Abstract
When Holy Church stresses to Will that “treuthe” is the best of all treasures and a glorious love-gift from God, Will resists her counsel. Instead of relying upon faith, he insists on employing his mind to discern truth’s meaning, which he finds in the concrete objects of this world. The certain knowledge that these objects provide stands apart from the kind of knowledge described by Holy Church. This gap explains the inherent difficulty for Will in completing his search for divine truth, for the mind can never know the essence of metaphysical matters. Yet his search does not simply educe the limitations of our cognitive abilities; more importantly, it reveals a specific epistemological pattern that conjoins Scotist and Ockhamist conceptions of thought—namely, intuitive and abstractive cognition. Logically, this pattern helps to explicate the counsel proffered to Will in the Vita de Dowel, a section that focuses exclusively upon human mental faculties. This chapter thus examines three select episodes from the Vita to illustrate how an awareness of these thinkers helps us to better understand the epistemological theories central to the poem’s narrative and, in turn, champion Will’s inquiries into the mind’s powers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Gordon Teskey, Allegory and Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 17. He cites Plato’s Third Man argument to account for the idea that two opposites can share something that is separate from each. “This can be nothing other than a Third Man, which must in turn share something with the first two, and so on” (14).
- 2.
William of Ockham, Ordinatio I, d. 1, q. 3 (OTh I: 415).
- 3.
Middleton, “Narration and Invention,” 107.
- 4.
Ockham, Rep. III, q. 11 (OTh VI, 375).
- 5.
Carruthers, Search for St. Truth, 70; Harwood, Problem of Belief, 154.
- 6.
By utilizing his emotions in productive manner, Piers proves that he is not subject to his passions. Still, sensory passions, as Ockham observes, can operate as an indirect power on the acts of the will. In certain conditions, a vehement emotional state can restrict any volitions. They affect the corporeal quality that enables intellections and volitions. See Quaest. variae, q. 6, 9 (OTh VIII, 262).
- 7.
See E. Talbot Donaldson, Piers Plowman: The C-Text and Its Poet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949); Schmidt, “Langland and Scholastic Philosophy.”
- 8.
James I. Wimsatt, “John Duns Scotus, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Chaucer’s Portrayal of the Canterbury Pilgrims,” Speculum 71 (1996): 633–45.
- 9.
Russell A. Peck, “Chaucer and the Nominalist Questions,” Speculum 53.4 (1978): 745–60.
- 10.
Coleman, Piers Plowman and the “Moderni”; Harwood, Problem of Belief.
- 11.
Roger Bacon, Communia Naturalium (Opera hactenus inedita Fratris Rogeri Baconis), ed. R. Steele (Oxford 1905, II), 92–95.
- 12.
Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de fide et de cognitione, Quaracchi (Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, 1957) Q. IV, 274–91.
- 13.
Aquasparta, Q. IV, 279. See also, Roger Marston who argues that the primary object of the intellect is the universal, the singular is the per se object. Just as color in itself cannot stimulate the sense—only a specific, definite color can cause this response—the universal cannot be the per se object. Roger Marston, Quaestiones disputatae de emanatione aeterna, de statu naturae lapsae et de anima, Quaracchi (Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, 1932) Q. II, 238–40.
- 14.
Franciscan thought, in accord with medieval thought generally, gave paramount importance to gaining knowledge about God, praising it as a laudable rational endeavor. Still, disputes arose in academic circles concerning how one acquires such knowledge. At the center of these disputes lay the problem of universals and the strong theological implications they raised. “Universals” are the general terms categorizing a multiplicity of individuals—such as the word “humanity,” applied to all humans, or “man” or “woman” applied to some. Until the Aristotelian revival in the thirteenth century, philosophers like Augustine commonly perceived universal natures as existing independently of the particulars whose natures they signify. Following the revival, however, medieval thinkers like Scotus and Ockham redefined this epistemology. Their revolution focused upon particular objects.
- 15.
For a complete discussion of his influence, see John Lynch, The Theory of Knowledge of Vital Du Four (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1972).
- 16.
For instance, suppose a person in a dark room stares at a blank screen. A red circle appears on the screen and then darkness resumes. After a wait, the circle reappears. This person experiences an “intuitive cognition” of the red circle both times it appeared. That is, this person can know with certainty that, for him, there is a red circle (an individual red circle, since there is not any other kind).
- 17.
John Alford rightly notes that Will’s search inspires “a deeper appreciation of the man’s originality and complexity of thought. He belongs to no tradition, popular or courtly.” I believe aligning Will with Franciscan thought, which praises the unique capabilities of created reason, lie outside popular and courtly tradition. It lies within a burgeoning belief system in late medieval thought. See “Langland’s Learning,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 9 (1995): 7.
- 18.
Gillian Rudd believes that the friars have “rendered their teaching incomprehensible by not suiting their words to their audience’s abilities.” The difficulty in discerning the words, I argue, stems from the complexity of the epistemological theory presented. See Gillian Rudd, Managing Language in Piers Plowman (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), 77.
- 19.
Scotus, Reportata Parisiensia I, d. 45, q. 2, n. 9; ibid., d. 33, q. 2, n.11.
- 20.
- 21.
Scotus, Opus Oxoniense II, d. 1, q. 5, n. 5.
- 22.
The theory of ‘thisness’ derives from the Latin term haecceitas and is the principle of individuation. He writes that “an individual is incompossible with not being a designated this by this singularity and the cause is asked not of singularity in general but of this designated singularity in particular—that is, as it is determinately this.” (Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4, n. 76; Spade, Problem of Universals, 74). In addition, this individuating principle cannot be discerned by us in the present life. See Scotus, Rep. Par. II, d. 12, q. 8, n. 10; ibid., d. 3, q. 3, n 15.
- 23.
Universals exist, then, only in the mind as one concept applicable to many things that have their objective basis in the specific nature existing within external, individual things. (Scotus, Rep. Par., II, d. 2, q. 5, n. 12). This aspect of Scotus’ theory becomes even more complex when he argues that this common nature has something “less than numerical unity” so that its nature is neither universal nor particular. This way he can claim both that universals exist and that all beings ever experience are individuals.
- 24.
This change demarcated the line between these two camps, the realists and the nominalists. Realists, on the one hand, believed that an abstract term names an independent and unitary reality. Nominalists, on the other hand, advocated the theory that no universal essences exist in reality and that the mind can frame no single concept or image corresponding to a universal or general term. The difficulties encountered by the nominalists centered upon their explanation of how one can know the world is as they describe it. For a discussion of nominalism’s meaning, see Paul Vincent Spade, “Ockham’s Nominalist Metaphysics: Some Main Themes,” The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. Paul Vincent Spade (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 100–17.
- 25.
For a complete discussion of Scotus’ notion of universals and its place in late medieval thought, see Martin M. Tweedale, Scotus vs. Ockham: A Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. 1–2, Studies in the History of Philosophy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press, 1999).
- 26.
Scotus, Quodlibetal q. 14, n. 12, 14; Scotus, God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, trans. Felix Alluntis and Allan Wolter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 327.
- 27.
Francis of Assisi, The Testament in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 154.
- 28.
Francis of Assisi, The Admonitions in Frances and Clare: The Complete Works, trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 29.
- 29.
Although this passage is assumed to have been written by St. Bernard, it was written by a Franciscan. See Wittig, “Elements in the Design of the Inward Journey,” 212.
- 30.
Francis of Assisi, The Later Rule in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 144.
- 31.
Michelle Karnes in “Will’s Imagination in Piers Plowman,” explores the possibility of Imagnatyf bridging reason with revelation. She writes, “Will progresses in his journey by learning to reconcile natural knowledge and revelation, or clergy, through his imagination” (29). Her informed argument rests largely upon an Aristotelian interpretation. Such a view contributes to this work, for both Scotus and Ockham draw from Aristotle to develop ultimately their emphasis upon the individual as the surety of epistemological truth.
- 32.
See Harwood, Problem of Belief, 84–90. E.N. Kaulbach has defined this faculty as “sense reasoning in animals,” Imaginative Prophecy in the B-Text of Piers Plowman, (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993). Still, my study follows Harwood’s thesis that Imagynatyf is the faculty responsible for making similitudes to enlighten Will of spiritual truth. As opposed to Kaulbach, Harwood asserts that “the imaginative power is not in itself rational; rather, the reason can make use of the powers of the imagination” (Problem of Belief, 194, n.107).
- 33.
Imagynatyf epitomizes the union of memory and foresight, a vision that not only encompasses the spectrum of time but also induces Will’s very own dreams. In medieval psychology, this faculty is the one responsible for dreams. See Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse, 172.
- 34.
“Lives of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano,” in Saint Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, ed. Marion A. Habig, vol. 1 (Quincy, IL: Franciscan P, 1991), 2 Celano 171, p. 499.
- 35.
Scotus, Ordinatio Prologue, n.1.
- 36.
Ockham, Sent. I, prol. q. 1 (OTh I, 31).
- 37.
Ockham, Sent. III, q. 2 (OTh VI, 65).
- 38.
Ockham, Sent. I, prol. q. 1 (OTh I, 30).
- 39.
Ockham, Sent. III, q. 3 (OTh VI, 124–5).
- 40.
Hugh White believes that “kynde wit” throughout this section of the B text is a body of knowledge. But Langland may suppose the faculty kynde wit—natural intelligence—to be intimately involved in acquiring natural wisdom.” See Hugh White, Nature and Salvation in Piers Plowman (Cambridge: Brewer, 1988), 26.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strong, D. (2017). Will’s Need to Know. In: The Philosophy of Piers Plowman. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51981-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51981-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51980-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51981-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)