Henry of Ghent

Ph.D.

2011-09-21T19:33:00.000-04:00

Last week I returned to All Souls College in Oxford for my viva voce, and passed! However, I've not got much time to waste these days in celebrating because I've got a (accepted) journal article to revise (titled: "Henry of Ghent on Real Relations and the Trinity: The Case For Numerical Sameness Without Identity"), and an old article on Thomas Aquinas to review in preparation for being published again elsewhere.

It feels great when things are going forward!

Henry of Ghent's Works ONLINE: Update

2011-06-18T11:35:00.000-04:00

Awhile back I reported that the web-page with Henry of Ghent's works had been down. I am happy to report that it is back online. Click "Henry of Ghent's Works ONLINE" on the sidebar. However, only most, not all, of the editions are downloadable in PDF format. I hope the others will return soon.

I'll get back to the series on intellectual habits soon; I've been crazy busy.

Dissertation Finished

2011-04-30T17:31:00.001-04:00

My dissertation ("Henry of Ghent on the Trinity: Metaphysics and Philosophical Psychology") has been submitted.

Just for Fun

2011-03-20T14:21:00.000-04:00

Quotable Henry: Will is to the Affection of Love as a Horse is to the Health of Its Body

2011-03-18T10:24:00.004-04:00

"The will is a principle agent and its affection of love is an instrument, since the will has it in [its] use and its power for the purpose of being expedited and efficacious (or intense) for an action to be performed. This is like a horse, having health throughout its body, that may use it [i.e. health] for running quickly. It would be an instrument of the horse with regard to velocity in a race. And affection is like this, that insofar as it is an instrument of the will, it is love. Love is a certain health of the will, but insofar as it stimulates by its healthy temperance for the intended motion, it has the nature of an inhabitant of the principle agent, and the will an instrument to the instrument. This is like a horse who runs quickly, having been furiously agitated. The fury itself is like an inhabitant of the horse and the horse itself is an instrument [of the fury]."

Dispositions and Habits of Mind, Part 2

2011-03-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

Here is what Henry says about the connection between a disposition of mind and a habit of mind:

"A habit and a disposition are in the very same thing, and they differ only as complete and incomplete, such that what began in an incomplete and imperfect manner is called a disposition. When, through a received augmentation, it will reach a perfection [that is] determined and complete, the name 'disposition' no longer applies, and it is called a 'habit'. In this way, the disposition itself becomes a habit in the way that a child is to an adult, and when one becomes an adult the name 'child' no longer applies."

Dispositions and Habits of Mind

2011-02-26T14:08:00.005-05:00

Henry of Ghent famously denies that there are such things as 'intelligible species'. Well, kind of. Henry thinks that an 'intelligible species' and a 'habit' play exactly the same explanatory role; consequently, Henry argues that we should just posit habits because that is explanatorily more parsimonious. An intelligible species is the name that various scholastic philosophers give for a person's being able to think of something. There are various ways to consider a person's being able to think of something.

Here are some ways to look at this. We might ask whether thinking of something is (a) relatively easy or (b) takes some effort, and whether your thought has (c) simple or (d) propositional intentional content (what do you think when you think of something). If (a) - (d) are sufficiently helpful, we get the following combinations.

Henry of Ghent's Works Now Online

2011-02-21T11:56:00.004-05:00

The Good News:

Gordon Wilson has put online PDF versions of all the Critical Editions of Henry's works, both the Quodlibeta and the Summa. I have added a hyperlink over on the sidebar "Henry of Ghent's Works ONLINE".

These PDFs are searchable. This will certainly help future research.

The Bad News:

Quotable Henry: On the Positive (albeit thin) Knowledge of God

2011-02-21T08:59:00.007-05:00

Henry of Ghent, Summa Quaestionum Ordinariarum, Article 24, Question 1 (Badius, vol. 1, f.137rC) (Emended translation from Jos Decorte and Roland Teske, 'Henry of Ghent's Summa: The Questions on God's Existence and Essence Articles 21-24).

In what follows Henry ends his criticism of those who say that knowledge of God is merely privative (e.g., 'God lacks finitude') or negative (e.g., 'God is not finite').

"If, therefore, we did not at all know what God is, we would not love God at all, because we can love unseen things, but we cannot at all love unknown things, as Augustine says in book 6 of On the Trinity.

A Companion to Henry of Ghent

2011-02-19T08:35:00.006-05:00

In a looong awaited release, Brill has published A Companion to Henry of Ghent (2011) in the series Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, edited by Gordan A. Wilson.

For the Table of Contents, authors, and more about this book, go here:

http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=28432

Intelligible Species in the Mature Thought of Henry of Ghent by Michael E. Rombeiro

2011-02-19T08:29:00.004-05:00

Michael Rombeiro has a forthcoming article in JHP titled, "Intelligible Species in the Mature Thought of Henry of Ghent".

Here is the abstract:

Henry of Ghent (1217?-93), a prominent theologian at the University of Paris during the last quarter of the thirteenth century, was a central figure on the issue of cognition and one of the first to reject intelligible species as mediating representations in the intellect's act of understanding. Scholars disagree, however, on some key elements of his alternative account. This paper clarifies Henry's doctrine on intelligible species, as well as other forms of mental representation, like the concept or mental word. In breaking with the standard Aristotelian account of Thomas Aquinas, Henry offered a unique and innovative view on species, which had a significant influence on subsequent medieval thinkers.

Dissertation Nearly Finished

2011-02-15T09:26:00.011-05:00

In the long quest to write a dissertation, and write it well, my blogging aspirations cooled. The upshot, however, is that my dissertation is nearly finished. I expect to finish and submit by the end of Spring (2011). For those, if there be any hangers-on, interested in what my dissertation is, below is the Table of Contents as it stands presently.

HENRY OF GHENT ON THE TRINITY:
METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

SCOTT M. WILLIAMS
D.Phil. Thesis
University of Oxford, Oriel College

Theologies of the Word

2010-06-30T15:21:00.001-04:00

My article, 'Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus: On the Theology of the Father's Intellectual Generation of the Word', is now available in Recherches de Theologie et Philosophie Medievales 77(1) 2010.

Correction to CLT

2010-04-01T11:49:00.006-04:00

Correction: It is possibly misleading to say that the CLT (= Constitutional Latin Trinitarianism) position affirms that (1)-(3) are predications. It might be better to go with what Brower and Rea have called "sameness without identity". Instead of 'God', I'll use "the divine essence". So, recasted in this way we get:

(1*) The Father is the same as but not identical with the Divine Essence.
(2*) The Son is the same as but not identical with the Divine Essence.
(3*) The Holy Spirit is the same as but not identical with the Divine Essence.

In this way, when we ask, "what does the Father communicate to the Son?" We can say the Father communicates something that is not identical to the Father. The Father communicates the divine essence to the Son. Hence, the Father doesn't generate another Father, but the Father communicates the divine essence to the Son. If the Father communicates what is identical to the Father, to the Son, then the Son would be identical to the Father. Hence, the Son would be the Father. But that's not right. There's only one Father, one Son, and one Holy Spirit.

Leuven: Later Medieval Cognitive Theories

2010-02-13T13:35:00.002-05:00

I am off to Leuven, Belgium next week for a conference on Later Medieval Cognitive Theories. I will be giving a paper on Henry of Ghent's (seeming) account of a person's being aware of her first-order thoughts, and that she's the subject of these first-order thoughts. It is a complicated mess, textually. In any case, I've done my best to make sense of various and sundry claims. The conference paper comes from material from a chapter of my D.Phil. thesis on the Father's intellectual generation of the Son/Word.

The more I learn about later medieval phil. of mind - the more I am surprised at the diversity of views. Our scholastic friends were kind of like jazz musicians-- give me a riff, and I'll show you a 101 ways to play off of it.

Constitutional Latin Trinitarianism

2009-06-27T14:37:00.006-04:00

In my recent post over at Trinities.org I mentioned what I take to be a stream of Latin trinitarian theology that doesn't satisfy what some have labeled "Latin Trinitarianism" [= LT]. Brian Leftow takes Aquinas to be a good representative of LT, and I think he is right. On LT the following are identity statements.

1. The Father is God.
2. The Son is God.
3. The Holy Spirit is God.

And of course, for those who interpret (1)-(3) as identity statements they must find a way to block the transitivity of identity such that e.g., 'The Father is the Son' turns out false.

Translations and the Wildlands of the SQO

2009-01-07T21:59:00.007-05:00

To translate Henry of Ghent is like translating Augustine. Or, to translate Henry of Ghent is to translate Augustine. As some medievalists know, Henry was much more of a modern author than other scholastics in the sense that he typically cites chapter and verse and gives full quotations (or interestingly edited versions) of the cited text.

Here is what Roland Teske said about translating Article 1 of Henry's SQO. [Henry of Ghent’s Summa of Ordinary Questions: Article One: On the Possibility of Human Knowledge, St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, IN, 2008, xxii]:

Henry’s Latin is difficult, and the Latin of the authors he cites is often far more difficult and cryptic. Another problem stems from the many Latin words that Henry used in referring to knowledge and knowing, such as scientia, apprehensio, notitia, cognitio, and their verbal forms. For example, at times Henry uses scientia in the sense of Aristotelian science or the knowledge of demonstrated conclusions. At other times the term seems to have a more general connotation.

Introductions

2009-01-01T13:06:00.006-05:00

I have been studying the theological writings of Henry of Ghent for a few years, and with the New Year I have thought it fitting to begin a blog devoted to all things pertaining to the Solemn Doctor.

My intentions for this blog is firstly to make the theological and philosophical teachings of Henry of Ghent available to a wider audience. It would be fair to say that mostly academics who study medieval theology or medieval philosophy have read Henry's texts. There are several English translations of small representative passages by folks like Roland Teske and Jos Decorte. As representative examples these translations are indeed to be appreciated; nonetheless in order for a willing person to come to understand Henry's cathedral of philosophical and theological teachings, much much more work needs to be done on several fronts (e.g., the production of critical editions, translations, rigorous explanation and analysis of Henry's teachings). Secondly, I aim to post things such as translations of and commentaries on passages from Henry's writings (e.g., on what it means to be a 'person', what 'mutual love' is, and various interesting and delicate issues in his Trinitarian theology.)

One of the most well-known medieval theologians is St. Thomas Aquinas. There are various reasons for Thomas's popularity. Thomas's teachings are fascinating in and of themselves. Thomas was a Dominican and was made the doctor of that religious order - this entailed that many students were institutionally required to study Aquinas's writings and encouraged to agree with them. Furthermore, there are many English translations of Aquinas's writings. A person who does not know Latin could read massive amounts of Thomas's writings and so this person could be informed about many topics that Thomas wrote on. Not so for Henry of Ghent. Who was Henry of Ghent? (For a full biography, see Pasquale Porro's article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)