The new Logic of Ramon Llull

The new Logic of Ramon Llull Charles Lohr ABSTRACT (The new Logic of Ramon Llull) This paper proposes a reassesment of Ramon Llullos thought in the history of philosophy. A previous reconsideration of the history of medieval thought is required. The author refuses a finalist interpretation of the Christian thought that reduces the ~rationalistn slant of Ansel~n and the Victorines to a philosophical moment overpassed, even buried, by Thomist criticisms. Therefore, he recognizes in the Anselmian stream a philosophical tradition of its own, historically transcending the Middle Ages and becoming one of the principal sources of Renaissance metaphysics. By reeenacting and transforming the terms of that current, R. Llull became one of its most decisive components. 1. Ramon Llull and the History of Christian Philosophy In our histories of medieval thought we have concentrated on the history of Christian philosophy during the centuries which separated Augustine from Luther. Because Christian philosophy was meant to provide the praeambula to the acceptance of revelation, we have attended prirnarily to the history of rnetaphysics, ethics, and rational psychology. We have focused, above all, on the philosophical developments in Paris and Oxford which were so closely related to the evolution of Scholastic theology. As a result, we have failed to recognize sorne of the greatest achievernents of medieval science -achievements in rnathematics and natural philosophy, in the theory of the state and in the theory of what science itself is. Our paradigm has forced us to regard what is known as Averroism as an aberration and the fourteenth century as the end of a joumey. We have no organic place in our histories for figures like the Englishman Roger Bacon, the Italian Pietro d'Abano, and the Catalan Arnau de Vilanova and even for such significant personalities as Dante Alighieri and Nicolaus Cusanus. In this essay 1 would like to outline the philosophical contribution of an author who has suffered much from the narrow scope of our current account: the Majorcan Ramon Llull. Around the beginning of the twelfth century in the temtories bordering on Islam -in Catalonia and in the kingdorns of Toledo and Sicilythere appeared a conception of knowledge and reality which opened a new period in the history of thought. The commerce and trade which flourished in the 24 1 Enrahonar 18, 1992 Charles Lohr Mediterranean basin formed its material basis, the spirit which animated it was a rare spint of openness and tolerance which was bom of the contact between the three great civilisations of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. In Toledo Christians and Jews labored together to make available to the Latin West the Greek philosophy and science which had been transmitted in Arabic. Frederick 11 of Sicily corresponded with Moslem philosophers in the search for solutions to problems arising out of the confrontation between pagan science and the Christian tradition. In the territory of Barcelona and on the Catalan coast of southem France Jewish scholars expelled from Moslem Spain by the intolerance of the Almohade monarchs translated Arabic works into Hebrew, Hebrew and Arabic works into Latin, and even Latin works into Hebrew. One of the most remarkable figures in this interchange was that of the Majorcan Ramon Llull. The island of Majorca was not only a centre of commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean world, but also a point where Islam, Judaism and Christianity met. Even after the Reconquista, Moslems made up a good part of the population of the island. Llull was born in 1232, some years after James the Conqueror retook Majorca from the Saracens. He died in 1316 on a ship which was bringing hirn home from his last voyage to North Africa, after he had -according to the local traditionbeen stoned almost to death while preaching the Christian faith. This vir phantasticus -who clothed himself as a pilgrim and probably spoke Arabic better than Latin-, sought tirelessly in Europe, North Africa and the Near East to win over the powerful of his time to the cause of understanding and concord between peoples. Conscious of the fact that he stood at the frontier between the three great religions, he sought -as an arabicus christianusto use methods proper to the Arabic tradition to convince Moslems and Jews of the truth of Christianity. In the pursuit of this goal, Llull's life became one of incredible literary production. In spite of his preaching, teaching and restless travel, Llull wrote some 280 works, many of them very extensive. In accordance with his purpose, these works were composed not only in Latin, but a also in Catalan and Arabic. Although the ideas in them show a rapid development, his goal remained always the same. He wanted to write a book which would make Christian doctrines intelligible to Moslems and Jews. He called his book the Ars inijeniendi i~eritatem, the Art of Finding the Truth, and, regarding it as a task imposed by God himself, worked unflaggingly on the composition of this Art for more than thirty years. His energy was not limited, however, to composing works directly concerned with his Art. He wrote in Latin on philosophy and theology, on logic and natural science, and composed in Catalan a great many popular, didactic works in al1 sorts of literary forms. As procurator irzfidelium he directed petitions to popes and cardinals and sketched in severa1 tracts a plan for the crusade. In his efforts to bring Moslems, Jews and Christians together, Llull was not only active as an author. He also struggled for the establishment of a new type The tiew Logic of Ramon Llull Enrahonar 18. 1992 125 of educational institution, different from the Latin universities of Paris and Oxford, in which a true dialogue between the three great mediterranean civilisations might be possible. In repeated petitions to popes and kings he pleaded for the foundation of colleges in which men prepared to die for their faith might learn the languages and doctrine necessary for preaching to Saracens and Jews. Although he was and remained a layman, Llull decided to dedicate his life to a missionary apostolate. To this end he planned at first to go to Paris to leam Latin and scholastic theology. He was advised, however, by Ramon de Penyafort -the same superior of the Dominican Order whose inspiration stood behind the Contra gentiles of Thomas Aquinasto return to his native Majorca, where he could leam not only Latin but also Arabic and something of Moslem thought. Llull not only mastered the Arabic language, but also conceived the idea of a new science which would serve high missionary purpose. This new science was based on both Latin and Arabic models. But because it was addressed to peoples of al1 faiths, it was not to be specifically theological, but rather a general science which could be applied to al1 the particular sciences of the time. Llull changed, therefore, the name of his Ars inveiziendi veritatem to Ars generalis and submitted the work to constant revision throughout his long life. 2. Ramon Llull: Arabicus Christianus Toward the end of the eleventh century the increasing contacts between the three great Mediterranean civilizations gave birth in the Latin West to a fundamentally new conception of knowledge and nature. This new conception took different forms in different pIaces and in different thinkers, but it was characterized, above all, by its dynamic understanding of reality. Impressed by the superiority of Islamic science, Western thinkers made an enormous effort not only to appropriate the results of Greek and Arabic leaming, but also to develop a standpoint which would enable the Latins to appear as an equal partner in philosophical and theological discussion. This standpoint they found in the view that al1 reality tended actively toward the infinite. The id quo maius cogitari nequit of Anselm of Canterbury is but one aspect of this new vision. Fundamentally, the Platonism of the twelfth-century school of Chartres, the understanding of the artes nlechanicae as aiming at the transformation of reality, the thirteenth-century science of optics, the linguistic and mathematical analysis of questions of continuity and the infinite, the fourteenth-century notion of the latrtudo formarum, Albertist epistemology, the questioning of the geocentric hypothesis, and the new conceptions of science itself which appeared during the fifteenth century are al1 aspects of the same vision -aspects which have been consistently ignored in our histories of Christian philosophy. Behind the general science which Llull thought of as applicable to al1 the sciences there lay the fundamental vision of a natural theology which should approach the true God through a method of contemplation. on the divine names. 26 1 Enrahonar 18, 1992 Chailcs Lohr Llull called these names «dignities» or «axioms» and listed in the final form of the art nine of them: goodness, greatness, eternity; power, wisdom, love; virtue, truth and glory. His idea seems to have been based on an Islamic method of contemplation which attempted to ascend by way of created reflections of the divine perfections to the infinite perfection which is God himself. He tliought that through contemplation on combinations of these names, which are common to al1 religions, agreement could be reached between Mosle~ns and Jews, Greek and Latin Christians. One recognises the Neoplatonic axiom, Bonunz est diffusiivun~ sui, behind «goodness» as the first of the dignities. 'The second group of three div' 'ine names was possibly suggested by the Latin triad of yotestas, sapientiu, benigtzirus, common in the twelfth century. The inclusion of «greatness» ainong the principles shows very clearly however that Llull has gone beyond the static categories of ancient Neoplatonism and made Anselm of Canterbury's id quo maius cogituri nequit his point of departure. Llull's inspiration for the way in which these names are to be understood seems at the same time to have been influenced by Islamic mystical writers. He composed a Liber de centunz nominibus Dei in which he tells us that the Moslems believe that God has placed even more power in his names than in animals, plants and precious stones. His method of contemplation can therefore only be understood correctly if we take the dignities to stand for active powers. He insisted that we must refer al1 the powers which they designate to the supreme power of God, who created al1 things. Accordingly, Llull developed his method of contemplation not only by spelling out -honzontally, so to speaknine different names of God, but also by making explicit -verticallythree degrees of the powers of the names. He conceived his Art as a means of ascent which proceeds by way of two stages, a transcending of sense-knowledge by an ascent from the positive to the comparative degree of the dignities (bonum-melius) and a transcending of rational knowledge by an ascent from the comparative to the superlative degree (melius-optimum). Llull argued that sense perception cannot form a valid basis for science; it remains on the lowest, positive level of knowledge. Reason can, however, rise to the comparative level in that it attains rational knowledge of these sensible objects. Aristotle and Averroes attained this level. But this level is still not the level of true science. If the objects of the sense world are good and great, the objects of the rational world are better and greater. But God is with respect to al1 creatures the best and greatest -optimum et maximum. Only through a second ascent, therefore, can the intellect attain the level of eterna1 truth. On this superlative level the differences we had encountered on the first two levels disappear. Because God is the best in the superlative degree, it is no longer possible to distinguish him as such from the greatest or the most powerful. At the superlative degree of reality the mystic dia'covers the supreme being in whom al1 the divine names coincide or fa11 together. Tlie new Logic of Ramon Llull Enrahonar 18,1992 127 3. Ramon Llull: Philosophe de l'action Two Latin mottoes characterize two divergent approaches to the medieval problem of the relationship between faith and science. Anselm's device, fides quaerens intellectum camed the day in the twelfth century. Thinkers like Hugo of St. Victor and Alain de Lille sought rationes necessariae for the doctrines of the faith. But at the beginning of the thirteenth century a new device appeared on the field, the motto, fides non habet meritum cui humana ratio praebet experinzentum, of Pope Gregory IX. Anselm's idea -which has been senously misinterpreted by the histonans of Christian philosophywas formulated in the context of the dialogue between the three great mediterranean religions. The new papa1 device represented a narrowing of the European vision. It was this device that implied the separation of theology from philosophy. Philosophy was assigned the task of providing reasons for the acceptance of a body of doctrinenot for the doctnnes themselves. The history of this approach is well known. It is the history of the Christian philosophy which we have written. Anselm's approach did not however remain submerged. It surfaced again in different guises in the early fourteenth century. In his works Llull sought above al1 to render intelligible the Christian doctrine on which al1 missionary intent had foundered, the doctrine of the Trinity. For this purpose he had recourse to an analysis of what it means when we say that the powers of the divine names are active. He held that we cannot truly cal1 something good which does not produce a good. In this way Llull introduced a completely new category in the history of metaphysics. In accordance with his apologetic purpose he spoke not only of pnnciples of being, but also of principies of action. He proposed the thesis not only that God is productive contingenter and ad extra in creation, but also that the divine persons are productive necessarie and ad intra. Taking his point of departure from the dynamism which his Islamic partners in dialogue admitted, the dynamism of the process of knowledge (the knowing intellect, the known object, and the act of knowledge) and love (the lover, the beloved, and love itself), Llull maintained that we must admit the activity of al1 the divine perfections. True goodness must produce something good; true greatness must produce something great. Because action presupposes a principle or source, that which is produced, and a bond between them, he spoke not only of the dignities, but also of their acts and the «correlatives» of their action. To designate these correlatives, he formed new words which appear strange in Latin and were probably formed on the analogy of the forms of the Arabic verb. In a sermon given in Tunis he explain: Actus.. . bonitatis dico bonificativum, bonificabile, bonificare; actus etiam magnitudinis sunt magnificativum, magnificabile, magnificare; et sic de aliis ornnibus divinis dignitatibus. Llull generalised this idea to the extent that he could speak even of the abstract moments of activity as -tivum, -bile and -are. He defined these 28 / Enrahonar 18, 1992 Charles Lohr moments as substantial and intrinsic principles of action which are valid for al1 reality. In this way he was able to recognise images of the triune God in al1 aspects of the created world, in the form, matter and conjunction which make up corporeal things; in the form, subject and property which constitute the nature of the angels; and even in the three dimensions of bodies and the two premisses and one conclusion of the syllogism. Above al1 in the union. Syllogism -above al1 in the union of knower and person known in the act of mystical knowledge and in the union of a lover and a beloved bound together in the active love. A lover and a beloved bound together in true active love. Llull was aided in his apologetic purpose by the analysis of the knowledge of the illuminated mystic current among some Moslem thinkers. Certain Christian controversialists writing in Arabic had taken up as an analogy for the Trinity Aristotle's description of God as vóqots votocws, as it had been expanded in Neoplatonism from two to three terms. Some Moslem writers accepted this idea for the mystical knowledge of God in which the knower, the object known and the act of knowing itself are one. Llull was able to join this analogy with Augustine's famous comparison of the Trinity with human love. In his De amic e amut, a charming little book which is one of the great glories of the Catalan language, Llull maintained that true, active love presupposes a lover, the beloved, and the love itself which unites them. Because the correlative principles are intrinsic to al1 activity, action and passion are not, as in Aristotle, accidental. For Llull, being and activity both belong to the substance of things and are identical. Because activity implies relatedness, Llull added, in the later forms of the Art, nine relative dignities to the absolute ones listed earlier: difference, contrariety, concordance; greaterness, lesserness, equality; beginning, middle and end; «contrariety», «greaterness» and «lesserness» are encountered in the created world, but on the superlative leve1 of the divine activity there remain only «difference», «equality» and «concordante». The infinitely great, divine optimans can only produce the divine optimatunz which is its «equal»; the «difference» between them being necessarily transcended in the «concordante» of the divine optimare, while al1 three together form the «beginning», «middle» and «end» of al1 things. In the sermon quoted above Llull made clear the relationship of his dynamic understanding of reality to the chartrain triad of unitas, aequalitas arzd connexio. He concluded: Per praedictarum.. . dignitatum.. . substantiales actus intrinsecos et aeternos, aequaliter et concordanter acceptos ... probant evidenter Christiani in una simplicissima divina essentia et natura esse trinitatem personarum, scilicet Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti. Thus for Llull the correlative unfolding of al1 things became an absolute ontological principle. Even the divine unity known through faith must be structured. As an active unity it must have a moment which is to be united. If God is truly one in an active sense of the word, he must be triune, even though The new Logic of Ramon Llull Enrahonar 18. 1992 129 on the superlative leve1 of the divine activity the manner in which God is triune eludes man's understanding. Having thus discovered the Christian Trinity in the mediated unity of the most simple divine essence, Llull also sought, by means of the dynamic dignities of his Art, to make intelligible the doctrine, known to Christians by faith, of the lncarnation of Christ. To this purpose he appealed to the distinction between the necessary activity of the dignities ad intra, and their contingent activity ad extra. Whereas the divine activity ad intra is necessary, the creation of the world ad extra is dependent on the divine will. But when God has freely chosen the creation of the world, the infinite first cause can only achieve concord with its effect: In Filii Dei incarnatione, per participationem scilicet unionis creatoris et creaturae in una persona Christi. Aristotle's theory of science, which begins with self-evident principles in order to present a body of doctrine deductively, was well suited to the thirteenth-century idea of the relation between faith and reason. The articles of faith could be taken as the first principles for a Summa of theology. The Anselmian approach implied a different theory of science -a theory of a science which ascends beyond al1 hypotheses and principles to the one presuppositionless beginning of al1 knowledge and al1 reality. The opposition between two approaches should not be understood simply as an opposition between Aristotelianism and Platonism. Thirteenth-century Aristotelians were able to fit many Neoplatonic ideas into their syntheses since they were easily adaptable to the idea of the theologians that Adam's fa11 darkened man's intellect and weakened his will. The often proclaimed great thirteenth-century synthesis between Platonism and Aristotelianism was in fact the result of the desire to show not only that revelation is in accord with reason, but also that it is necessary, since man's nature is a fallen nature. The approach of Anselm of Canterbury represented rather something completely new in the history of philosophy. In accordance with his idea, some fourteenth-century thinkers saw creation and man's place in it more optimistically. Their views implied the abandonment of the hierarchical division of nature into supraand sub-lunary realms and saw the earth not as the lowest of a series of necessary emanations, but as a noble star, differing only in brilliance from the other stars of the heavens . Applying his ideas to the creation of the world, Llull strongly emphasized not only the dynamic character of God' s causal action, but also that of its effect, the created world itself. He applied the distinction between necessary activity ad itztra and contingent activity ad extra to the activity of creatures. To explain how the distinction applies to creaturely activity, he employed the example of a property in a subject. Fire, for example, must necessarily burn, but whether it heats water or burns wood is contingent. Within itself fire is active «substantially» and «in a proper way»; in water or earth it is active «accidentally» and «in an 30 1 Enrahonar 18.1992 Charles Lohr appropriated way». The form of whiteness is active within itself? but when it contingently whitens (albificut ) this or that body, it is present in the body in a «contracted» way. For Llull therefore creation is a likeness of God because of its dynamic character. Not only does God's activity of creation not cease with the bestowal of being on the world, but the world which God has treated is itself active. tending to its own perfection. Just as whiteness can seek to increment its contract perfection in an appropiated way, by whitening more and more individual bodies, so also the creator has so created the various species that they tend to increase their perfection by numerical multiplication. Although the particular, individual things of which the world is made up are in process tending toward perfection, no individual thing can attain the full perfection of its species. The species is the limit to which the perfection of the individual approaches, the genus that of the species, the universe that of the genera. Llull understood the individuals, species and genera which we encounter in the world as parts of a whole, as components of a unity reflecting the dynamic greatness of the creator. He presented his understanding of this whole -this universemost clearly in his epoch-making Liber chaos, a work which he appended to the second redaction of his Art, the Ars demonstrativa. In this work Llull broke with the medieval idea of a Stufenkosnzos. He gives no account of the heavenly spheres and their angelic movers, but focused his attention rather on the sublunary world of the four elements. His book understands chaos neither as a primordial void in the sense of disorder and confusion nor as materia informis in the sense of the Augustinian theology of creation. For Llull chaos is rather the complex of al1 the things which were created by God in a unique act, together with al1 the determinations categorizing them. Chaos contains the semina causalia whith are the grounds for al1 things, the forma universalia and the materia universalis, the genera and species, the substantiae and accidentia. From chaos proceeds everything which is beneath the sphere of the moon. In the semina causalia of chaos al1 the individual transmutntiones, al1 the various possibilities of individual development, are already present. The transmutations of chaos do not affect its essence. They are rather various actualizations of that which is already present in chaos in potentia. In his conception of chaos Llull thus brought together a great many different ideas from the philosophical tradition. He divided chaos into three degrees. In the first degree we find the rationes semirzales of the Stoics in the role of a genus for both the Platonic notion of a world soul and the Anstotelian predicables and categories. In the second degree we find the first individuals of the particular species, in the third al1 the individuals deriving from these first ones. But Llull's use of these ideas completely transformed their meaning. The Platonic idea of an anima mundi is associated with the Anstotelian doctrine of The new Logic of Ramon Llull Emahonar 18. 1992 131 matter and form, but understood in terms of the Llullian correlatives of action. Chaos is made up of the four abstract essences of the four elements: igneitus, aeritas aqueitas, teneitas. Each essence has its proper correlatives, its proper form (ignificutii,um), its proper matter (ignificabile) and its proper act (igiiificare). The matter and form of the various individuals in chaos should not be thought of as limited to the individuals Al1 the proper forms are pined together in a unique foi.ma uiiiversalis -a Corpus mundi -which is the total sum of al1 the possible (-bilia). Taken together, this universal form and this universal matter make up the urium esse, the uizunz suppositunz, which Llull calls chaos. From the universal form and universal inatter emerge the genera and species, substances and accidents, and from them in tum the individual things composed of particular forms and matters. Each particular form and each particular matter is grounded in the universal form and matter. In accordance with his doctrine of relative principies Llull understood the second degree of chaos as mediating between the original sei?zina causalia and the final perfection which the individuals find in their numerical multiplication. But the concrete individual things which emerge from the seniiila causalia tend not only to their extnnsic, numerical multiplication. They tend also to their intrinsic, proper perfection. By nature each concrete thing strives to fulfill the abstract essence from which it has emerged. It was in this sense that Llull maintained that the categories and predicables and the union of universal form and universal matter are real things. The abstract is already really present in individual things as the limit of their, striving toward infinity. In his Libel de natura, a treatise which is intimately connected with the final redaction of Art, Llull defined nature as the principle through which the entia concrcta - the individual man (horno), for example -approach ever more closely the entia abstractathe essence of man (hunzmlitus). For this reason Llull could adopt the Neoplatonic idea of nature as the \lis ailimae unii~ersalis which is the tliird emanation from the One. In the Ars genelzlis ultima he described nature as the essentia in suo riaturuli concreto sLrsterltata et iliota per actuni naturaleni. Accordingly, he thought of the essences of things as vires, as powers which are moved by the natures in them. At each degree of their return to the original unity the respective -tiva form the i~atui.a natui.arzs, the respective -bilia the natu1.a naturata, and the respective -are the union of both. In this way chaos taken as a whole can be understood as the reflection of the divine nature whose dynamism unfolds in a threefold natura, a rzatura iiutui.ans, u natura naturata arld a nuturu naturare. 4. From Anselm's Maxiinum to the Dignitas hominis of the Renaissance The two divergent conceptions of knowledge and reality which ran in parallel currents through the entire medieval penod came into open conflict over the nature of man. The conflict reached its high point in the debates conceming