Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

Neoplatonic ideas reached him from a variety of authoritative sources, which presented a united front endorsing the “from one only one” motto and its corollary that God uses intermediaries to fashion the universe. For starters there was Avicenna. We’ve seen him exerting influence in the Latin sphere starting in the twelfth century, especially regarding the soul. But Albert drew more deeply on Avicenna than others had done, as we can see from his exposition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which refers constantly to Avicenna.2 Then, there was that favorite source of Eriugena’s, the Pseudo-Dionysius. Albert commented on his works in lectures that were recorded by Thomas Aquinas, who would go on to write his own commentary on Dionysius’ Divine Names. Since Dionysius was covertly drawing on the ideas of the late ancient Platonist Proclus, this too helped push Albert in a Neoplatonic direction. Finally, there was an even more indirect route through which Proclus was smuggled into Latin Christendom: the Book of Causes (Liber de causis). It is a partial translation of Proclus’ elegant and axiomatic presentation of Neoplatonist philosophy in his Elements of Theology. The Latin Book of Causes was based on an Arabic paraphrase translation produced in the ninth century. It acquired considerable authority because it was thought to be a work of Aristotle himself. This is basically what Albert believed, though he saw it as an excerpt of a work by Aristotle. Albert thought the excerpting was ...