Medieval Philosophy: The Epistemology of Henry of Ghent

By M. James Ziccardi

Henry of Ghent is commonly regarded as one the three most important scholastic philosophers of the latter part of the Middle Ages. Wedged neatly between the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Henry’s philosophy encompassed a wide range of topics, including epistemology, ethics, and the natural sciences, all of which he closely tied to the Christian theology of his day. In this book we examine Henry’s ideas on epistemology, all of which are put forward in Article 1 of his Summa of Ordinary Questions, entitled On the Possibility of Human Knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. James Ziccardi
• Release date: Oct 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310020803

M. James Ziccardi

M. James Ziccardi lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter and has been a software analyst for over twenty-five years. Reading and writing about philosophy is his passion.

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Medieval Philosophy: The Epistemology of Henry of Ghent

Copyright © 2014 by M. James Ziccardi

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Section 1: Notes

This work is based on the translation of Henry of Ghent’s Summa of Ordinary Questions, Article One - On the Possibility of Human Knowledge, by Roland J. Teske, S.J.

With regard to quotations, content found within square brackets [] is mine; content found within parentheses () belongs to Henry of Ghent.

Section 2: Biography of Henry of Ghent

Henry of Ghent was born near the city of Ghent in Belgium sometime around the year 1217 and died in Paris on June 29, 1293. During his lifetime, Henry, who was known as the Solemn Doctor, came to be regarded as Europe’s leading scholastic philosopher. Prior to the time of Henry this honor had been held by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), and following Henry’s death it was passed on to John Duns Scotus (1266–1308). To regard this succession of esteemed thought as remarkable would not be unwarranted considering that all three men’s unique take on philosophical and theological matters were so often at odds with each other.

Little is known about Henry’s early life. It is believed that he came from an Italian family by the name of Bonicolli that had immigrated to Belgium and that had later taken up the Dutch name of Goethals, meaning good ale. Henry began his formal education in Ghent before moving on to Cologne where he studied under one of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, Saint Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280). It was under the guidance of Albertus that Henry earned his doctorate degree. Following his time in Cologne, Henry returned to Ghent where he lectured both on philosophy and theology. Not long afterwards Henry became seduced by a contentious shift in academic doctrine that was beginning to take place at the University of Paris, which at the time was the center of all philosophical and theological thought throughout Continental Europe. Accordingly, Henry moved to Paris and remained there for the rest of his life. In 1274, the year of Aquinas’ death, Henry became a Master of Theology at the University.

Between the years 1276 and 1292 Henry conducted a series of discussions and debates at the University of Paris which were known as the Quodlibetal Disputations. (The Latin term quodlibet, meaning what pleases, was the name given to formal arguments pertaining to issues of theology or philosophy.) These forums, which were held on either Christmas or Easter, were meant to address a wide range of public, academic, and theological issues. One of the most pressing issues at the time, however, was the encroachment of Aristotelian thought into the well-established tenets of Christian theology. Accordingly, the controversies surrounding this encroachment became the focal point of Henry’s disputations.

In any discussion of medieval philosophy, the rise and influence of scholasticism cannot be ignored. Scholasticism, which came to prominence in the High Middle Ages (1000-1300) through the writings of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), attempted to reconcile the teachings of the Christian Church with early Greek philosophy, and particularly with the philosophy of Aristotle. While scholasticism was primarily a Christian-based form of philosophy, it had its fair share of influence on Islam (through the writings of Averroes, 1126-1198) and Judaism (through the writings of Maimonides, 1135-1204) as well. In this context, therefore, scholasticism may broadly be seen as any attempt to reconcile secular and religious thought. For his own part, Henry was a devout Augustinian, and having accepted the notion that Saint Augustine (354–430) had successfully reconciled the teaching of the early Christian Church with the philosophy of Plato, Henry regarded the Aristotelian influence that was becoming more and more pervasive at the University of Paris as a threat to Christianity itself.

At this point, it would not seem inappropriate to take a brief look at the history behind this controversy. As Rome began to fall in the fourth and fifth centuries, a schism between the east and west began to emerge within the foundering empire. On the one side there was the Latin West which was centered in Rome, and on the other there was the Greek East which was centered in Byzantium. Although by this time many of Plato’s writings had already made their way to the West, most of the writings of Aristotle (which were translated much later) were essentially cut off from the Latin world due to the east-west schism. Thus, when Augustine, beginning in the latter part of fourth century, undertook his effort to reconcile early Christianity with Greek philosophy, for the most part he only had the writings of Plato, and perhaps more importantly, the ideas of the neoplatonists to contend with.

Now, one of the key components of Plato’s philosophy is the notion that everything in existence owes its very being to a corresponding eternal, unchangeable, and perfect form, or in other words, to an ideal form which lies beyond the reach of all human experience. Thus, according to Plato’s theory of forms, for any knowledge concerning such things as truth, beauty, or goodness to be regarded as certain and infallible, it must be derived from the world of the Ideal, or as Augustine had reconciled it, from the divine essence of God.

Beginning in the tenth century, however, many of Augustine’s neoplatonist-inspired ideas began to be challenged, for it was during this time that the writings of Aristotle began to emerge as a consequence of the Islamic incursions into Southern Spain, which culminated in the Caliphate of Cordoba. Especially troubling to the Latin West were the writings of Averroes, an Islamic philosopher and theologian who espoused what many considered to be an extreme form of Aristotelianism. Although Averroism was indeed seen as a threat to Christian theology, the writings of Averroes nonetheless remained respected and influential on an intellectual level - so much so that many of the most important scholastics of the time, including both Aquinas and Henry, included the ideas of Averroes (who they often referred to as the Commentator) in many of their greatest works.

The main point of contention between the established neoplatonism of the Christian Church and this newfound Aristotelianism was that while Plato placed the source of pure knowledge and goodness in an ideal realm which exists above everyday experience and human reason (i.e., in God), Aristotle maintained that the knowledge of truth and goodness can be attained through the universal concepts we take (or abstract) from the reality we experience through our senses and then use as the building blocks of our rational thought. Thus, the threat perceived by the Church was that Aristotelianism was taking pure truth and goodness out of the divine and placing it in the ordinary.

To counteract this threat to the Church, Pope John XXI called for a special council to be convened at the University of Paris for the express purpose of identifying heretical teaching, many of which involved the ideas of Aristotle and Averroes. Once identified, the censure of these heresies (219 in all), which included twenty propositions by Aquinas that were considered to be somewhat sympathetic to the teachings of Aristotle (though not to Averroes), came to be known collectively as the Condemnations of 1277 - the last in a series of similar condemnations which began in 1210. During the Condemnations of 1277, the Church’s position was defended primarily by Étienne Tempier, who at the time was the Bishop of Paris, and Henry of Ghent, who by then was serving as a regent master at the University of Paris. Although the Condemnations of 1277 would later be annulled, while they were in effect they nearly destroyed the reputation of Aquinas. Ironically, it was the significance of Aquinas’ own writings that, once fully understood, led to both the annulment of the Condemnations and the rehabilitation of Aquinas’ reputation. (It is worth pointing out that according to some modern scholars of the Condemnations, there is evidence to suggest that Henry’s role in the matter was largely the result