Mercedes Rubio

This article explores Albert the Great’s understanding of human cognition as a hierar-chical, semiotic structure, made of light. It examines his response to the question “What is good for man?”, tracing his shift from a moral–theological to an anthropological and epistemological perspective in dialogue with Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Arabic sources. Through close textual analysis of his writings on the soul and intellect, the ar-ticle reconstructs man’s hierarchical constitution and highlights the central role of signs and of the imagery of light and shadows in his understanding of cognition. It argues that, for Albert, each level of apprehension functions as a semiotic link that dynamically leads the human intellect from lower to higher degrees of comprehension, intentionally pointing toward the divine source of all being, understood as light. Albert’s conception of signs, intentionality, and intellectual illumination is shown to anticipate and go be-yond later semiotic theories. Consequently, the article proposes that he should be re-garded as a “proto-semiotic” thinker whose original anthropological synthesis, centered on epistemology and sign-theory, illuminates the intrinsic role of signs in human per-fection and clarifies how words and images can express the cognitive relation between created and uncreated being.

Maimonides looks for the true axiom for a demonstration of the existence of God, and he finds it in the universal fact of movement. His logical argumentation is as follows: given the hypothesis of the eternity of the Universe, of its eternal movement, if we can think of a First Mover, that Mover has all the characteristics of the First Principle according to Aristotle; the characteristics of eternity and to be essentially moving. Maimonides' contribution to the Aristotelian theory of the First Principle is precisely the crossing of the invisible barrier between the physical proof of the First Mover and the metaphysical proof of the First Principle. By transforming Aristotle's corollary into the postulate that supports the whole proof, Maimonides avoids the aporia of the First Principle being confused with the First Mover. But setting a postulate, that is, a proposition whose opposite is equally possible, at the foundations of the theory, transforms what was meant to be "a true and indubitable proof" into a scientific theory in the modern sense of the term: a theory that can be accepted as true only regarding certain parameters or system of propositions. If there was creation of the world in time, then no doubt there is a Creator. If the world is eternally moving, then it has a Mover that is essentially moving, incorporeal, one and eternal itself, namely the divinity.

There have been two major revolutions in the history of philosophy. The first, when Aristotle formalized philosophical language and metaphysics. The second, when modern philosophers turned to the thinking subject. The modern project is stalled due to the inability of classical anthropological notions to provide answers to key questions, like the nature and scope of human knowledge, freedom, and interpersonal relations. L. Polo proposes a theory of knowledge that adds the missing links, enabling him to develop a fully-fledged transcendental anthropology that completes the picture of the human person.

Both Averroes and Maimonides are concerned with the relationship between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith. Both examine the exoteric and esoteric teachings of scripture and the role of allegory in sacred texts, share the same concern for the apparent contradictions between religious and philosophical truths, try to explain the reasons for these inconsistencies, and look for ways to reconcile both sources of knowledge. But their differences in understanding the role of sacred scripture as a source of knowledge are irreconcilable. Averroes relies on the Aristotelian notion of sign, which enables human apprehension of higher matters and is central for explaining certain kinds of figurative speech found in sacred scriptures. Maimonides is not aware of this epistemological tool, an ability to grasp the truth that pervades our cognoscitive structure and is the only way to communicate the incommunicable. Ignoring its central role in biblical texts leads Maimonides to theoretical agnosticism.

Thomas Aquinas wrote a text later known as Quaestio de attributis and ordered it inserted in a precise location of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard more than a decade after composing this work. Aquinas assigned exceptional importance to this text, in which he confronts the debate on the issue of the divine attributes that swept the most important centres of learning in 13th Century Europe and examines the answers given to the problem by the representatives of the four mainstream schools of his time: the Greek mystic Dionysius Areopagita, the Latin Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina. This in-depth study of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestio de attributis (In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3) binds together the findings of previous research on the unique history of this text by reconstructing the historical circumstances surrounding its composition, shows that the Quaestio contains Aquinas’ final answer to the dispute on the divine attributes, and thoroughly examines his interpretation of Maimonides’ position on the issue of the knowledge of God by analysing this and other texts related to it chronologically and doctrinally. The examination of the Quaestio reveals the background of Thomas Aquinas’ renewed interest in Maimonides’ position on the issue and brings to light elements of Aquinas’ interpretation that are absent from his earlier references to Maimonides. Moreover, the chronological and doctrinal connection of the Quaestio de attributis to other Thomistic works with explicit references to Maimonides enables a reconstruction of his comprehensive approach to Maimonides’ teaching on the possibility and extent of the knowledge of God in the Guide of the Perplexed and highlights the place of Maimonides’ philosophical teachings in Thomas’ own thought in issues like "Being" as the proper name of God, the multiplicity of the divine names, the beatific vision in the afterlife, the causes that prevent the instruction of the multitude in divine matters and the role of faith and prophecy in the acquisition of the true knowledge of God in this life. The last chapter examines the reasons behind Aquinas’ silencing of Maimonides’ name when introducing his Five Ways for the knowledge of the existence of God, in spite of the evident relation between these and Maimonides’ Four Speculations. The study is completed with an extensive appendix that includes the text of the Quaestio de attributis with an English translation and the critical edition of several chapters of the 13th Century Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed known as Dux neutrorum