Franziska van Buren-Penev

The question of whether Bonaventure’s metaphysical thought is “Aristotelian” has long been answered with a plain “no.” Indeed, many scholars have interpreted Bonaventure as parting ways with Aristotle on a number of foundational metaphysical positions: Bonaventure adopts Augustinian seminal reasons, instead of the accounts of generation and causation found in Aristotle, and Bonaventure’s universal forms have ‘being’ independent of and prior to sensibles. While the characterization of Bonaventure as largely opposed to Aristotelianism has become standard in contemporary scholarship, this paper demonstrates quite the opposite: Bonaventure, in developing his notion of form, relies almost exclusively on his—indeed idiosyncratic—interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the author argues that Aristotle’s philosophy is at the foundation of Bonaventure’s two seemingly Augustinian positions concerning seminal reasons and the ontological status of forms—as well as his distinction between the universal form and the seminal reason, which is neither a real nor a conceptual distinction.

The question of whether Bonaventure’s metaphysical thought is “Aristotelian” has long been answered with a plain “no.” Indeed, many scholars have interpreted Bonaventure as parting ways with Aristotle on a number of foundational metaphysical positions: Bonaventure adopts Augustinian seminal reasons, instead of the accounts of generation and causation found in Aristotle, and Bonaventure’s universal forms have ‘being’ independent of and prior to sensibles. While the characterization of Bonaventure as largely opposed to Aristotelianism has become standard in contemporary scholarship, this paper demonstrates quite the opposite: Bonaventure, in developing his notion of form, relies almost exclusively on his—indeed idiosyncratic—interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the author argues that Aristotle’s philosophy is at the foundation of Bonaventure’s two seemingly Augustinian positions concerning seminal reasons and the ontological status of forms—as well as his distinction between the universal form and the seminal reason, which is neither a real nor a conceptual distinction.

This article revisits a long-abandoned position that, contrary to the developmentalist view, Aristotle’s lost dialogue, the Eudemus, argued for the immortality of intellect, not for the Platonic view of the immortality of the soul as a whole. It does so by providing evidence for the presence of Aristotle’s lost writings in the Church Fathers, a period often overlooked in the study of the reception of Aristotle’s lost writings. After discussing the debates in the secondary literature on Aristotle’s view of immortality in the Eudemus, it shows that Tertullian’s De anima 12 should be considered a fragment of the central argument for the immortality of intellect in Aristotle’s Eudemus. The conclusion is based not only on the fact that Tertullian’s summary of Aristotle’s view cannot be derived from any of Aristotle’s extant writings, but also on similar reports regarding the separability of intellect from soul found in Origen and Clement of Alexandria. The article thereby demonstrates the influence of Aristotle’s lost writings in the Patristic period and their importance as reporters of Aristotle’s lost works.

This article revisits a long-abandoned position that, contrary to the developmentalist view, Aristotle’s lost dialogue, the Eudemus, argued for the immortality of intellect, not for the Platonic view of the immortality of the soul as a whole. It does so by providing evidence for the presence of Aristotle’s lost writings in the Church Fathers, a period often overlooked in the study of the reception of Aristotle’s lost writings. After discussing the debates in the secondary literature on Aristotle’s view of immortality in the Eudemus, it shows that Tertullian’s De anima 12 should be considered a fragment of the central argument for the immortality of intellect in Aristotle’s Eudemus. The conclusion is based not only on the fact that Tertullian’s summary of Aristotle’s view cannot be derived from any of Aristotle’s extant writings, but also on similar reports regarding the separability of intellect from soul found in Origen and Clement of Alexandria. The article thereby demonstrates the influence of Aristotle’s lost writings in the Patristic period and their importance as reporters of Aristotle’s lost works.

Bonaventure's metaphysical thought and his interpretation of Aristotle Contemporary scholarship on Bonaventure has characterized him as the Neo-platonic foil to the Aristotelianism of his day. The present book, however, shows a Bonaventure who is highly enthusiastic about utilizing the philosophy of Aristotle and who centers much of his philosophical project around interpreting and understanding the texts of Aristotle. Two goals are central to this book. The first is to shed light on Bonaventure's greatly understudied ontology and theory of forms, demonstrating how his philosophical system is an important and unique alternative to other medieval Aristotelian systems. The second is to establish, more broadly, how Bonaventure's interpretation of Aristotle is a resource which should be mined for contemporary efforts in thinking about and reading Aristotle himself. Ebook available in Open Access.

Scholars have long considered de Philosophia and de Caelo to be in contradiction regarding the nature of the heavenly bodies, particularly with respect to the activity proper to the element composing them. According to the accounts we have of de Philosophia, Aristotle seems to have put forth that stars move because they have minds, and, according to Cicero’s account of the lost text, they choose their actions out of free will. In de Caelo, however, Aristotle seems only to consider that stars engage in the activity of circular motion because it is in their nature to do so, as it is in the nature of, e.g. fire to move upwards or Earth to move downwards. In this paper, I argue against the longstanding view that there is an incompatibility between these two “early” cosmological texts of Aristotle. I aim to show that these two texts endorse complementary, not contradictory, views of the heavenly bodies. I argue that in de Philosophia, Aristotle attributes to stars the intellective counterpart of the spatial motion which is developed in greater depth in de Caelo, while in de Caelo, we see hints of Aristotle’s view in de Philosophia that the stars are also minds and are able to rationally cognize their particular good – a point which is shown in de Caelo 292a18–293a14, where Aristotle attributes both life and praxis to the heavenly bodies. The overarching view which I present of these two texts is that while de Caelo approaches the heavenly bodies qua bodies and de Philosophia approaches them qua minds, they are still examining one and the same substance and that Aristotle has not changed his mind regarding the basic nature of such a substance in the (supposed) interim between writing de Philosophia and de Caelo. Rather, we find echoes of de Caelo in de Philosophia, and echoes of de Philosophia in de Caelo, which speaks to the fact that Aristotle maintains one view of the heavenly bodies which he presents over the course of these two texts.