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Habitus Revisited: A Reply to Cary Nederman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Marcia L. Colish
Marcia L. Colish*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
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Extract

In a recent Traditio article, Cary J. Nederman has added another valuable study to the series of papers he has been publishing over the past few years. This body of work has the laudable goal of showing that, across the twelfth century, thinkers were taking an increasingly Aristotelian line in the fields of ethics and political theory, on the basis of ideas transmitted indirectly via works available in Latin well before the appearance of the integral Latin translations of the texts of the Stagirite deemed to have launched the “Aristotelian revolution” of the thirteenth century in these fields. Throughout this burgeoning oeuvre, Nederman has been quite successful in supporting his case for a more gradual and less cataclysmic reception of Aristotle in the Latin West than the standard accounts acknowledge. It is not the purpose of this paper to challenge that larger argument. Nonetheless, with respect to the Aristotelian doctrine of habitus on which Nederman focuses in his Traditio article, we would like to suggest that his analysis needs to be reconsidered. We offer the following pages as an amplificatio of his thesis, with the aim of adding nuance to it by bringing forward material that he omits. Our intention here is not so much to criticize Nederman's reading of the texts on habitus in the twelfth century that he does adduce, and certainly not to object to his larger project, but rather to indicate that there is more to the story, and so to refine his analysis in the hope of strengthening it.

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Articles
Information
Traditio , Volume 48 , 1993 , pp. 77 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by Fordham University 

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References

1 Nederman, Cary J. “Nature, Ethics, and the Doctrine of ‘Habitus’: Aristotelian Moral Psychology in the Twelfth Century,” Traditio 45 (1989–90): 87–110. See also Nederman, Cary J. and Brückmann, J., “Aristotelianism in John of Salisbury's Policraticus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 203–29; Nederman, “Bracton on Kingship Revisited,” History of Political Thought 5 (1984): 61–77; “Aristotelian Ethics and John of Salisbury's Letters,” Viator 18 (1987): 161–73; “The Aristotelian Doctrine of the Mean and John of Salisbury's Concept of Liberty,” Vivarium 24 (1987): 161–73; “Nature, Sin, and the Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 3–26; “Knowledge, Virtue and the Path of Wisdom: The Unexamined Aristotelianism of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon,” Mediaeval Studies 51 (1989): 268–86; “Aristotelian Ethics before the Nicomachean Ethics: Sources of Aristotle's Concept of Virtue in the Twelfth Century,” Parergon n.s. 7 (1989): 55–75; “Aristotelianism and the Origins of ‘Political Science’ in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 179–94.Google Scholar

A shorter version of this paper was presented at the 27th International Congress of Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 10 May 1992.Google Scholar

2 Nederman, “Nature, Ethics, and the Doctrine of ‘Habitus’,” 94–110.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 108Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 109.Google Scholar

5 This characterization is widespread in the scholarly literature on twelfth-century scholasticism. Convenient examples are Philippe Delhaye, “La vertu et les vertus dans les oeuvres d’Alain de Lille,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 6 (1963): 13–25; Odon Lottin, “Les premières définitions et classifications des vertus au moyen âge,” Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles 3 (Louvain, 1949), Section 2 part 1, 100–02, 108–09, 114–15, 126–29.Google Scholar

6 This estimate of Peter the Chanter has been standard for some time. See, most conveniently, Baldwin, John W., Masters. Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (Princeton, 1970), 1: 18, 43; idem, “Peter the Chanter,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Strayer, Joseph R. (New York, 1987), 9: 521–22. While this judgment has been modified with respect to Peter as a speculative grammarian in his De tropis loquendi and elsewhere by Evans, Gillian R., “A Work of ‘Terminist Theology’? Peter the Chanter's De Tropis Loquendi and Some Fallacie,” Vivarium 20 (1982): 40–58 and eadem, “The Place of Peter the Chanter's De tropis loquendi,” Analecta Cisterciensia 39 (1983): 231–51, the general judgment concerning his nonspeculative approach to ethics and to the sacraments remains in place.Google Scholar

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10 Lombard, Peter, Sent. 3. d. 36, ed. Brady 2: 202–06.Google Scholar

11 A good survey is provided by Lottin, “Les premières définitions,” 99–150. Nederman cites part of this study in “Nature, Ethics, and the Doctrine of ‘Habitus’,” 89 n. 9, but does not give adequate attention to this topic and the place of Simon and Alan in the debate on it.Google Scholar

12 Lombard, Peter, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 7.5, ed. Brady 2: 262–63.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. 4. d. 4. c. 4–6, ed. Brady 2: 255–61.Google Scholar

14 Peter of Poitiers, Sententiarum libri quinque 5.6–7, PL 21 1:1232D-33A.Google Scholar

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18 Institutiones in sacram paginam 8.2, ed. Heinzemann, Richard, Die “Institutiones in sacram paginam” des Simon von Tournai: Einleitung und Quästionenverzeichnis (Munich, 1967), 82.Google Scholar

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20 Alan of Lille, “Le traité,” 1.1, ed. Lottin 6: 47–50. The Aristotelian, but not the non-Aristotelian, understanding of habitus in this treatise — although the author does not quote that term — is also noted by James Simpson, “The Information of Alan of Lille's ‘Anticlaudianus’: A Preposterous Interpretation,” Traditio 47 (1992): 126–28.Google Scholar

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22 Daniel Edward Pilarczyk, ed., Praepostini cancellarii de Sacramentis et de novissimis (Summa theologicae pars quarta), Collectio Urbaniana, ser. 3, textus ac documenta 7 (Rome, 1964), 38, 44. The editor (9–11) dates this work to 1188–94 but acknowledges that it could have been completed as late as 1210.Google Scholar

23 Ebbesen, Sten and Boje Mortensen, Lars. eds., “A Partial Edition of Stephen Langton's Summa and Quaestiones with Parallels from Andrew Sunesen's Hexaemeron ,” Cahiers de l'Institut de moyen-âge grec et latin 49. (1985): 136, 159–64. Stephen's teaching career at Paris embraced the years 1170–1206; no agreement as to when, during these years, he wrote his Summa has been reached by scholars and the editors cited above do not hazard a guess, except to note that it is likely to have been produced in the same period as the Quaestiones. “Before 1206” is the most specific anyone gets. See Artur Michael Landgraf, “Zur Chronologie der Werke Stephan Langtons,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 3 (1931): 67–70; Odon Lottin, “La ‘Summa’ attribué à Etienne Langton,” Psychologie et morale 6: 125–36; Damien Van den Eynde, “Précisions chronologiques sur quelques ouvrages théologiques du XIIe siècle,” Antonianum 26 (1951): 223–46.Google Scholar

24 Langton, Stephen, Summa, ed. Ebbesen and Mortensen 144.Google Scholar

25 Peter the Chanter, Summa de sacramentis et animae consiliis 24, 58, ed. Jean-Albert Dugauquier (Louvain, 1954–67), 1: 69–81, 3 part 2B: 520–22. The editor (3 part 1: 179–87) gives 1191–97 as the likeliest date of this work.Google Scholar

26 Alan of Lille, “Le traité” 1.1, ed. Lottin 6: 47–50.Google Scholar

27 Alan of Lille, Regulae 89.1–2, 89.4–7, ed. Häring 195, 196. The terms quoted are at 89.4, ed. Häring 196. This point in the Regula has also been noted by Simpson, “The Information of Alan of Lille's ‘Anticlaudianus’,” 127, 137–38.Google Scholar

28 Alighieri, Dante, Inferno 3.34–39, ed. Fredi Chiapelli (Milan, 1965), 456.Google Scholar

29 Simon of Tournai, Institutiones in sacram paginam 6.96–104, ed. Heinzemann (as in n. 18) 66; Alan of Lille, “Le traité,” 1.2–3, ed. Lottin 6: 57–60, 145–46. Their position is noted by Lottin, “Les premières définitions” (as in n. 5), 107, 116–21. For Alan, see also Suzanne Elizabeth Potter, “A Study of the Regulae de sacra theologia of Alan of Lille” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1972), 184–94.Google Scholar

30 Peter of Poitiers, Sent. 3.17, PL 211:1078D–80C; Stephen Langton, Summa, ed. Ebbesen and Mortensen 159–60; In 2. Sent. d. 25. c. 1 in Der Sentenzenkommentar des Kardinals Stephan Langton, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 37:1 (Münster, 1952), 93–95. See also the unpublished texts cited and the analysis given by Lottin, “Les premières définitions,” 121–25, 145–49; Artur Michael Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte der Frühscholastik (Regensburg, 1952–56), 1 part 1: 163–83.Google Scholar

31 Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., “A Commentary on the Our Father by Alan of Lille” 11, 62–69, Analecta Cisterciensia 31 (1975): 161, 173–74. On this point, see Maurizio Aliotta, La teologia del peccato in Alano di Lilla (Palermo, 1986), who adds that another doctrine, and certainly a non-Aristotelian one, that tinctures Alan's ethics is his adherence to the privative theory of evil.Google Scholar

32 Simon of Tournai, Disputationes 72. q. 2–4, ed. Warichez 204–205; Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., “Simon of Tournai's Commentary of the So-called Athanasian Creed,” 2.8–10, AHDLMA 43 (1976): 151–52. See also Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 1: 59.Google Scholar

33 Alan of Lille, “Le traité,” 2.3, ed. Lottin 6: 84. On this point see Evans, , Alan of Lille (as in n. 19), 83–84.Google Scholar

34 Alan of Lille, “Le traité,” 1.5, ed. Lottin 6: 63–66; Glorieux, P. ed., “La Somme ‘Quoniam homines’ d’Alain de Lille” 2.1.140, 2.1.142, 2.1.151, 2.1.156, AHDLMA 20 (1953): 276–77, 278, 290–92, 297. Other theologians who maintain the same position include Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 5. c. 1–5, d. 24. c. 1–d. 29. c. 2, ed. Brady 1: 450–52, 461–93; Peter of Poitiers, Sent. 2.9, ed. Moore, Philip S. Marthe Dulong, and Garvin, Joseph N. (Notre Dame, 1961), 56, 58; Odo of Ourscamp, Quaestiones magistri Odonis Suessionensis, pars altera q. 336, ed. Joannes Baptista Pitra, Analecta novissima Spicilegii Solesmensis, altera continuatio (Paris, 1888; rpt. Farnsborough, Hants., 1967), 2: 177–80; Gandulph of Bologna, Magistri Gandulphi Bononiensis Sententiarum libri quatuor 2.1.193–97, ed. Johannes de Walter (Vienna, 1924), 255–57; Prepositinus, Summa, as cited in Albert Fries, Ungerechtigkeit, Fall und Erbsünde nach Präpositin von Cremona und Wilhelm von Auxerre (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1940), 15 n. 23; Stephen Langton, In 2. Sent. d. 3. c. 1, c. 3; d. 5. c. 3, ed. Landgraf 72–73, 78. On this point see Landgraf, , Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 1: 51–140.Google Scholar

35 Lombard, Peter, Sent. 2. d. 27. c. 3.2, ed. Brady 1: 482–83. On this point see Johann Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1932).Google Scholar

36 See, for example, Peter of Poitiers, Sent. 3.2–4, PL 211: 1044A-51A; Stephen Langton, In 2. Sent. d. 5. c. 3, ed. Landgraf 78.Google Scholar

37 See, for example. Odo of Ourscamp, Quaestiones, pars altera q. 313, ed. Pitra 2: 140.Google Scholar

38 Alan of Lille, Regulae 87.3, 90.1–2, ed. Häring 193, 197.Google Scholar