Abstract
This article examines Bonaventure’s account of the soul and its powers, which seeks to strike a middle path between the better-known identity and distinction views of the thirteenth century. Bonaventure contends that the powers of the soul are neither fully distinct from the soul nor completely identical to it. The article argues that Bonaventure’s view comprises four key theses. Bonaventure maintains (i) that the soul’s powers are necessary features of the soul; (ii) that they depend on the soul; (iii) that they are in the same category as the soul; (iv) but that they belong to this category “by reduction” (per reductionem). The article also considers an objection to Bonaventure’s view raised by Peter John Olivi.
1 Introduction*
Philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries held that organisms were alive thanks to their souls (animae), and they took an organism to have, thanks to its soul, a series of powers enabling it to engage in its characteristic life-operations. They called these powers the “powers of the soul” (potentiae animae). Examples of such powers discussed by medieval thinkers were the nutritive powers, the sensory powers, such as sight and smell, the intellect, and the will – powers that enable an organism to perform such diverse vital operations as digesting, sensing, thinking, and willing.
One of the debates central to medieval theorizing about the soul concerned the question as to whether the soul’s powers are identical to, or distinct from, the soul. In essence, the debate boils down to this. Is that which makes an organism alive, that is, the soul, just a power or set of powers, that is, a capacity or set of capacities to produce or undergo vital operations, such as seeing or thinking? Or is that which makes an organism alive one thing, while the capacities to perform vital operations are another?
Recent scholarship has distinguished between two main camps in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century debate.1 Some medieval thinkers, like Philip the Chancellor (c. 1160s–1236) and William of Auvergne (c. 1180/90–1249), and later William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347) and John Buridan (c. 1300–1358), defended what scholars now commonly refer to as an “identity theory” of the soul and its powers.2 On this theory, the soul is the same as its powers in the strong sense that the term ‘soul’ and the various power-designating terms, such as ‘intellect’ and ‘will’, refer to one and the same entity under different descriptions. That is, the same substance that is the soul is also, say, the intellect and the will, and there is merely a conceptual distinction between them. The term ‘soul’ picks out the substance under the description of being a form making an organism alive, whereas the terms ‘intellect’ and ‘will’, respectively, pick out the selfsame entity under the descriptions of being a power ordered to the act of thinking and a power ordered to the act of willing.
Medieval identity theorists were opposed by thinkers, like Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who defended what scholars today refer to as a “distinction theory.”3 On this theory, the distinction between the soul and its powers is not merely a conceptual but rather a mind-independent one. According to this account, the soul is a kind of substance, while its powers are “proper accidents” (proprietates), that is, non-essential, but necessary accidents that “flow” (fluunt) from the soul.4 For distinction theorists, then, the soul itself is not a power. Rather it is a form of the body, and its powers are entities that differ from and, as the use of “flowing from” (fluere ab) is meant to indicate, depend on the soul.
The identity and distinction theory were arguably the main positions in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century debate about the soul’s powers, and this is no doubt why recent scholarship has focused for the most part on these two views. They were, however, not the only positions. This article considers a third view regarding the soul’s powers defended by Bonaventure (c. 1221–1274). Bonaventure calls this position, which has antecedents in the early Franciscan school, notably in Alexander of Hales (c. 1185–1245), a “middle view,” and he takes it to strike a middle path between the identity and distinction theory. He describes it as holding that the powers of the soul are neither fully distinct from the soul nor completely identical to it.5
Bonaventure’s defense of the middle view has received little attention in recent scholarship.6 It did receive considerably more attention in the early twentieth century.7 However, the various older studies dedicated to it, the last of which dates to the mid-1950’s, do not seem to me to do justice to the intricacies of the Seraphic Doctor’s theory because they leave unexplained what I take to be the key notion on which the theory is predicated, namely, “reductive category membership.” Nearly seventy years later, I therefore propose to take a fresh look at Bonaventure’s account.
The remainder of the article is in three sections. I will first provide a brief sketch of Bonaventure’s position and consider its Augustinian background, which is central to it (section 2). I will then offer a detailed analysis of Bonaventure’s theory with special attention to the notion of reductive category membership (section 3). In the final section, I will consider an objection that was raised against Bonaventure’s view by Peter John Olivi (1248–1298) (section 4). In this last section, I will also argue that, despite his criticism, Olivi aims to preserve Bonaventure’s main idea of striking a middle path between the identity and distinction theory. In short, I shall suggest that Bonaventure’s project of a via media survives in later Franciscan thought, albeit under a different guise.
2 A Sketch of Bonaventure’s Theory and Its Augustinian Background
Bonaventure discusses the relation between the soul and its powers in at least two distinctions of his commentary on the Sentences (1250–1252) (henceforth: In Sent.). He first examines it in In I Sent., d. 3, in a distinction dealing with the Augustinian doctrine of the image of the Trinity. He then returns to the topic in In II Sent., d. 24, in a distinction that discusses the difference between cognitive (potentiae cognitivae) and appetitive powers of the soul (potentiae affectivae). In sketching Bonaventure’s view and its background in Augustine in this section, I will mainly rely on this second text. I will consider In I Sent., d. 3 more closely in the next section.
Bonaventure opens his discussion in In II Sent., d. 24 by providing brief position statements of both the identity and the distinction theory. He first describes the identity theory as holding “that a power of the soul is nothing other than … the soul as related to an act and … that all powers of the soul are essentially one.”8 In other words, on this view, as Bonaventure observes, a power, such as the intellect, just is the soul, but it is the soul qua ordered to an act, such as thinking, where this order to an act is, for the identity theorist, nothing over and above the soul itself.
Bonaventure next considers the distinction theory, which he describes as maintaining that “the powers of the soul … indicate properties inhering in the soul that belong to the genus of accidents.”9 The term ‘property’ here refers to the above-mentioned non-essential but necessary accident that the distinction theorists appeal to when specifying the ontological status of a power of the soul.
Finally, Bonaventure contrasts both the identity and distinction view with his own preferred middle view, which he characterizes as a kind of compromise solution between the two. Here is his statement of this middle view:
On the one hand, the powers of the soul are not the same as the soul to the degree to which the soul’s intrinsic and essential principles are the same as the soul. On the other hand, neither are the powers so diverse from the soul that they pass into another genus, as accidents do. Rather, they are in the genus of substance by reduction.10
This passage will require some unpacking in the next section, but the main idea is not difficult to convey. As the text makes clear, the middle view holds, like the distinction theory, that the soul’s powers cannot be simply identified with the soul. There is, accordingly, more than merely a conceptual distinction between them. But as the text also shows, Bonaventure agrees with the identity theory that the soul’s powers are not accidents of the soul. Rather they belong to the category of substance, albeit “by reduction,” as Bonaventure adds.11
Why does Bonaventure adopt this middle view? In In II Sent., d. 24, he writes that this view is preferable to the identity and the distinction theory because, unlike these, it has the advantage of “conforming more to the common way [of thinking] and to authoritative passages in treatises [on this topic].”12 What is more, he tells us, his view “is more moderate and more consonant with reason.”13 In short, Bonaventure thinks that his view is bolstered by philosophical reasons as well as arguments from authority.
As far as I can see, Bonaventure does not provide any strong philosophical arguments for his position.14 What he does do, however, is show that his view can accommodate a number of authoritative claims about the soul. In particular, Bonaventure, ever the Augustinian, shows that his position can accommodate a number of claims that Augustine (354–430) makes about the human mind (mens) in his De Trinitate, “mind” being how Augustine refers to the rational soul (anima rationalis).15 The copious references to Augustine in In II Sent., d. 24 make it clear that this consonance with Augustine is the main attraction that the middle view holds for Bonaventure.
To see why Bonaventure takes his view to be faithful to Augustine, it is well to say a few words about Augustine’s theory of mind as developed in De Trinitate.16 In book X of this work, Augustine claims that there are three powers of the human mind, namely, memory, intelligence, and will. These are, respectively, the powers to remember, think, and love. These powers are an image (imago) of the divine Trinity, Augustine maintains, and by this he means that they are an imperfect likeness of God’s trinitarian structure. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons, but one in essence. Similarly, as Augustine explains in De Trinitate X, 11, memory, intelligence, and will are three powers but “not three minds, but one mind, and consequently they are certainly not three substances but one substance.”17
It is not clear how exactly Augustine understands the relation between the mind and its three powers in De Trinitate. The passage just quoted can be taken to suggest that Augustine adopts something like the identity view.18 At least, this is a straightforward way to read his claim that the three powers are “one mind” and “one substance.”
Furthermore, this identity-theoretical interpretation is suggested by another claim of Augustine’s, advanced in book IX, 4 of De Trinitate, namely, that the powers of (memory), intelligence, and will are “not in the mind as in a subject.” By this, Augustine means that these powers are not accidents of the mind, in which case, one might argue, they must coincide with the mind.19
However, in book XV, 17 of the same work, Augustine puts forward a thesis that looks incompatible with the identity theory.20 He says that there is a greater distinction between the three powers of the mind than there is between the persons of the Trinity.21 For Augustine, the distinction between the persons of the Trinity is more than merely a conceptual one. On his view, there is a robust metaphysical distinction between them – one accounted for by different relations distinguishing the three persons. But if that’s the case and the distinction between the powers of the mind is greater than that between the persons of the Trinity, then the powers of the mind cannot be merely conceptually distinct from one another. And this means of course that the powers cannot be identical to the mind, since that would require them to be merely conceptually distinct. Thus, in De Trinitate XV, 17 Augustine seems to commit himself to a picture of the mind’s powers closer to the distinction theory.
There are, then, conflicting strands or, at the very least, tensions in Augustine’s De Trinitate account of the mind’s relation to its powers. Bonaventure thinks that the middle view provides a way to do justice to both strands. As will be recalled, the middle view holds that the powers of the mind, or, more generally, the soul, are not distinct accidents but rather belong to the substance of the soul. In this respect, then, the view can accommodate those passages in De Trinitate IX, 4 and X, 11 in which Augustine says, respectively, that the mind’s powers are not accidents and that they are “one mind” and “one substance.”22 But the middle view also maintains, as we saw, that the soul and its powers are not completely the same thing. That is, there is, for the middle view, more than merely a conceptual distinction between the soul and its powers. In this respect, the view can do justice to the De Trinitate XV, 17 passage in which Augustine implies that the distinction between the soul’s powers is not merely a conceptual one because it is greater than the distinction between the persons of the Trinity.23 In short, for Bonaventure, the middle position offers the best of both worlds when it comes to the exegesis of Augustine.
This consonance with Augustinian authority is no doubt an attractive feature of the middle view. But is the view also philosophically feasible? In particular, can Bonaventure maintain that the soul’s powers are not accidents but rather the substance of the soul and yet argue that they are distinct from the soul in a way that is more robust than a conceptual distinction? To answer this question, we need to take a closer look at his view.
3 Bonaventure’s Middle View Examined
In discussing Bonaventure’s theory, it will be useful to treat his commitment to the distinction between the soul and its powers and his commitment to their sameness separately. I begin with a discussion of his account of their distinction.
Here we need to return to the passage from In II Sent., d. 24 quoted in the previous section. In this text, Bonaventure says that soul’s powers cannot be simply identified with the soul, as we saw. But he also specifies this idea by appeal to a contrast, which we need to shed light on in this section. He writes – I quote the salient bit again – that “the powers of the soul are not the same as the soul to the degree to which (adeo) the soul’s intrinsic and essential principles are the same as the soul.”24 By “the intrinsic and essential principles of the soul,” Bonaventure understands the soul’s form and matter. Bonaventure is a universal hylomorphist, which is to say that he holds that every created substance, whether corporeal, such as a dog or a fern, or incorporeal, such as a soul or an angel, is composed of matter and form. Matter is a principle of receptivity, whereas form is that which is received by matter and makes matter be a certain type of entity.25 Matter is corporeal (materia corporalis) only in corporeal entities, whereas it is spiritual (materia spiritualis) in incorporeal items.26
This is not the place to discuss Bonaventure’s universal hylomorphism. It suffices for our purposes that we now know what Bonaventure wishes to contrast the powers of the soul with in the above passage from In II Sent., d. 24. His point is, as we can see, that the soul’s spiritual matter and form are, in some sense, “more the same” as the soul than its powers are. But this immediately raises a question: what does this greater sameness amount to? Does sameness even admit of degrees?
Bonaventure offers a clarifying remark in the other text in which he discusses the soul’s powers, namely, In I Sent., d. 3. He there considers various senses in which something can be said to be “essential” (essentialis) to an entity, and in this context he contrasts a stronger sense in which matter and form are essential to the soul with a weaker sense in which the soul’s powers are essential to it. Thus, when Bonaventure says that matter and form are “more the same” as the soul than its powers are, we should take him to mean that the former are essential to the soul in a stronger sense than the latter are. What are these stronger and weaker senses of ‘being essential’, more specifically?
In In I Sent., d. 3, Bonaventure claims that matter and form are essential to the soul in the sense of pertaining “to the constitution of the thing.”27 That is, I take it, they make the soul what it is. According to Bonaventure, it is the form in particular that makes something what it is, but the matter is needed to receive this form because a created form cannot exist on its own. For Bonaventure, as for other scholastics, what a thing is is specified by its definition. Accordingly, matter and form are essential to the soul in the sense of pertaining to its definition. This is the standard Aristotelian sense of ‘being essential’.
The soul’s powers are essential to the soul in a much weaker sense, Bonaventure thinks, indeed in the “weakest sense” (minimo modo), as he writes.28 They are essential to it in the sense that “without them the thing [i.e., the soul] cannot be thought to have its complete being (perfectum esse).”29 That is, without its powers the soul would still be a hylomorphic composite, I take it, but it would not be able to perform the key tasks that it should be able to perform as a principle of life. In particular, it would not be able to elicit life-operations such as digesting, sensing, and thinking. In the case of the human soul, the absence of the soul’s powers would also mean that the human being couldn’t perform those operations necessary to enter into a union with God, namely, seeing and loving God, and this is of course a theologically unacceptable consequence, for Bonaventure.30 In short, the soul’s powers are essential to the soul in the sense of being necessary for its being a functional principle of life. I shall refer to this claim as Bonaventure’s Necessity Thesis.
What is the nature of this necessity of the soul’s powers? To understand it, I think it is helpful to think of it as analogous to the necessity associated with the above-mentioned proper accidents. This is merely an analogy of course because, for Bonaventure, as we noted, the soul’s powers are not accidents, not even proper ones. To see the similarity, consider a standard example of a proper accident discussed by medieval authors, namely, risibility, which is our capacity to laugh in response to jokes or other things taken to be funny. According to medieval thinkers, no human being can lack this capacity, and it is therefore a necessary feature of ours. However, it is not essential in the sense of pertaining to our definition because we do not define human beings as risible but rather as rational animals. And there is a reason for this: our rationality is explanatorily prior to our risibility. We are capable of laughing in response to jokes because we are rational beings who can understand jokes in the first place.
For Bonaventure, I take it, the powers of the soul are similar to proper accidents in that no soul could lack them, though we do not appeal to its powers, but rather to its hylomorphic constituents when giving a definition of the soul.
There is a further parallel to proper accidents that is worth noting, and this brings us to another key aspect of Bonaventure’s theory. As Bonaventure writes in In I Sent., d. 3, a power of the soul is “a power that naturally proceeds from the substance and immediately so,” the substance here being the soul qua constituted by matter and form.31 In other words, the hylomorphic constituents that enter into the definition of the soul explain the powers of the soul, just as our rationality explains our risibility. I will say more about this theory of “proceeding” below, but for now we can note that, on Bonaventure’s view, the powers of the soul are necessary features that depend on the soul’s intrinsic principles. Let us refer to this as Bonaventure’s Dependency Thesis.
In adopting both the Dependency Thesis and the Necessity Thesis, Bonaventure shares two important commitments with distinction theorists like Albert the Great and Aquinas. For, as will be recalled from section 1, they likewise hold that the soul’s powers are necessary features that depend on (or, as they put it, “flow from”) the soul. However, Bonaventure parts ways with distinction theorists when it comes to drawing out the implications of the Dependency Thesis. For Albert and Aquinas, this thesis automatically entails that the soul’s powers are accidents distinct from the soul. As Albert puts it in his Summa theologiae, “what flows from something and from what is essential to it, is its property, not its substance.”32 Bonaventure does not accept this entailment, at least not in all cases. In In I Sent., d. 3, he argues that only some powers that proceed from a substance are accidental to it; for instance, the power to heat, which flows from the nature of fire, is an accident of fire. But the same does not hold for the soul’s powers. A power of this latter kind proceeds from the soul, but it does not, as Bonaventure writes in In I Sent., d. 3, “belong to another genus than substance.”33 In other words, the soul’s powers are in the same category as the soul and its intrinsic principles.34 Let us refer to this as Bonaventure’s Same Category Thesis.
Bonaventure sees the need to defend this latter thesis, and he offers an argument in its favor. The argument, which relies on Augustine, is that even if the soul were bereft of every accident, say, because God separated every accident from it, it would still be able to remember, cognize, and love itself.35 Therefore, the powers of the soul enabling acts of memory, self-cognition, and self-love cannot be accidents of the soul. Rather, they must belong to its substance.
Unfortunately, this argument is doubly unsatisfactory. Firstly, it shows at best that some powers of the soul belong to its substance. But to defend the Same Category Thesis in full generality, Bonaventure needs to show that all powers of the soul, including the bodily ones, belong to its substance. Secondly, the argument is question begging. Bonaventure gives us no reason to think that the soul, in the absence of its accidents, is indeed able to perform the operations of remembering, self-cognition, and self-love. The distinction theorist could flatly deny that this is possible and argue that the soul needs the (necessary) accidents of memory, intellect, and will to engage in these operations.
Be that as it may, the Same Category Thesis that the argument is meant to support is what sets Bonaventure apart from distinction theorists. In fact, it constitutes a commitment he shares with identity theorists. For in maintaining that the soul’s powers are identical to the substance of the soul, identity theorists clearly hold that the soul and its powers are in the same category. But of course these theorists claim more than that. In addition, they maintain that the soul and its powers are the selfsame categorial item differently conceived. Bonaventure does not adopt this latter, stronger commitment because he thinks that the soul’s powers are not merely conceptually distinct from the soul, as we saw in the previous section. For this reason, Bonaventure adds a crucial qualification to his claim that the soul and its powers belong to the same category. He claims that they belong to the same category in different ways. The soul’s powers are in the category of substance “by reduction” (per reductionem), whereas the soul itself is in the same category “by itself” or per se.36 I refer to this claim as Bonaventure’s Reduced Substantiality Thesis.
To understand the meaning of this thesis, which is arguably at the heart of Bonaventure’s theory, we need to first discuss how Bonaventure understands per se as opposed to reductive category membership in general. I begin with a discussion of per se category membership. Bonaventure characterizes it as follows:
There are some beings that are in a genus per se, but others that are in a genus by reduction. Those things are in a genus per se that participate in the complete essence of the category.37
What is it for an entity to “participate in the complete essence of the category” of substance, for Bonaventure? Elsewhere, he suggests that this requires an entity “to be capable of subsisting by itself and of acting and undergoing change.”38 By self-subsistence, Bonaventure means that a per se substance must not depend on anything else as a bearer in the way in which accidental features, such as color and height, do, and it is in virtue of its self-subsistence, Bonaventure thinks, that a substance can cause and undergo changes in its own right.
Standard Aristotelian examples of per se substances are living beings, such as human beings or dogs. I, for instance, am a per se substance. I bear diverse accidental features, rather than being borne by them, and I cause and undergo certain changes. For instance, right now, I am effecting the change of finishing this paragraph, and I am undergoing the change of sweating because of the hot summer weather.
For Bonaventure, though, ordinary living beings are not the only per se substances. As he sees it, the rational soul, which is a component of the living substance human being, is likewise a per se substance. It does not depend on another entity in the way in which an accident does, not even a body,39 and it also causes and undergoes changes in its own right (in particular non-bodily ones). For instance, if I understand a fact about geometry, my soul undergoes the change of acquiring new information, and if I make a decision, my soul brings about an act of settling on a course of action.
Let us now turn to reductive category membership. Here is how Bonaventure characterizes it:
Those entities are [in a genus] by reduction that do not indicate the complete essence, and these fall under five headings. Some are reduced as principles, others as complements, yet others as ways, still others as likenesses, and finally some as privations.40
To get a better sense of what a reduced substance is, we need not consider all of the five types that Bonaventure adduces in the above text. It will be helpful to first consider just one example, that of principles. In a next step we can then discuss what makes the soul’s powers reduced substances. This will require us to say something about the notion of “ways” (viae), which Bonaventure also appeals to in the above text.
Bonaventure considers two types of principles that are substances in the reduced sense, namely, a substance’s essential parts, that is, its matter and form, and its integral parts.41 Let us consider integral parts here, these being parts of a bodily substance, such as a hand or foot of a human being. Such parts are not dependent on a substance in the way in which accidents, such as height and color, are, on Bonaventure’s view. A substance bears accidents, but it does not bear its parts. In fact, parts themselves bear accidents. A hand, for instance, has a certain color and size. So rather than being accidents, integral parts seem to be substances. However, they are not full-blown or per se substances, for Bonaventure, because they depend on per se substances for their existence. Human feet and hands are feet and hands of some human being, and they cannot exist as hands or feet unless integrated into a human organism. It is only as parts of an organism that they can carry out their specific functions, such as walking or grasping things.42 Accordingly, they are only substances in a “reduced” sense because they depend on substances in the per se sense, that is, entities, such as human beings, that are substances according to the complete essence of the category.
We are now in a position to consider Bonaventure’s thesis that the soul’s powers are in the category of substance by reduction. Based on our discussion of principles, we can see that this thesis means that the powers are in the category of substance but in such a way as to depend on a per se occupant of this category, in particular the soul itself. We have already noted how Bonaventure describes the dependence relation between the soul’s powers and its substance. He writes that the former “proceed” from the latter. But Bonaventure spells out this idea a bit more in In II Sent., d. 24, connecting it with the reductive category membership of what he calls “ways.” He writes:
But if they [i.e., entities that are in a category by reduction] are reduced as ways, this can be in two manners. Either as ways [leading] to things, and this is how changes and substantial changes, such as generation, are reduced to substance, or as ways [leading away] from things, and this is how powers have to be reduced to the genus of substance. For the primary power [enabling us] to act, which is said to “proceed” (egressum habere) from the substance, is reduced to the same genus [as the substance], and it is not so far removed from the substance that it would indicate another complete essence.43
This text makes a distinction between two kinds of ways. First, Bonaventure considers changes, which are, as he puts it, “ways [leading] to things” (viae ad res). Bonaventure takes this description from Aristotle, who, in Metaphysics IV, 1, 1003b7, characterizes a substantial change as a “way to a substance” (ὁδὸς εἰς οὐσίαν, via ad substantiam).44 The idea behind this description is that a change is essentially a change ordered to some end state. A substantial change, like the generation of a human being, for instance, is ordered to the production of a human being. Hence, it is a “way to” this substance. Since, for Aristotle, a change is reduced to the same category as its end state, it follows that a substantial change is, like its end state, reduced to the category of substance.
The second type of way, which is of interest for our purposes here, is not Aristotelian, as far as I can tell. It is an inversion of the first type, being, as Bonaventure puts it, a “way [leading away] from a thing” (via a re) rather than one leading to a thing (via ad rem). Bonaventure holds that a power of the soul is precisely a way of this second type. For it proceeds (egressum habet), and so leads away, from the soul.
Just what Bonaventure means by this claim is rather obscure. The above text does not add any further explanation, and I have not found any other passage in Bonaventure’s oeuvre that draws on the concept of a “way [leading away] from a thing.” However, in his earlier In I Sent., d. 3, Bonaventure says something about accidental powers that can shed light on what he might have in mind here. He there writes that the power of an accidental form is not strictly identical to the form itself.45 For instance, fire’s heat and its power to heat other objects are not strictly identical. Rather, as Bonaventure contends, “the power belongs to the accidental form insofar as it influences something else.”46 Indeed, the power of an accidental form is that form’s “order to an act,” as he maintains in the same text.47 In short, an accidental power is not identical to an accidental form because it is not just the form itself but rather the form plus its relation to other things in the world that it can causally affect. Heat’s power to heat things is not just the heat taken by itself; rather it is the heat as related to things it heats or at least can heat.
I suggest that we think of Bonaventure’s powers of the soul in a similar way. Take the will as an example. It is not strictly identical to the soul itself, for Bonaventure, because the will is not just a hylomorphically organized principle making something alive. Rather, it is that principle as related to certain items in its environment, namely those things like our limbs and instruments that we can change at will. For instance, I can, at will, set my legs in motion and I can thereby ride a bike. The will, then, and indeed any power of the soul, contains an ordering to items other than the soul not contained in the soul taken qua principle of life. And since this ordering is directed to objects other than the soul, Bonaventure likely characterizes a power of the soul as a “way [leading away] from,” rather than to, the soul.
In section 2, we saw that the identity theory, on Bonaventure’s construal at least, also maintains that a power of the soul is the soul qua ordered to an act. However, for the identity theorist, this order to an act is nothing over and above the soul itself. Bonaventure, in contrast, holds (here no doubt closer to distinction theorists) that this order does constitute an ontological extra, though not one that is located in a different category from the soul itself.
We now have all of the ingredients of Bonaventure’s theory of the soul and its powers before us. Let us take stock. The theory relies on four theses. On the first, the Necessity Thesis, the soul’s powers are essential to the soul in the weak sense of being features that the soul cannot lack in order to be a proper principle of life. On the second, the Dependency Thesis, the powers of the soul, though necessary, depend on the soul, in particular its intrinsic principles of form and matter, which make the soul what it is. However, although the powers have this dependency, the third thesis, the Same Category Thesis, maintains that these powers are, like the soul, in the category of substance. But this does not commit Bonaventure to a strict identity theory, as we saw, because he subscribes to a fourth thesis, namely, the Reduced Substantiality Thesis, on which the soul is a substance per se, whereas its powers are in the category of substance “by reduction.” By this, Bonaventure means that the soul’s powers are in the category of substance in a dependent manner, namely, as ways or relations leading away or proceeding from the soul.
Has Bonaventure’s attempt to amalgamate elements of the distinction and the identity theory succeeded? At least one of Bonaventure’s confreres, Peter John Olivi, didn’t think so.48 It is to his objection that I turn in the next, and final, section of the article.
4 One Objection and the Continuation of the via media
In his questions on the Sentences II, q. 54, Olivi writes that “he cannot understand” (intelligere non valeo) how Bonaventure can maintain “that powers arise from the substance of the soul and follow upon (sequantur) it and nevertheless do not go over into another genus.”49 In other words, Olivi has difficulties grasping how Bonaventure can subscribe both to the Dependency Thesis and the Same Category Thesis. Olivi explains why he sees a tension between these two claims in the following passage.
Claiming origination or resultation seems to imply in [the soul’s] powers a diversity of genus and a characteristic (ratio) of an accident. For everything that arises from another is posterior to what it arises from, not only in terms of essence but also in terms of being. If therefore the powers arise from the substance of the soul, then they are posterior in terms of essence and in terms of being. But everything like that is truly in a genus of accident, or at least in another genus from [the substance of the soul]. Therefore, if the powers arise from the substance of the soul, they too will be in a different genus from it. Furthermore, according to Augustine, “nothing begets itself so that it exists.” If, then, the powers arise from the soul, they differ from it just as a thing or an essence begotten from the generating thing or essence, and so there truly will be two essences really distinct and diverse between themselves.50
As this text makes clear, Olivi holds that if Bonaventure wants to maintain that the soul’s powers proceed or originate from the soul, then he ought to also maintain that the powers are entities in a different category from the soul. Olivi’s argument for this is that if the soul and its powers were the same in substance and the soul originated its powers, then cause and effect would coincide, which violates Augustine’s prohibition against self-causation, according to which nothing “begets itself.” Thus, Olivi holds, like Albert before him, that if one is to defend the Dependency Thesis, the only coherent way to do so is by adopting a distinction theory, which takes the soul’s powers to be accidents distinct from the substance of the soul.
In making this objection, Olivi does not consider Bonaventure’s Reduced Substantiality Thesis, and Bonaventure would likely protest that Olivi can only make his objection from self-causation because he ignores this important detail. Emphasizing this thesis, Bonaventure could argue against Olivi that when the soul brings about its powers, it is not strictly speaking one and the same entity that brings itself into existence. Rather, it is a per se substance that brings a set of substances by reduction, namely, the soul’s powers, into existence. But it is unlikely that this would convince Olivi. For, as the above text shows, Olivi holds that what begets or causes and what is begotten or caused must be distinct in the sense of having separate existence. What proceeds from something else must be “posterior in being,” as Olivi writes. The cause is one thing, the effect another. Given this, Bonaventure’s appeal to the Reduced Substantiality Thesis would be of no help because even if the soul’s powers were substances by reduction distinct from the per se substance of the soul itself, they would not have separate existence from the soul, in which case they lack the necessary distinctness of effect from cause.
In my view, Olivi’s objection points to a real problem in Bonaventure’s position. You cannot adopt both the Dependency Thesis and the Same Category Thesis because causation requires a robust distinction between cause and effect. Does this mean that the Seraphic via media fails in the end, for Olivi? Yes and no. It fails under the specific guise in which it was defended by Bonaventure. However, as I now want to show by way of conclusion, Olivi himself carries forth the general idea of the middle theory under a new guise.51
While Olivi does not accept the specifics of Bonaventure’s theory, as we have just seen, he does think that its commitment to bringing together elements of both the identity and the distinction theory is a good one. How does Olivi propose to combine these two elements? He offers what one might call a “mereological theory” of the soul and its powers.52 On this theory, the soul is a set of powers, each of which is a constitutive part of the soul, that is, an element that partially accounts for what the soul is in the sense of pertaining to its definition.53 Here is how Olivi describes the view:
[The powers] are constitutive parts of the soul, indicating principally a formal nature and including matter in some way in its nature, but those powers … are partially the same with the soul’s substance and essence, partially diverse, not [diverse] through their adding something real to the soul’s substance, but because they do not indicate the soul’s entire substance. For this is the way in which a part is said to differ from its whole.54
So, on the theory that Olivi favors here, a human soul is partially constituted by the vegetative power, as well as by the sensory powers, and most importantly, the powers of reason and will. All powers together constitute one soul, and we need to appeal to them when defining what the human soul is.
This differs considerably from Bonaventure’s view, on which the soul’s powers are not parts but rather ways that depend on the soul. However, as the above text shows, the mereological theory is also like Bonaventure’s view in that it shares the general impulse of combining elements of the identity and distinction theory.55 Because the soul’s powers are parts, on his view, Olivi can hold, along with the identity theory, that the soul’s powers do not belong to another category than the soul itself. For parts of a substance are themselves substances. But these parts are, like Bonaventure’s ways, substances in a reduced sense, and the mereological view holds that no such reduced substance is completely identical to the soul itself. This non-identity claim sides Olivi like Bonaventure with the distinction theorists. However, the explanation of this non-identity that the mereological view offers is quite different from both the distinction-theoretical and the Bonaventurean one. Rather than claiming that the soul’s powers are not identical to the soul because they are accidents or ways of the soul, the mereological theory claims that powers are not identical to the soul because a power is a part of the soul, and no part is (completely) identical to the whole that it constitutes. For instance, if my intellect is a part of my soul, then it is not identical to my soul because my soul is not exhausted by my intellect. It also includes other powers, such as the sensory and vegetative powers.
This mereological view is a straightforward way of maintaining that the soul’s powers are in the same category as the soul itself, while also holding that they are not completely identical to it. At any rate, it is a more straightforward way of combining elements of both the identity and distinction theory than Bonaventure’s version of the middle view. But the mereological theory faces a problem of its own. For on it, the soul turns out to be nothing but an aggregate of powers, and this seems to seriously threaten its unity. This is a significant problem because medieval Aristotelians commonly hold that the soul, in addition to vivifying an organism, makes an organism one being. It is hard to see how an aggregate like Olivi’s soul could play this role.56 But exploring this matter is a topic for another paper.
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D’Eysden, F. “La distinction de la substance et de ses puissances d’opération d’après S. Bonaventure.” Études Franciscaines 2 (1951), 5–23 and 147–171.
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Macken, R. “Le statut philosophique de la matière selon Bonaventure.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 47 (1980), 188–230.
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Perler, D. “Ockham über die Seele und ihre Teile.” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 77 (2010), 313–350.
Perler, D. “The Soul and its Parts.” In Medieval Mereology, ed. A. Arlig (Turnhout, forthcoming).
Piana, C. “La controversia della distinzione fra anima e potenze ai primordi della scuola scotista (1310–1330 c.).” Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medievali, Serie prima (Milan, 1956), 65–168.
Rodolfi, A. “Interpretazioni dell’ilemorfismo universale nella scuola francescana: Bonaventura, Bacone e Olivi.” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 102 (2010), 569–590.
Shields, C. “The Unity of the Soul in Francisco Suárez.” In Medieval Perspectives on Aristotle’s De anima, eds. R. L. Friedman and J.-M. Counet (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2013), 359–382.
Shields, C. Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford, 2002).
Silva, J. F. Robert Kilwardby on the Human Soul: Plurality of Forms and Censorship in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 2012).
Suarez-Nani, T. “Introduction.” In Pierre de Jean Olivi, La matière, eds. and trans. T. Suarez-Nani, C. König-Pralong, O. Ribordy and A. Robiglio (Paris, 2009), 7–48.
Teske, R. J. “Augustine’s Philosophy of Memory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, eds. E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (Cambridge, 2001), 148–158.
Teske, R. J. “Augustine’s Theory of Soul.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, eds. E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (Cambridge, 2001), 116–123.
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Wood, A. “Aquinas vs. Buridan on the Substance and Powers of the Soul.” In Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others. A Companion to John Buridan’s Philosophy of Mind, ed. G. Klima (Cham, Switzerland, 2017), 77–93.
Wood, A. “The Faculties of the Soul and Some Medieval Mind-Body Problems.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 75 (2011), 585–636.
I would like to thank Kara Richardson, Philip-Neri Reese, Jeff Brower, Dominik Perler, Matthew Kroll, and the participants of the June 2019 conference “Mind and Body: Aspects of Medieval Natural Philosophy” at the University of Łódź for very helpful comments on previous versions of this article. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees of Vivarium whose comments helped to greatly improve the article.
See, e.g., Perler, “Faculties”; De Boer, The Science of the Soul, 209–300; Van den Bercken, “John Duns Scotus”; Wood, “The Faculties.”
For this term, see, e.g., Perler, “Faculties,” 104. For a clear thirteenth-century statement of the identity view, see William of Auvergne, De anima c. 3, pars 6, 92a: “Potentia apud animam humanam nihil est aliud quam ipsa anima.” For a clear fourteenth-century statement, see, e.g., John Buridan, Quaestiones Ethicorum X, q. 1, 205ra: “[L]icet intellectus et voluntas sint eadem anima, tamen nomina differunt secundum rationem. Nam illa anima dicitur intellectus ex eo quod intelligit vel potest intelligere … et eadem anima dicitur voluntas ex eo quod vult vel potest velle.” For a discussion of William’s view, see Perler, “Faculties,” 100–105. For a discussion of Buridan’s view, see Wood, “Aquinas vs. Buridan,” as well as my “Aristotle and John Buridan,” esp. 204–206. For a discussion of Philip the Chancellor’s view, see Künzle, Das Verhältnis, 108–109. For a discussion of Ockham’s view, see Perler, “Ockham über die Seele.”
For this term, see again Perler, “Faculties,” 107. For a still useful analysis of Albert’s as well as Aquinas’s respective views, see Künzle, Das Verhältnis, 144–218. For another discussion of Albert’s theory of the soul, see Craemer-Ruegenberg, “Alberts Seelen- und Intellektlehre.” For more recent discussions of Aquinas’s theory, see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 275–294; Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 152–160; Perler, “Faculties,” 105–114.
Here is a clear statement of the distinction view in Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones de anima, q. 12, ad 7, 111284–287: “Potentiae autem animae sunt accidentia sicut proprietates. Unde sine eis intelligitur quid est anima; non autem sine eis animam esse est possibile.” For the claim that the powers flow from the soul, see Summa theologiae, I, q. 77, a. 6, 246b: “[O]mnes potentiae animae, sive subiectum earum sit anima sola, sive compositum, fluunt ab essentia animae sicut a principio.” The distinction that Aquinas appeals to in his theory need not be conceived of as a real distinction implying separability. For while Aquinas admits that the soul could exist without certain powers (e.g., in its separated state, the rational soul lacks the powers to digest and sense), he does not seem to think that the soul could exist without any powers whatsoever, as the text quoted at the beginning of this note suggests. Francisco Suárez would later defend the possibility of a soul existing without any power whatsoever. See Shields, “The Unity of the Soul.”
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560b, describes the view as being a “medium … inter utramque opinionem,” the two opinions being the identity and distinction view. See Künzle, Das Verhältnis, 131–132 for the relation to Alexander of Hales’s theory, versions of which were also adopted by other early Franciscan thinkers, such as Odo of Rigaud and John of La Rochelle, as Künzle shows.
The following recent studies only briefly touch upon Bonaventure’s view: Van den Bercken, “John Duns Scotus,” 205–206; Wood, “The Faculties,” 597–598; Silva, Robert Kilwardby, 79; Kahm, Aquinas, 42, n. 69 and 55.
The most detailed discussions (known to me) are Künzle, Das Verhältnis, 127–137, and D’Eysden, “La distinction.” Other earlier studies that examine Bonaventure’s view are Lutz, Die Psychologie des Bonaventuras, 81–85; O. Lottin, “L’identité,” 209; Piana, “La controversia,” 152–161. Rather surprisingly, there is no discussion of Bonaventure’s view in Gilson’s The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a: “Quidam enim dicere voluerunt, quod potentia animae non est aliud quam ipsa relatio, vel ipsa anima relata ad actum; et hi ponunt, quod omnes animae potentiae sint unum per essentiam, nec est in eis aliqua differentia nisi solum secundum relationem ad actum alium et alium.” Bonaventure associates the identity theory so described with the pseudo-Augustinian twelfth-century Liber de spiritu et anima (esp. 788–789 and 794), an influential text possibly written by Alcher of Clairvaux. Unless noted otherwise, translations from Latin into English in this article are mine.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a: “Alii vero dicere voluerunt, quod potentiae animae non tantum dicunt modum sive relationem, sed etiam dicunt proprietates inhaerentes ipsi animae, quae sunt de genere accidentium, utpote in secunda specie qualitatis, videlicet naturalis potentiae et impotentiae.” When writing his Sentences commentary, Bonaventure would have known the distinction view in Albert the Great’s version. See, e.g., Albert the Great, Summa theologiae I, tr. 3, q. 15, c. 2, 70a–73a.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a: “Potentiae animae nec adeo sunt idem ipsi animae, sicut sunt eius principia intrinseca et essentialia, nec adeo diversae, ut cedant in aliud genus, sicut accidentia, sed in genere substantiae sunt per reductionem.”
See also Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, 86a: “Unde istae potentiae sunt animae consubstantiales et sunt in eodem genere per reductionem, in quo est anima.”
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560b: “Haec positio ultimo dicta plus concordat viae communi et auctoritatibus tractatorum et magis sobria est et rationi consona.”
See the text quoted in the previous note.
Bonaventure agrees with arguments of other thinkers for the non-identity of the soul and its powers. He also presents one (bad) argument for the claim that the soul’s powers, though not identical to the soul, are not accidents either (which I will discuss below).
For the terminology of anima rationalis and mens in Augustine, see, e.g., Teske, “Augustine’s Theory of Soul.” For Augustine’s philosophy of mind, see O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind.
My presentation of Augustine’s theory closely follows Künzle’s detailed discussion in Das Verhältnis, 19–29. In particular, I follow Künzle (i) in taking memory, intelligence, and will to be three powers, rather than acts, and (ii) in taking Augustine to provide us with conflicting statements about the relation between the mind and its powers.
Augustine, De Trinitate X, c. 11, 18, 33029–32: “Haec igitur tria, memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas, quoniam non sunt tres uitae sed una uita, nec tres mentes sed una mens, consequenter utique nec tres substantiae sunt sed una substantia.”
Teske, “Augustine’s Philosophy of Memory,” 157, interprets Augustine along these lines, for instance.
Augustine, De Trinitate IX, c. 4, 5, 29836–39: “Quamobrem non amor et cognitio tamquam in subiecto insunt menti, sed substantialiter etiam ista sunt sicut ipsa mens quia et si relatiue dicuntur ad inuicem, in sua tamen sunt singula quaeque substantia.”
As has been pointed out by Künzle, Das Verhältnis, 20–21.
Augustine, De Trinitate XV, c. 17, 28, 50346–49: “Nec distent in eis ista, sicut in nobis aliud est memoria, aliud intellegentia, aliud dilectio siue caritas; sed unum aliquid sit quod omnia ualeat sicut ipsa sapientia, et sic habetur in uniuscuiusque natura ut qui habet hoc sit quod habet sicut immutabilis simplexque substantia.”
Bonaventure refers to the passage from De Trinitate IX in In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 559a–b, and to the passage from De Trinitate X in In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a.
Bonaventure refers to this passage in In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 559a.
See n. 10 above for the text.
See Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2, 98b. For Bonaventure, there is also a key connection between matter and the ability to undergo change. See In II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2, 414b–415a. For discussions of Bonaventure’s universal hylomorphism, see, e.g., Cullen, Bonaventure, 44–45; Macken, “Le statut philosophique”; Rodolfi, “Interpretazioni.”
See Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 15, a. 1, q. 1, 374b.
Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, 86b: “Notandum quod ‘essentiale’ dicitur quatuor modis. Primo modo essentiale dicitur quod dicit rei essentiam totam, sicut species singularis. Secundo modo dicitur essentiale quod est de essentia et constitutione rei, ut materia et forma. Tertio modo dicitur essentiale sine quo res non potest esse nec potest intelligi esse, ut sunt illa in quibus attenditur ratio vestigii, ut unitas, veritas, bonitas. Quarto modo dicitur essentiale sine quo res non potest cogitari habere perfectum esse, ut sunt potentiae in anima, in quibus attenditur imago; et hoc est minimo modo substantiale sive essentiale; tamen non transit in aliud genus; ideo anima dicitur suae potentiae.”
See the text quoted in the previous note.
See again the text quoted in n. 27.
Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 1, dub. 16, 45b: “Summum bonum est quod super nos est. Ad hoc ergo quod illi uniamur, necessario intervenit duplex medium; medium unum, per quod anima nata est uniri alii a se diverso, et hoc est potentia; aliud speciale supra hoc, quod ipsam sublevet; et hoc est virtus.”
Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, 85b–86a: “Potentia naturalis dicitur potentia naturaliter egrediens a subiecto. Et hoc potest esse dupliciter. Nam aliqua potentia egreditur a substantia cum accidente, ut potentia calefaciendi … Alio modo dicitur naturalis potentia, quae naturaliter egreditur a substantia et immediate, sicut potentia generandi quantum ad inductionem ultimae formae; et haec quidem non est alterius generis quam substantia, sed reducitur ad genus substantiae tanquam substantialis differentia. Per hunc modum intelligendum est in potentiis animae.” I will return to the contrast between substantial and accidental powers that Bonaventure makes in this text below.
Albert the Great, Summa theologiae I, tr. 3, q. 15, c. 2, 71b: “Quod autem fluit ab aliquo et ex essentialibus suis, proprietas eius est, non substantia.”
See the text quoted in n. 31 above. See also Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a: “Nec adeo diversae, ut cedant in aliud genus, sicut accidentia.”
For an explicit statement of the claim that the soul is a substance, see the text in the next note.
Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, 86a: “Et hoc patet, quia omni accidente circumscripto, intellecto quod anima sit substantia spiritualis, hoc ipso quod est sibi praesens et sibi coniuncta, habet potentiam ad memorandum et intelligendum et diligendum se.” There is a remote resemblance between this argument and Ibn-Sīnā’s (Avicenna’s) famous Flying Man thought experiment. In this thought experiment, Ibn-Sīnā imagines a scenario in which the soul is unaffected by perceptual stimuli to establish “whether it belongs to the soul’s essence that the soul be related to the body” (Adamson and Benevich, “The Thought Experimental Method,” 148). To the best of my knowledge, Bonaventure nowhere indicates that this thought experiment plays a role for his argument.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, 560a: “Potentiae animae … in genere substantiae sunt per reductionem.” I do not know of a text in which Bonaventure explicitly states that the soul is in the category of substance per se. But he does write in In II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2, 414b–415a: “Anima rationalis, cum sit hoc aliquid, est (et corr.) per se nata subsistere et agere et pati, movere et moveri, quod habet intra se fundamentum suae existentiae et principium materiale, a quo habet existere, et formale, a quo habet esse,” which comes very close. In a similar vein, he states in In II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2, 415b: “Ipsa autem anima, cum sit rationalis, cum sit per se existens, aliquam compositionem habet, quam aliae formae non sunt natae per se habere, dum non sunt natae per se existere.” Here Bonaventure differs from Aquinas, for whom the soul is in the category of substance “per reductionem” (Quaestiones de anima, q. 1, ad 13, 12435–441). This is because Aquinas views the soul as a “form” of a hylomorphically organized composite. Being a universal hylomorphist, Bonaventure cannot take this route. For him, the soul is itself a hylomorphic composite. Its relation to the body is that of a hylomorphic composite “perfecting” matter according to a feature of “unitability.” For discussion of the union between soul and body in Bonaventure, see Cullen, Bonaventure, 52–54.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, ad 8, 562b: “Sunt enim quaedam quae sunt in genere per se, aliqua per reductionem. Illa per se sunt in genere, quae participant essentiam completam illius generis, ut species et individua.”
See Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2, 414b–415a, as quoted in n. 36 above. The idea of per se subsistence is an Aristotelian one. See Categories 5, 2a10–15.
See Bonaventure, Breviloquium p. II, c. 9, 199–291, 227a: “Quoniam autem [anima] ut beatificabilis est immortalis, ideo, cum unitur mortali corpori, potest ab eo separari; ac per hoc non tantum forma est, verum etiam hoc aliquid.” For discussion of the soul’s immortality in Bonaventure, see Lutz, Die Psychologie des Bonaventuras, 67–72.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, ad 8, 562b: “Illa vero per reductionem quae non dicunt completam essentiam, et haec sub quinque membris continentur. Quaedam reducuntur sicut principia, quaedam sicut complementa, quaedam sicut viae, quaedam sicut similitudines, quaedam sicut privationes.”
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, ad 8, 562b: “Quaedam reducuntur sicut principia … Sicut principia dupliciter: aut essentiantia aut integrantia; ut principia essentiantia, sic sunt materia et forma in genere substantiae; ut principia integrantia, sic partes substantiae sunt in genere substantiae per reductionem.”
This is the Aristotelian homonymy thesis, on which a foot or a hand is only a hand in name when it no longer is a part of a functional organism (De anima II, 1, 412b18–22). Bonaventure accepts this thesis. See In II Sent., d. 30, a. 3, q. 2, 735b. For discussion of the thesis in Aristotle, see, e.g., Shields, Order in Multiplicity, 30–32.
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, ad 8, 562b–563a: “Si autem reducuntur sicut viae, hoc potest esse dupliciter: aut sicut viae ad res, et sic motus et mutationes, ut generatio, reducitur ad substantiam; aut sicut viae a rebus, et sic habent reduci potentiae ad genus substantiae. Prima enim agendi potentia, quae egressum dicitur habere ab ipsa substantia, ad idem genus reducitur, quae non adeo elongatur ab ipsa substantia, ut dicat aliam essentiam completam.”
As Trifogli, Oxford Physics, 48–56, has shown, there was, in the Latin Middle Ages, under the influence of Averroes’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, much debate about the ontological status of motion as a via.
Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, ad 5, 87b: “Ad illud quod obiicitur de forma accidentali, dicendum, quod forma accidentalis non est sua potentia. Nam potentia eius est, in quantum influit in alterum; attamen potentia illa non tantum addit quantum potentia formae substantialis, quoniam potentia formae accidentalis dicit ordinationem ad actum, sed non sufficientem per se, sed per virtutem substantiae.”
See the previous note for the text.
See n. 45 for the text.
As has already been pointed out (but not developed in any detail) by Piana, “La controversia,” 160.
Olivi, In II Sent., q. 54, 253: “Quidam enim volunt substantiam animae radicem esse ipsarum potentiarum, ita quod potentiae ab ea oriantur et eam sequantur, ho⟨c⟩ tamen modo quod non transeant in aliud genus et ita quod sint idem in substantia … In prima autem opinione, licet sit sollemnis valde et valde magnorum, duo sunt quae plene intelligere non valeo” (trans. R. Friedman, modified).
Olivi, In II Sent., q. 54, 253: “Positio originationis vel resultationis videtur implicare diversitatem generis et rationem accidentis in suis potentiis. Omne enim quod oritur ab alio est posterius illo a quo oritur non solum secundum essentiam, sed etiam secundum esse. Si ergo potentiae oriuntur a substantia animae, ergo sunt posteriores secundum essentiam et secundum esse. Omne autem tale est vere in genere accidentis aut ad minus in alio genere ab ipsa. Ergo et potentiae si oriuntur a substantia animae, erunt in alio genere ab ipsa. Praeterea, secundum Augustinum, ‘nulla res se ipsam gignit ut sit’. Si ergo potentiae oriuntur ab anima, different ab ea sicut res seu essentia genita a re vel essentia generante, et ita vere erunt duae essentiae realiter inter se distinctae et diversae” (trans. R. Friedman).
One could argue that Duns Scotus’s account of the soul and its powers is likewise a continuation of Bonaventure’s via media. For discussion, see Van den Bercken, “John Duns Scotus,” 205–206.
Olivi is not the first to defend this view, as he himself indicates. See Olivi, In II Sent., q. 54, 253. The view can already be found in Roger Bacon and John Pecham. For references and a brief discussion of Bacon’s view, see Wood, “The Faculties,” 596.
For discussion of Olivi’s own view, see Toivanen, Perception, 90–97.
Olivi, In II Sent., q. 54, 258–259: “Summa igitur responsionis … est quod sunt partes animae constitutivae, dicentes principaliter aliquam naturam formalem et comprehendentes aliquo modo in sui ratione materiam, sed dictae potentiae … sunt partim idem cum substantia et essentia animae, partim diversa, non per hoc quod aliquid reale addant ultra substantiam animae, sed quia non dicunt totam substantiam animae. Hic est enim modus quo pars dicitur differre a suo toto” (trans. R. Friedman).
Note that Olivi’s theory of the soul also appeals to spiritual matter, which is another tenet that it shares with Bonaventure’s. For discussion of Olivi’s theory of matter, see Suarez-Nani, “Introduction.”
One could also read Olivi as completely abandoning the view that the soul ought to guarantee the unity of the living being. See Perler, “The Soul and its Parts” for this suggestion.