Pekka Kärkkäinen

Luther began developing his theology within the late medieval school of the via moderna (also called the Nominalists). This school of thought had developed during the 15th century mainly as a method for interpreting Aristotle, which relied on certain 14th-century authorities, such as William of Ockham, John Buridan, Gregory of Rimini, and Peter of Ailly among others. Luther studied philosophy according to the via moderna in Erfurt, where his teachers Jodocus Trutfetter and Bartholomaeus Arnoldi of Usingen represented a position, which tolerated the Thomist and Scotist views. The school also featured a specific kind of theology, which was based on its interpretation of Aristotle. Among the most influential theologians in the German via moderna was Gabriel Biel in Tübingen, whose theology was crucial for Luther’s understanding of the school’s positions. Besides Ockham, whom Biel mentioned as his main authority in his Sentences commentary, Biel adopted the positions of several other authors, even outside the common authorities of the via moderna. Other influential theologians and philosophers affiliated with the via moderna were John Mair in Paris and John Eck in Ingolstadt. Later both became adversaries of Luther and the Lutherans, as did Luther’s former teacher Usingen. The University of Wittenberg did not host the via moderna at all. Thomist and Scotist forms of the via antiqua were predominant among its academics, including the later Reformer Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt. During his early years as a student in Erfurt, Luther remained largely among the camp of the via moderna. Soon after moving to Wittenberg, Luther developed his criticism of Aristotle and late medieval theology, where his main target was that of Biel’s theology, and especially his doctrine of grace. However, even during those years Luther retained much of his scholastic education, including an interpretation of Aristotle, in which he adopted several of Ockham’s ideas. Even during his later years, Luther made use of terminological tools of the via moderna, even when opposing some of its theological positions.

Luther’s view of emotions is firmly based on traditional language. He prefers to use affect as a general term for emotional phenomena, which includes general inclinations of love and hate, which involve more incidental emotions such as joy and fear. In general terms, emotions always have a cognitive content, although they are for Luther more than mere cognitions. In some cases, Luther even enjoins a cognitive manipulation of unwanted emotions, using traditional forms of piety such as meditation on Christ’s sufferings. In the healing of emotions both in the spiritual and in natural realms, music has a prominent place for Luther. The main cognitive source of spiritual emotions for Luther is the Word of God, dispensed by God himself in the Scripture as the supreme rhetorician. Luther also noted the social nature of emotions. In particular, he appreciated the innate emotional bonds between the members of the family as God’s means for securing the well- being of humankind. The emotions are so deeply embedded in human nature that all the saints and even Christ himself were not without them. Luther’s ideal is not Stoic apatheia, but rather a moderation of emotions. Luther seldom attributes genuine emotions to God. He considers biblical language on God’s anger pointing to his future judgment rather than any present state of mind. Luther intimately connects faith, which grasps the promises of the Gospel and creates the certainty of salvation, with human emotional life. This has a double effect on the emotions, providing comfort against the fear caused by sinfulness and external adversities, as well as creating spiritual joy and peace of mind. Fear of God is an ambiguous emotion for Luther. The right kind of fear connected to reverence is essential to Christian life, and a similar fear should be felt for parents and authorities. Faith creates joy which drives away fear, but the remaining sinfulness means that a certain amount of fear remains in this life. Fear and joy are dynamically complementary in Luther’s view and he accuses his adversaries of preaching false security, which gets rid of the fear by denying the inherence of sin and mortality in human life. As with emotions, Luther adopts the traditional terminology of experience, but develops it in a creative manner. Experience of God’s both negative and positive presence is essential for theology, especially for understanding the true meaning of the Scriptures. However, in comparison to Scripture, experience is insufficient in spiritual matters.

Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch (1490-1534), Melanchthon’s student and close collaborator elaborated significantly the Lutheran method in works written shortly before his untimely death in 1534. He seems to have systematized to a considerable degree the Melanchthonian concept of method and to have developed it towards an explicitly Aristotelian and even scholastic framework. In doing so, he did not merely imitate his authorities, who included above all Aristotle and Albert the Great: these figures served as sources for his Melanchthonian/Lutheran manner of presenting and organizing scientific knowledge.  The example from Bernhardi’s discussion of causes shows that his contribution to the discussion on method did not remain at the level of mere theorizing, but was applied to some degree in his own teaching of natural philosophy.

In his discussions on the psychology of moral judgement, Mair appears as a follower of the via moderna in the footsteps of Gabriel Biel. However, his refinements of, and even conscious disagreement with the Bielian position reveals a degree of originality in his thinking. In all of this, Mair seemed to be interested in the  problems of moral psychology throughout his career and endeavoured to find satisfactory solutions even if some remained open to further questions.

Many medieval writers argued that sleep was caused by corporeal processes related to digestion. This theory was largely transmitted to the medieval West through the medical treatise Pantegni which considered the vapours of digestion rising to the brain as the cause of termination of the sensory operations in sleep. While this explanation was later supported by Aristotle’s works, it was in most cases based on a brain-centered view of perception (1). Some medieval authors elaborated the ancient classifications of types and causes of dreams. An anonymous twelfth-century treatise Liber de spiritu et anima disseminated Macrobius’ classification of dream-content into the following five categories: oracular saying, vision, dream, nightmare, and apparition. Other writers like Averroes provided psychological explanations based on standard notions of internal perceptive faculties (2). Among various kinds of dreams, the nature of prophetic dreams was discussed in particular. Thomas Aquinas thought that both God and natural agents, such as separate substances, cause prophetic dreams (3). The similarities and dissimilarities between cognition in dreaming and in external perception were also discussed by many authors (4).

Avicenna’s theory of the five external and the five internal senses and his descriptions of these had a strong impact on early medieval thought. By the ‘internal senses’ Avicenna refers to the cognitive faculties of the sensory soul other than the external senses. The organs of the inner senses are the different ventricles of the brain in which they are located. While the acts of the inner senses are associated with changes in the fine corporeal spirit, their ultimate subject is the incorporeal soul. The common sense unifies the sensations of the external senses, the imagination retains the sensations, and a third power can create configurations by combining and dividing representations in the imagination. This latter ability is called imaginative in animals and cogitative in human beings. The fourth power, which is called estimative, grasps the ‘intentions’ of things, such as their hostility or dangerousness and other harmful and useful aspects which are not perceived by the external senses. The memory is a retentive power which retains the content of the estimative power. Avicenna’s theory of the internal senses was among the leading paradigms until the mid-thirteenth century, and his conception of the estimative power was discussed right through to the seventeenth century. Another influential source for early medieval discussions was the late ancient Platonist view, also found in Augustine, in which the imagination is treated as a central immaterial power which mediates between sense and intellect; sensory acts other than perceptions are associated with the instrumental animal spirit in various ventricles of the brain.

Early medieval Latin discussions of perception were largely influenced by Avicenna’s Liber de anima. His description of the five external senses combined Aristotelian and Galenic medical ideas. Some medical views were also known through the Pantegni of ‘Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī and the works of Costa ben Luca, Nemesius of Emesa and John Damascene. While Avicenna’s approach also included the Neoplatonic conception of the soul as the active perceiver which uses corporeal instruments, this was not a central theme in his De anima and was rather known through Augustine’s works. Aristotle’s theory became dominant when his De anima was included in the university curriculum in the middle of the thirteenth century. Following Averroes, Latin Aristotle commentators were particularly interested in the nature of the medium change and the reception of the sensory species of the object without matter. Aristotelian perceptual realism involved the teleological idea that the passive sensory powers and their extra-mental objects constituted a relational whole in which the objective perceptibility of things was actualized when the sensory qualities activated the corresponding sensory powers. This model was somewhat qualified though not refuted by the early fourteenth-century interest in the subjective reception of sensory content and the tendency to combine Aristotle’s view of passive perception with various active elements.

The chapter gives a general description of philosophical psychology as it was practiced and taught in the sixteenth century at three of the most important universities of the time, the universities of Erfurt, Padua, and Bologna. Contrary to received notions of the Renaissance it argues that the sixteenth-century philosophical psychology was tightly bound to the Aristotelian tradition. At the University of Erfurt, philosophical psychology was developed with strong adherence to the basic doctrines of Buridanian via moderna, as it had been taught for over a century. The Buridanian approach dominated especially discussions on the metaphysical nature of the human soul and disputes about universal realism versus nominalism. The situation was somewhat different at the universities of Bologna and Padua. The connections between these two universities were close, and they can be seen as developing one and the same Aristotelian tradition. Although the works produced were rather eclectic in nature, they shared research topics as well as conceptual and methodological frameworks which contributed to the unity of the school. In Bologna and Padua, Averroës had a central position as an authority cited and criticized; and philosophical questions concerning the immortality of the soul and the nature of the intellectual species attracted continuous interest. The development of philosophical psychology was also influenced by the special organizational situation of these universities: theology had a relatively unimportant position, and medicine instead had continuous impact on teaching.

The present chapter examines the different views about the objects of sense percep-tion held by late medieval nominalist philosophers at the University of Erfurt. The discussions on sense perception in medieval Aristotelianism were complicated by the notion of inner senses – ...

... Et quia non semper animadverterunt vel advertere cogitarunt ad sermonis proprietatem, sed aliquando improprie, figurate et tropice sunt locuti, rever-enter sunt interpretandi et illorum dicta non in sensu quem verba faciunt, sed potius quem ipsi pre se ferunt accipienda, et ita ...