moderns.” He wants a purer Aristotelianism cleansed of misunderstandings, as if in his mind the condemnations prove not that Aristotle is unreliable but that he has been very badly understood.38