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An Aristotelian Theory ofDivine Illumination: RobertGrosseteste's Commentary onthe Posterior AnalyticsChristina Van Dyke aa Calvin College ,Published online: 22 Sep 2009.

To cite this article: Christina Van Dyke (2009) An Aristotelian Theory of DivineIllumination: Robert Grosseteste's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics , BritishJournal for the History of Philosophy, 17:4, 685-704, DOI: 10.1080/09608780902986581

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ARTICLE

AN ARISTOTELIAN THEORY OF DIVINEILLUMINATION: ROBERT GROSSETESTES

COMMENTARY ON THE POSTERIOR ANALYTICS

Christina Van Dyke

Two central accounts of human cognition emerge over the course of theMiddle Ages: the theory of divine illumination and an Aristotelian theorycentred on knowledge abstracted from sense data. Typically, these twoaccounts are seen as competing views of the origins of human knowledge;theories of divine illumination focus on Gods direct intervention in ourepistemic lives, whereas Aristotelian theories generally claim that ourknowledge derives primarily (or even entirely) from sense perception. In thispaper, I address an early attempt to reconcile these two accounts namely,Robert Grossetestes commentary on Aristotles Posterior Analytics and Iargue (against common consensus) that Grossetestes eorts to bringAristotles account of human cognition into harmony with a theory ofdivine illumination proves largely successful.Written in the 1220s, Grossetestes commentary on the Posterior Analytics

(CPA) focuses primarily on Aristotles account of how human beings acquireknowledge.1 Historically, the commentarys main interest lies in its systematicintroduction of Aristotelian epistemology to the medieval discussion.Grosseteste is a key gure in the reintroduction of Aristotle to the LatinWest, the Posterior Analytics is a key Aristotelian work, and Grossetestes isquite likely its earliest completed commentary in the Latin West.Philosophically, the most original and intriguing feature of this commentaryis the way in which it explicates Aristotelian epistemologywithin a frameworkof illumination. One of the main developments in medieval epistemologyprevious to the thirteenth century was Augustines theory of divineillumination; as is clear from earlier works such as De veritate, Grosseteste

1The exact date of the commentarys composition is unclear; James McEvoy dates it to the late

1220s and, most likely, to around 1228. This seems reasonable to me; since nothing of

philosophical importance for this paper hangs on the exact date of composition, in what follows

I will assume that Grosseteste wrote the commentary in the mid-to-late 1220s. (For a detailed

discussion of this topic, see McEvoys The Chronology of Robert Grossetestes Writings on

Nature and Natural Philosophy, Speculum 58 (1983) 63643. For a contrasting view, see

Richard Southerns argument for a slightly earlier date [12201225] in Robert Grosseteste. The

Growth of an English Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) 1313.)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17(4) 2009: 685704

British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online 2009 BSHP

http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09608780902986581

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himself advocated some version of such a theory.2 At the same time, in theCPA Grosseteste directly interacts with Aristotles account of cognition,according to which human beings acquire knowledge not from God butthrough a complex process beginning with sense perception.Scholarly opinions concerning Grossetestes attitudes toward Augustinian

illumination and Aristotelian epistemology in the CPA tend to fall into twodistinct camps: that of scholars such as Etienne Gilson, Lawrence Lynchand James McEvoy3 who hold that Grosseteste himself does not advocatethe Aristotelian account on which he comments and that of scholars suchas Steven Marrone, who argues that Grossetestes exposure to the PosteriorAnalytics leads him to abandon completely a theory of divine illumination inthe CPA in favour of a humanist theory that no longer requires Godsinvolvement in our cognitive lives.4

I believe, in contrast, that Grosseteste quite consciously attempts toembed the new epistemology of the Posterior Analytics within an accountof divine illumination, and that he himself thought he had successfullyreconciled the Augustinian and Aristotelian views. In this paper, I arguethat Grosseteste synthesizes an Aristotelian model of cognition (centring onabstraction to universals from sensible particulars) with a robust theory ofdivine illumination by claiming that, while human beings do acquireknowledge by engaging in the process of abstraction from sense perceptionto universal concepts, God plays a necessary role in this process byilluminating the objects of our intellection i.e. making them intelligible tous. This interpretation of Grossetestes intentions in the CPA leaves himwith a more ambitious and philosophically challenging project than hasbeen widely acknowledged: one that seeks to preserve the best elements ofboth Augustinian and Aristotelian theories of knowledge.

1. UNIVERSAL TRUTHS AND GODS IDEAS

In CPA I.7, Grosseteste breaks from straightforward commentary onAristotles text for the rst time in order to situate the discussion of

2Although Richard Southern argues in favour of a later date for De veritate in Robert

Grosseteste (113), I follow Steven Marrone in holding that De veritate was most probably

composed sometime in the 1220s. (See, for example, Marrones The Light of Thy Countenance:

Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century, vol. 1: A Doctrine of Divine Illumination

(Leiden: Brill, 2001) 345.)3See, respectively, Pourquoi S. Thomas a critique S. Augustin (Archives dhistoire doctrinale et

litteraire du Moyen Age, 1 (Paris, 1926), 1126); The Doctrine of Divine Ideas and Illumination

in Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (Mediaeval Studies, 3 (1941), 16173); and The

Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), especially 327, and n15.4This is his central argument in Chapter Six ofWilliam of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New

Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1983). It

also features prominently in Chapters One to Four of Volume One of his later The Light of Thy

Countenance (38108).

686 CHRISTINA VAN DYKE

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incorruptible truths and demonstrative proofs (APo 75b2223) in a broadercontext that includes Gods relation to universal principles for cognizingeternal and unchanging truths.5 In the process, he both introduces the basicelements of his theory of illumination and separates the cognition ofnecessary truths from cognition of both God and Gods ideas. Augustinehimself famously claims that all necessary truths are contained in some wayin the divine essence, so that when human beings know truth, they also (insome sense) know the divine Truth.6 In I.7, however, Grosseteste makes itclear that the universals that human beings generally cognize in this life arenot themselves the necessary, immutable and eternal ideas that Augustinedescribes as contained in the divine essence, but rather the formal causesthat Aristotle discusses in his Posterior Analytics. As we will see, thisdistinction relates in crucial ways to the general position Grosseteste takes inthe CPA concerning Gods role in the process of human cognition.Grosseteste distinguishes in I.7 between ve dierent types of universal, or

cognizing principle.7 The rst, highest kind of universal is a means ofcognizing the uncreated ideas (rationes) of things ideas that exist frometernity in the rst cause.8 Grosseteste characterizes universals of this sortas the necessary truths contained in the essence of God, the one necessary,eternal and immutable truth. Unlike Augustine, however, who describesthese ideas as available in common to all who discern what is unchangeably

5All references to Grossetestes commentary and translations of the Latin text are from to

Pietro Rossis 1981 edition: Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (Firenze, Italy:

Leo S. Olschki).6See, for example, De libero arbitrio, where Augustines argument for Gods existence relies on

our recognizing that all immutable truths are part of a single, higher truth:

You cannot deny the existence of an unchangeable truth that contains everything that

is unchangeably true. And you cannot claim that this truth is yours or mine or anyone

elses; it is present and reveals itself in common to all who discern what is

unchangeably true, like a light that is public and yet strangely hidden.

(II.12, using Thomas Williamss translation in On Free Choice of the Will,

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993: 54)

Williams relies on the Latin text in the critical edition in the Corpus Christianorum: Series

Latina series, vol. 29, edited by W. M. Green (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1970).7These are, respectively: (a) uncreated ideas of things, which exist from eternity in the rst cause,

(b) exemplar forms and causative ideas of created things (which the intelligences possess and

through which they aid God in the creation of corporeal species), (c) causative ideas of

terrestrial species (located in the powers and illuminating principles of the heavenly bodies),

(d) formal causes, or that in the thing by virtue of which it is what it is, and (e) ideas of

accidents such as colour and sound, which can eventually lead weaker intellects to the cognition

of genera and species. Steven Marrone, James McEvoy and Pietro Rossi each discuss this

passage in detail in, respectively, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste, 16678, The

Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) 3279, and Robert

Grosseteste and the Object of Scientic Knowledge in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives

on his Thought and Scholarship, edited by James McEvoy, in Instrumenta Patristica, 27

(Turnhout, 1995) 5375.8In addition, they serve as principles of creation (creatrices) the ideas of things to be created

and [their] formal exemplar causes.

ROBERT GROSSETESTES COMMENTARY 687

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true (DLA II.12), Grosseteste reserves cognition of these principles for onlythose intellects pure and separated from phantasms, able to contemplatethe rst light, for these ideas involve both the clearest possible cognition ofcreated things and direct cognition of God, the rst light who makes thingsvisible to our mental vision: When the pure intellect is able to x its sight onthese things, it cognizes created things in them as truly and clearly aspossible and not only created things but also the rst light itself in which itcognizes other things (10811).By and large, human intellects are not pure enough in this life to access

these principles: we interact primarily with physical objects, and our concernfor them typically prevents us from completely transcending materialconsiderations.9 Grosseteste allows that some human beings achievecognition of the causative ideas of terrestrial species located in the heavenlybodies through the study of astronomy, but he holds that human cognitiontypically involves only lower-level universals such as formal causes and theaccidents that follow on the true essences of things, such as shape andcolour. Grossetestes specic interest in human (rather than divine or angelic)knowledge leads him, then, to focus on these types of universal throughoutthe CPA, particularly formal causes which he describes in familiar terms asthat by which [a] thing is what it is (1312). Grosseteste goes on to claim thatthese widely accessible principles of cognition, or forms (such as animal orhuman being) correspond directly to the universals on which Aristotlefocuses in the Posterior Analytics.10

By distinguishing between these dierent types of universal and claimingexplicitly that human beings have access in general only to the type of whichAristotle was speaking, Grosseteste thus separates our everyday cognition ofuniversal truths from the sort that would also entail direct cognition of God.In a later discussion, Grosseteste even goes so far as to claim: [A]lthoughuncreated ideas and denitions (rationes) exist from eternity in the divinemind, these ideas dont pertain at all to the sort of thinking (ratiocinationem)in which one thing is predicated of another (I.15, 1468, added emphasis).11

In other words, when in the ordinary course of things a human beingreaches the conclusion of a demonstrative argument (for example All catsare mammals), the universals she employs are not the divine ideas of catand mammal.Unlike many (perhaps most) theories of divine illumination, then,

Grossetestes account does not entail that cognizing necessary truths brings

9He does leave open the possibility that certain people who are entirely separated from the love

and phantasmata of corporeal things (I.14) might receive illumination directly from God and

thus share cognition of the rst and highest type of universal, but he makes it clear that this is

far from the norm for human beings whose intellects are weighed down by corrupt, corporeal

bodies.10As he puts it: [T]his is Aristotles position with regard to genera and species (1401).11Grosseteste goes on to say that he is talking here of predications involving demonstrations

and thought processes philosophical thought in general, then.


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normal human beings into direct epistemic contact with God.12 AsGrosseteste goes on to explain, such contact is generally prevented by theunion of our immaterial intellects with corrupt physical bodies. Thefollowing section examines both this claim and its consequences in detail, forI believe they hold the key to understanding the nature of Grossetestesproject in the CPA.

2. AFFECTUS ET ASPECTUS: MENTAL VISION ANDTHE LOVE OF THE BODY

Although I.7 is the rst passage in which he makes a signicant break withthe text on which he is commenting, Grosseteste introduces his theory ofillumination toward the beginning of the opening chapter of the CPA,writing:

Neither the one who produces an external sound nor the external visiblewriting in a text teaches these two things merely move and stimulate [thelearner]. The true teacher, however, is the one who internally illumines the

mind and reveals the truth.(336)

This is a clear reference to Augustines De magistro (12.3940); the trueteacher to whom Grosseteste refers here is, of course, God, who illuminatesour intellects from within and who is directly responsible for humanlearning and knowledge.13

On a traditional understanding of Augustines theory of divine illumina-tion, the highest truth not only contains all necessary truths it also revealsthem to our intellects. Although a professor who gives a talk on dierentialequations might speak the truth, that lecture is merely an instrumentalmeans of the students acquiring knowledge: the student gains actualknowledge of the truth about these things only when God illumines herintellect while she contemplates what the professor is saying.

12One disadvantage of this distinction between the truth which is part of the divine essence and

the truth which human beings cognize is that it appears to remove the explanation for the

necessity of certain sorts of truth. Augustine thought that by identifying necessary truths with

the divine, he thereby gained an explanation for their necessity. Grosseteste cannot make the

same sort of appeal, however, and so he must provide another account of the necessity of

necessary truths one which is more Aristotelian in nature.13Interestingly, Steven Marrone does not see this as a clear reference to Augustine, despite the

fact that Grosseteste himself had strongly advocated Augustines theory in earlier works and the

fact that this is almost a direct quotation from De magistro. Rather, Marrone writes in The

Light of Thy Countenance: Although his words recall Augustine on God as within each person

teacher of mind, it is more than likely that Grosseteste was not thinking about the divinity (48).


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It is clear throughout the CPA that Grosseteste is deeply committed to anilluminationist theory of some sort.14 Although Grosseteste describes directillumination as the ideal method for acquiring knowledge he consistentlyholds that the highest and best sort of learning results from Gods revealingthe truth from within he argues in various places throughout the CPAthat this is not how human beings generally acquire knowledge. Our bodies,corrupted by original sin, interfere with Gods directly illumining ourintellects. As a result, Grosseteste believes, our acquisition of universalknowledge involves the complex process of abstracting from and reasoningabout sense data that Aristotle describes in the Posterior Analytics.In order to appreciate fully the dierence between the ideal and the

ordinary processes of human cognition in the CPA, it is important rst tonote the distinction Grosseteste repeatedly draws between human and non-human knowers. In discussing the claim that sense perception is necessaryfor demonstrative knowledge in I.14, for example, Grosseteste qualiesAristotles statement that a lack in sense perception causes a lack inknowledge by stating that this holds true only in the case of human knowers.Both God and the angels possess knowledge without possessing senseperception at all; in fact, Grosseteste claims: knowledge is most complete inthese things that lack senses (2278). Human beings require senseperception in order to acquire knowledge not because sense perception isa necessary condition for cognition but because human intellects are, insome way, inferior to other minds. The fact that a lack in sense perceptioncauses a corresponding lack in human knowledge merely underscores thesense in which human intellective activity falls short of the ideal.Grossetestes explanation of the problem with human intellects is also his

answer to the question of why human beings do not generally cognize theeternal, unchanging truths contained in Gods essence: namely, thehuman intellects union with the body, which was corrupted by the fall.15

As he puts it, relying heavily on the metaphor of intellective vision andillumination:

[I]f the highest part of the human soul, which is called the intellectivepart . . . were not clouded and weighed down by the weight of the corruptcorporeal body, it would have complete knowledge without the aid of sense-

perception through an irradiation received from a higher light, just as it willhave when the soul has been stripped from the body and perhaps as those who

14In fact, Grossetestes attraction to the metaphor of illumination famously leads him later in

his career to develop a complex metaphysics of light, according to which light is central to the

workings of the physical universe as well as to human understanding. See De luce (123540) for

his fullest discussion of this theory.15It appears that the diculty of the body is two-fold for Grosseteste: rst, he comes extremely

close to advocating the Platonic belief that human intellects would be better o without bodies

to begin with; second, the Christian doctrine of the fall explains that we now possess bodies that

are even worse than they have to be.


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are wholly separated from the love and the phantasms of corporeal thingshave.

(22835).

Ideally, human cognition would take place without the aid of senseperception, just as is the case for God and the angels. The corrupt bodyrenders this possibility unavailable to the vast majority of human beings,however: Because the purity of the eye of the soul is clouded and weigheddown by the corrupt body, all the powers of the rational soul in a humanbeing are occupied from birth (nato) by the weight of the body so that theycannot act, and so are in a certain way sleepy (2358). In Grossetestesgeneral metaphor of illumination, it is the souls vision that allows us to seethe light of truth; thus, when our bodies cloud our mental sight, our abilityto cognize is compromised.Toward the end of I.14, Grosseteste describes more fully how our bodies

draw our intellects vision away from their proper light:

Now the reason why the souls sight is clouded through the weight of thecorrupt body is that the aection and vision (aectus et aspectus) of the soulare not distinct, and it attains its vision only by means of that by which it

attains its aection or its love. Therefore, since the love and aection of thesoul are turned toward the body and toward bodily enticements, it necessarilypulls the souls vision with it and turns it away from its light, which is related

to it just as the sun is related to the external eyes. But the minds vision that isturned away from its light is necessarily turned toward darkness and idleness(otium).16

(27986)

On Grossetestes account, what the soul sees (aspectus) is inseparably linkedto what it loves (aectus). Our mental gaze is pulled toward the objects ofour aection and we love the body. We love feeding it, resting it,pleasuring it: all manner of bodily enticements. Our inner vision, taken upwith these physical concerns, turns toward the material world and awayfrom the immaterial and intelligible light of truth. Thus, the blame for ourdarkened mental vision falls squarely on the shoulders of the fallen body.Human intellects are, in this way, prevented from gaining knowledge in

the best possible way (that is, directly from a higher light).17 Instead,Grosseteste claims that we must gain knowledge of universals in a less idealway, describing the process in detail as follows:

And so when over time the senses act through their many meetings withsensible things, reason (which is mixed up with these senses and in them as if it

were carried toward the sensible things in a boat) is awakened. But once it is

16See Chapter 18, conclusion 28 for further discussion about love and desire moving the soul.17A higher light could be either God or an intelligences reection of Gods rationes causales.


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awakened, reason begins to distinguish between and to consider separatelythings that had been confused in the senses as, for example, sight confusescolor, magnitude, shape, and body, and in its judgment these things are all

taken as one thing. Awakened reason, however, distinguishes color frommagnitude and shape from body and, furthermore, shape and magnitude fromthe substance of the body. And so, through drawing distinctions and

abstracting, it comes to the cognition of the substance of the body that bears(deferentis) the magnitude, shape, and color. Nevertheless, reason knows thatthis universal exists in actuality only after it has made this abstraction from

many individuals and after it has occurred to reason that it has found in manyindividuals what it judges to be one and the same thing. This is the way,therefore, in which the simple universal is obtained from individual thingsthrough the help of the senses.

(I.14.23852)

In other words, although love of the body draws the souls vision away fromits proper light, reason is roused by its repeated exposure to the informationit receives from the senses. Presented with a hotchpotch of sense-data,reason eventually begins to distinguish between, for example, colour, sizeand shape. After reason makes a sucient number of distinctions,abstractions and judgements, moreover, we can gain knowledge of simpleuniversals such as red and large.18 Thus, at the same time that the bodyprevents the intellect from engaging in ideal cognition, information acquiredthrough the physical senses does provide the intellect with the means forattaining knowledge.19

18This is the process for acquiring what Grosseteste calls a simple universal; he also describes

how human beings arrive at knowledge of complex experiential universals (such as his favourite

example: scammony enduces red bile), but that discussion is tangential to the topic of this

paper.19This sort of cognition is less perfect than the sort acquired through direct illumination,

however: rst, it is acquired in an inferior way; second, it is capable of being in error (since,

unlike the cognition which involves direct illumination, we are able to make mistaken

judgements on the basis of our sense data); and third, its less clear, deep, and explanatory. As

Grosseteste remarks in I.7, we are able to access the formal causes of which Aristotle speaks

through sense perception, but were not able to cognize created things as truly and clearly as

possible because we are not cognizing them in the rst light itself. Furthermore, although most

people will at least arrive at the understanding of the essential nature of, for example, a human

being, through this process of abstracting from sense data, certain weak intellects will never

even reach full understanding of these simple universals on the basis of sense perception. See I.7,

where Grosseteste claims that

The weak intellect, which cannot rise to the cognition of these true genera and species,

knows things only through the accidents following from the true essences of things,

and for that intellect these accidents are genera and species and are principles only of

knowing and not of being.

(1415)

Theyll never be able to transcend the limits of what they perceive.


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Grosseteste takes pains to redescribes this process at the end of I.14 thistime in explicitly illuminationist terms of the intellects discovering andturning toward the spiritual light:

The minds vision that is turned away from its light is necessarily turned

toward darkness and idleness until, coming through the external senses insome way out into the external sensible light, it in some way nds again a traceof the light born in it. When it stumbles upon that, it begins as if awakened

to seek the proper light; and, to the extent that [the minds] love is turned awayfrom corruptible corporeal things, its vision is turned toward its light and ndsthat light again.

(28691)

Grosseteste here draws a close parallel between mental and physical vision:when the intellect receives visual data through sight something possibleonly because the external light of the sun illuminates both our eyes andexternal objects reason nally has something to work with, and theintellect is able to begin the process of becoming itself illuminated. Thus, theinitial impetus for the intellects seeking the higher realm of truth isthe information it receives from the body; the mind must turn its aectionsaway from physical concerns to some extent, however, for it actually toreach knowledge of universals.

3. INTERPRETING THE METAPHOR OF ILLUMINATIONIN THE CPA

As we have just seen, Grosseteste frequently employs the language ofillumination in explicating Aristotles text. The precise role that themetaphor of illumination is meant to play in the CPA is an object ofsignicant controversy, however. In particular, although some scholars (forexample, Etienne Gilson, Lawrence Lynch and James McEvoy) hold thatGrosseteste rejects Aristotles theory of abstraction and advocates athoroughly Augustinian theory of divine illumination throughout hiscorpus, others (most notably Steven Marrone) believe that Grossetesteoers an Aristotelian picture of cognition in the CPA as a replacement forhis earlier theory of divine illumination, arguing that the continued mentionof illumination refers merely to the natural light of the human intellect.My own position is that Grosseteste intends neither to reject Aristotles

account nor to jettison Gods involvement in human cognition: I believethat Grosseteste sees himself as placing the process of Aristotelianabstraction within a broader framework that includes divine illumination.In this section, therefore, I argue against the strictly Augustinianinterpretation by pointing out signicant ways in which the theory ofillumination presented in the CPA diverges from traditional versions, and I


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then undermine the exclusively Aristotelian reading by providing strongevidence that the spiritual light which Grosseteste claims makes cognitionpossible is God and not the light of the human intellect.The Augustinian interpretation of the CPA relies on the intuition that

Grossetestes views on cognition remained virtually unchanged despite hisexposure to Aristotles epistemology.20 Gilson, for instance, writes thatGrossetestes thought in the CPA moves on a level that is entirelyAugustinian and totally foreign to Aristotelianism (98) a sentimentrepeated approvingly by James McEvoy.21 Lynch agrees, responding to thepossibility that Grosseteste holds a theory of the agent intellect with thecomment: There is no question of introducing an Aristotelian activeintellect, for there is no Aristotelian abstraction. There is only Augustinianillumination (1723).22 In other words, Lynch sees Grosseteste as so rmlywedded to an Augustinian theory of cognition that he has no need forAristotles process of abstracting from sense data to universals, much lesshis theory of the active intellect.23 This reading does render Grossetestesepistemic views constant through his corpus; it does not, however, seem tot well with the position on ordinary human cognition that emergesthroughout the CPA.First, as we have already seen, Grosseteste explicitly claims in both I.7

and I.15 that the universals we employ in making demonstrative argumentsare not themselves the eternal and unchanging ideas in Gods mind. This,however, constitutes an important modication of Augustines theory, as itis traditionally understood. In separating the cognition of necessary truthsfrom the cognition of God, Grosseteste appears to have removed whatGilson himself sees as a feature paradigmatic of most illuminationisttheories namely, providing the intellect with both knowledge of necessarytruths and certainty in its knowledge of those truths.24 On a classicallyAugustinian theory of divine illumination, what makes something true is theextent to which it conforms to the relevant idea(s) in Gods mind, and we areassured of access to this truth because God himself shares it with us, a lightshining for anyone with eyes to see it. Both our knowledge of such things asthe essence of human being and our certainty that we know those thingscome directly from God. In the CPA, however, Grosseteste presents a

20Lynch grants that Grossetestes reading of natural philosophy may have been inuenced by

Aristotle, but he is resolute in claiming that this inuence does not extend to his thinking about

metaphysical or epistemic matters. See, for example, The Doctrine of Divine Illumination, 172.21Pourquoi S. Thomas a critique S. Augustin., and The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, 327.22Ibid.23It also would raise questions about Grossetestes attitude toward an Averroistic account of the

Agent Intellect; Lynch thus heads this issue o at the pass. In fact, although Grosseteste himself

would have been familiar with the doctrine of the Agent Intellect, there is no indication in the

CPA that he felt any attraction toward such a position himself.24See Gilsons Sur quelques dicultes de lillumination augustinienne, RNS 36 (1934) 32131,

especially 3223.


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theory in which the relation between our knowledge of necessary truths andGod is far less direct. We may have eyes designed to see Gods truth, but inGrossetestes metaphor our vision is drawn away from that truth by ourbodies and our love for physical things, and we are not in a position to useour mental sight for its intended use. This denial of one of the centralfeatures of Augustines own view raises immediate worries about callingGrossetestes position entirely Augustinian.Even more important in responding to the strictly Augustinian

interpretation of the CPA, however, is Grossetestes detailed descriptionin I.14 of the process by which reason acquires knowledge of universals. Aswe saw in Section II, although ideal human cognition would involve the sortof direct epistemic contact many illuminationist theories advocate as thenorm, Grosseteste holds that the vast majority of human beings are forcedto undertake the less perfect process of beginning with the informationgathered by the senses and through drawing distinctions and abstractingfrom that information reaching comprehension of necessary truths. Thispainstaking process of reasons acquiring knowledge of universals throughabstraction from sense data very closely resembles the theory Aristotlehimself advocates. Given, then, not only Grossetestes claims that humanbeings do not cognize the truths present in Gods own essence and thatGods illuminating work is actively interfered with by our love for thematerial world, but also his explicit appeal to abstraction from sense data indescribing the alternate process of how human beings acquire knowledge ofuniversals, it seems extremely unlikely that Grossetestes epistemic theory inthe CPA represents an allegiance to Augustine that proves totally foreign toAristotelianism.If the idea that Grossetestes theory of illumination remains in every way

Augustinian seems implausible, however, what about the suggestion thatGrosseteste completely abandons Augustines theory of divine illuminationin favour of Aristotles? Steven Marrone, for instance, claims that, WhenGrosseteste came to write his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics . . . hehad by this time totally excised any mention of God or a conformity to someideal exemplar from his formal denition of simple truth (157).25 As wehave already seen, Grosseteste appears to oer a theory of divineillumination that applies to human beings only hypothetically or potentially:if the human intellect were completely puried or not joined to a corruptcorporeal body, then human beings could acquire knowledge by gazing at

25William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. Marrone is here contrasting Grossetestes

position on simple truth in the CPA and the ostensibly earlier De veritate. It seems to me,

however, that Marrone overlooks the natural consequences of the dramatic shift in topic

between the two works. An explanation of the nature of truth naturally has a very dierent

focus from a discussion of how human beings acquire demonstrative knowledge. In The Light of

Thy Countenance, Marrone does qualies this claim somewhat, writing: At the very least,

Grosstestes focus has changed, and his interest in Aristotle overwhelmed his ability to maintain

explicit place for the epistemological principles of Augustines thought (50).


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Gods light.When the body dies, then the unencumbered intellect can receiveillumination directly from God. In this life, however, human intellects arejoined to corrupt bodies and almost never free from the love of corporealthings.26 Marrone contends that Grosseteste does not appeal to divineillumination at all in explaining the actual process by which human beingstypically acquire scientic knowledge. In emphasizing the role of senseperception and reason and not God in the cognitive process, Grossetestehas, Marrone claims, diminished divine participation in human intellectionto insignicance: Only the resounding echo of Augustines words makeone reluctant to say divine illumination has dropped entirely out of thepicture (50).27

Marrones argument relies heavily on the supposition that Grossetestereplaces the light of God with the light of human reason. In the CPA, heclaims, illumination serves largely as a convenient metaphor for explainingthe Aristotelian account of cognition to readers steeped in Augustinianilluminationist imagery: Careful examination suggests that Grosseteste hadchanged his entire approach [to the human cognitive process in the CPA](47).28 In order to show that the theory of cognition laid out in the CPAdoes involve divine illumination, then, I need to demonstrate thatGrosseteste refers to God and not to human reason when he speaksof the spiritual light that plays a crucial role in human cognition.According to Marrone, There is ample evidence [Grosseteste] held that themind itself had a power that could be described as a light and that acted tomake intelligible objects visible to it (198). Whats more, since the intellectwas its own illuminator . . . here is a way to read the image of intelligiblelight without making any reference to God at all, and it appears to have theexplicit approval of the author himself (199).29 Although Grossetestes CPAretains illuminationist language, then, Marrone concludes that the humanintellect functions as the sole spiritual light that enables us to cognizetruth.30

I believe, however, that Grosseteste is clearly still referring to God whenhe speaks of the spiritual light in the CPA. As we saw in Section I, heexplicitly calls God the rst light in I.7, claiming that when the pureintellect cognizes the highest sort of universal, it cognizes not only createdthings but also the rst light itself in which it cognizes other things (111).Although this alone does not establish that God is the spiritual light

26For a discussion of what people might qualify for this extremely rare distinction, see the

discussion in McEvoys The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)

3259.27The Light of Thy Countenance.28Ibid.29William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste.30See, for example, 489 of The Light of Thy Countenance, where Marrone makes the case that

certain passages in the CPA imply that mind served as sole intelligible light in normal

intellection (48).


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Grosseteste speaks of in later passages, since human intellects typically lackaccess to this level of cognition, the fact that Grosseteste here takes forgranted a framework of divine illumination strongly indicates that he meansto situate Aristotles account of cognition in the Posterior Analytics within abroader theory of divine illumination a theory, moreover, that would havebeen very familiar to his audience. Given this context, it would be extremelysurprising for Grosseteste to expect readers to take the mention of aspiritual light or the intellects proper light later in his commentary asreferring solely to the human intellect and not to God, absent furtherdiscussion.Indeed, in later passages (especially an extended discussion of the

metaphor of illumination in I.17), claims Grosseteste makes about thespiritual light and its relation to both our intellect and the objects ofcognition give us good reason to think that he identies the spiritual light ofthe intellect with God and not human reason in the CPA. In a passageearly in I.17, for instance, Grosseteste describes the light in question asfollows:

I hold that there is a spiritual light which pours over intelligible things and theminds eye a light that is related to the interior eye and intelligible things justas the corporeal sun is related to the corporeal eye and to corporeal visiblethings. Therefore, the intelligible things that are more receptive of this spiritual

light are more visible to the interior eye, and the things that are more receptiveof this light are by nature more similar to this light. And so the things that aremore receptive of this light are penetrated more perfectly by a mental sight that

is also a spiritual irradiation, and this penetration is more perfect and morecertain.

(3947)

Ironically, although Marrone himself uses this passage to support the claimthat the spiritual light is the human intellect,31 I believe two features of thispassage make it clear that Grosseteste means to identify the spiritual lightwhich pours over intelligible things and the minds eye with God.First, Grosseteste claims here that the light is related to the minds eye and

the objects of cognition in the same way that the corporeal sun is related tothe corporeal eye and corporeal visible objects. If we take this comparisonseriously, it seems hard to believe that the spiritual light is the light of thehuman intellect. The sun is external both to the eyes and to external objects,and it shines on both alike. If the spiritual light were the intellect, it isdicult to see how this analogy would work: the intellect would have toshine on itself at the same time as it shone on the objects of cognition.Second, Grosseteste here describes a mental sight which he claims

penetrates more intelligible objects more perfectly, and he calls this power ofthe intellect also (similiter) a spiritual irradiation comparing it in this way

31See n31, Chapter One of The Light of Thy Countenance.


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to the spiritual light he was already discussing. The mental acuity of ourintellects might also be a sort of light, then, but this seems to rule out thepossibility that this mental acuity is the spiritual light itself.32 Thus, I believethat although Marrone is right to claim that the mind itself had a powerthat could be described as a light, he errs in identifying that light with thespiritual light of which Grosseteste speaks throughout his commentary.Later in the same chapter, Grosseteste explains that universal demonstra-

tion is superior to particular demonstration because universal demonstra-tion brings one to know what is less mixed up with phantasmata and closerto the spiritual light through which mental vision becomes certain . . .[U]niversal demonstration brings one to know better, since it brings one toknow what is more visible to the minds eye (21216). The objects ofuniversal demonstration are described here as both easier to see with theminds eye and nearer to the spiritual light that makes knowledge possible.Marrone reads this passage as further evidence that Grosseteste identiesthe spiritual light as the human intellect: what made an object morereceptive to this light was its closeness to intellect, a closeness that could beglossed as proximity to the intelligible light itself. The implication was thatintellect and intelligible light were the same (48, n31).33 This interpretationseems a stretch, however, especially since in earlier passages (including theextended discussion in I.7), the more removed from phantasms an object (oran intellect) is, the closer Grosseteste claims it is to the divine light.A further passage toward the end of I.17 also supports the claim that the

spiritual light is the rst light and not the light of human reason. Accordingto Grosseteste:

Things that are prior are closer to the spiritual light, by which when it poursover intelligible objects those objects are made actually visible to the mindsvision (aspectus). And these prior things are more receptive of that light andmore penetrable by the minds vision, for which reason they are more certain,

and knowledge of these things is more certain knowledge. Considered in thisway, the knowledge belonging to separated incorporeal substances is morecertain than the knowledge belonging to incorporeal substances that are tied to

a body, and this knowledge in turn is more certain than the knowledgebelonging to corporeal substances.34

(3407)

32Marrone, however, refers to this as a parenthesis of much signicance, glossing this claim as

follows: In other words, the light of the intellect was itself a candidate for the intelligible

illumination he had just lines before compared to the rays of the sun (LTC 48). This seems quite

a stretch to me, however in fact, I nd it just as plausible to suppose that Grossetestes calling

the intellect likewise an irradiation (irradiatio) and not a light indicates that he is thinking of

the intellect as something that, at best, reects the light shining on it from God.33The Light of Thy Countenance.34By incorporeal substances that are bound to a body, Grosseteste clearly refers to human

beings, whose immaterial intellect is tied to a corporeal body.


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Knowledge possessed by intelligences (angels) is said to be more certain thanthe knowledge possessed by human intellects because that knowledge is ofprior things things that are closer to the spiritual light. It would makelittle sense for Grosseteste to claim that intelligences had knowledge ofthings closer to the spiritual light than the objects of human cognition,however, if the spiritual light were the human intellect. Instead, this passageappears to refer back to I.7, where Grosseteste claims that intelligences usehigher principles of cognition than human beings higher precisely in thesense that they are closer to the rst light, i.e. God. It seems sensible, then, tounderstand the spiritual light mentioned here as the same as the rst lightof which Grosseteste speaks in I.7. Because the other passages in the CPAthat mention the spiritual light parallel the passages I have alreadydiscussed,35 I see no further reason for thinking that Grosseteste means torefer to the human intellect, as opposed to God, when he speaks in the CPAof a light that pours over intelligible objects and that makes those objectsactually visible to the minds vision.

4. GODS ROLE IN HUMAN COGNITION

I have argued, then, that Grosseteste neither presents a strictly Augustinianunderstanding of divine illumination nor removes God entirely from hisaccount of human cognition in the CPA. This raises an obvious question forhis theory, however: what role does Grosseteste mean the spiritual lightplays in human cognition?On standard theories of divine illumination, God acts directly on our

intellects so that we can both know the truth and recognize that we know thetruth. Grosseteste rejects this possibility, focusing instead on the relationbetween God and the intelligible objects rather than the relation betweenGod and human intellects. Indeed, I believe that the central function of thespiritual light in the CPA is to shine on the proper objects of cognition sothat they become visible to us as we engage in the process of abstraction. Onmy reading of Grossetestes account, then, although God does not hold thenormative role common to most illuminationist theories laying bare thecriteria by which mind can separate truth from falsehood and thus providingthe epistemic basis for certitude (33)36 God nevertheless retains whatEtienne Gilson has referred to as a crucial ideogenic function in the humanacquisition of universal concepts, making the proper objects of cognitionaccessible to human intellects.37

35See, for example, II.6 (1047).36Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance.37Sur quelques dicultes. Not surprisingly, this possibility is explicitly ruled out by Marrone:

Might there still be place for God in the origin of concepts? As before with the

question of truth and certitude, eliminating divine presence in formal matters of

largely epistemic concern need not have precluded its reappearance under more


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In I.19, Grosseteste provides a concise description of the process ofillumination as he conceives of it. I want to begin with this basic frameworkand then develop it as he does to demonstrate the specic roleillumination plays in the CPA. In his words:

I hold that there is a mental vision for the apprehending of intelligible things,that the things visible to this vision are what we call intelligible and knowable,

and that there is a light that pouring over both the vision and the visiblethings brings about actual sight, just as the light of the sun brings about[sight] in external vision.

(2932)

I have argued in the previous section that the light that brings about actual[mental] sight is God, as opposed to the light of the human intellect. Theparallel drawn here between external and mental sight entails, then, thatGods light functions in human cognition in much the same way that thesuns light functions in vision namely, by illuminating knowable thingsand the faculty of mental sight in a way that makes us able to graspintelligible objects.This much of the story seems clear. What needs elaboration is how best to

understand this metaphor, particularly in light of Grossetestes remarksabout the negative eects the body has on our mental vision. Gods lightdoes shine on our intellects, as Grosseteste states repeatedly. The problemwith human cognition is that our mental gaze is stubbornly focused not onthat light, but rather on physical enticements; our attachment (both literaland metaphorical) to material things typically prevents us from turningdirectly to the light that makes intellection possible.Numerous passages, including several from I.17 which we have already

seen, suggest that Grosseteste focuses for this reason on Gods relation tothe objects that we cognize, rather than on Gods relation to our intellects.Take, for instance, his claim that [T]hings that are prior are closer to thespiritual light by which when it pours over intelligible objects thoseobjects are made actually visible to the minds vision. Here the emphasis ison Gods relation to the objects of our mental vision; what makes us able tosee the objects of cognition is the fact that the spiritual light shines onthem. In fact, what makes certain intelligible objects prior to others is nottheir proximity to our intellects, but rather their proximity to God. Thecloser these objects are to the spiritual light, the brighter they are to us andthe better our grasp of them is.

ambiguous, process-oriented guise, this time as source of an Augustinian light

necessary for ideogenesis. But again, the later works of Grosseteste . . . leave little

room for the doctrines associated with a notion of divine illumination.

(TLTC 67)


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Grossetestes focus is also on the relation between God and the objects ofhuman cognition (and not our intellects) when he writes:

[T]he intelligible things that are more receptive of this spiritual light are more

visible to the interior eye, and the things that are more receptive of this lightare by nature more similar to this light. And so the things that are morereceptive of this light are penetrated more perfectly by a mental sight that is

also a spiritual irradiation, and this penetration is more perfect and morecertain.

(I.17.3947)

The intelligible objects that are the most receptive of the spiritual light thatare the brightest are the ones that are most similar to that light; that is,they are the ones that are most similar to the eternal, immaterial,unchanging God. Presumably, then, the objects that are most suited tocognition are themselves eternal, immaterial, unchanging and so forth.Taken to its logical conclusion, Grossetestes claim implies that the optimalobject of human cognition is God himself.This is, in fact, what Grosseteste claims later in I.17: To the intellect such

as it ought to be considered in its highest state divine things are mostcertain, and to the extent that things are prior and more sublime by nature,they are more certain (3635). As we saw in Section I, the highest objects ofcognition are God and Gods own ideas,

since when the pure intellect is able to x its sight on them, it cognizes createdthings in them as truly and clearly as possible and not only created things,but also the rst light itself in which it cognizes other things.

(I.7.10810)

As we also saw in Section I, however, although our knowledge of the thingsclosest to God should be the most certain, in the normal course of things it isnot; the corrupt physical body interferes with the ideal cognitive process. AsGrosseteste writes:

Divine things are more visible to the minds vision that is healthy and notclouded by phantasmata . . . But to the minds vision that is unhealthy,38 suchas our vision is while we are burdened by the weight of the corrupt body andthe love of corporeal things, the things that are more visible are covered up

with phantasmata . . . Therefore to the human intellect such as is currently inus, mathematical things are most certain, for the imaginable phantasmatareceived by sight aid us in comprehending them.

(I.17.35363)

38Taking aegro for egro.


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In our present state, our intellects are unhealthy, clouded withphantasms (mental pictures, so to speak, of physical objects, that we canrecall at will) from their love for material things; this prevents us fromknowing those things such as God and the divine ideas that should beclearest to us.This passage proves highly useful in understanding Grossetestes attempt

to synthesize Aristotles account of cognition with a theory of divineillumination. As we saw in Section II, our intellects are prevented fromreceiving direct illumination by their attachment to corporeal things andare, instead, forced to resort to abstracting to universals through a complexprocess beginning with sense perception. Our love of the material world andcorresponding reliance on phantasms obscures our knowledge of God andGods ideas, for phantasms are representations of created material thingsand cannot (Grosseteste implies here) help us reach a better understandingof the uncreated divine nature. Material objects and the imaginablephantasmata received by sight can help us reach an understanding of otheruniversals, however, such as those involved in mathematics. We can teachchildren what numbers are, for instance, using apples, and we can teachfractions by cutting up a chocolate cake and mentally comparing theindividual pieces to our memory of the whole. We can even begin to graspthe concept of pie by repeatedly measuring the diameters and circumferencesof dierently sized cans. Although it would be better to receive completeknowledge of ve, one-half, and pi directly from God (as the angels do),without resorting to this lengthy and potentially futile process,39 sensoryexperience and phantasms are necessary tools for ordinary human intellectsacquiring knowledge of universals.Grosseteste sees Gods primary role in human cognition, I believe, as

illuminating the proper objects of our ordinary (as opposed to ideal)knowledge, which he identies in I.7 as the universals Aristotle refers to inthe Posterior Analytics universals he claims we grasp through the processof abstraction described in I.14. In this life, mathematical knowledge is themost certain knowledge we have, for it involves unchanging, immaterial,eternal truths that sense experience and phantasms can, nevertheless, aid usin acquiring. There are many other universals, moreover, of which we canalso gain an understanding through sense perception, including the essencesof created beings such as daisies and human beings. Grosseteste makes itclear that, in each case, that understanding depends crucially on Godsassistance.Grosseteste does not go into detail concerning what it means literally for

God to illuminate the objects of our cognition. It seems highly likely to me,however, that he sees God as the answer to an important questionconcerning the Aristotelian process of abstraction: namely, as we applyreason to sense experience and phantasms, what enables us to abstract to the

39See n19 above.


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actual essence of a substance? In other words, when we contemplate thenature of the beings with whom we live, what enables us to reach the answerrational animal rather than featherless biped or laughing strategist what makes it possible for human intellects to, in Platos words, carvereality at the joints?On Aristotles account of cognition, human beings are left on their own to

acquire knowledge of universals; we rely on experience, trial and error, andreason to get things right. On Augustines account, in contrast, we acquireknowledge as a result of Gods acting directly on both our intellects andintelligible objects. In the reading of the CPA for which I have argued, wecan see Grosseteste drawing elements from both theories: human cognitionrequires our reasoning about sense experience and phantasms, but ourintellects are not left on their own during the process of abstraction. Rather,God lights up the true essences of things when we engage in intellectiveactivity. He does not himself place knowledge of universals directly in ourintellects, as some theories of divine illumination hold, but he is responsiblefor distinguishing them from the accidents of a substance; he makes thoseuniversals catch our mental gaze in a special way. Intellects that remaininfatuated with material things might xate on a substances accidents andfail to reach knowledge of that substances true essence, but Grossetestecalls these intellects weak.40 The vast majority of human intellects, heclaims, can see the true natures of things when they engage reason long andhard enough in the process of abstraction, and God the spiritual light isresponsible for that.Grossetestes theory may diverge from a strictly Augustinian account,

then, but it is not one in which the metaphor of illumination collapses intoinsignicance or humanism. Human beings may lack direct epistemiccontact with God, but God plays a necessary role in the acquisition ofuniversal concepts nevertheless; his light is a precondition for our being ableto grasp truth on any level. Although a mere half-century later, JohnPecham identies an inherent ideological conict41 between divineillumination and Aristotelian abstraction and describes himself as part ofa movement attempting to protect the authentic teachings of Augustineagainst the falsity advocated by the Aristotelians, Robert Grossetesteappears much more interested in demonstrating the compatibility of the twopositions in his Posterior Analytics commentary than in setting one viewagainst the other.42 It seems only just, then, to recover the synthetic nature

40See I.7, where Grosseteste describes the weak intellect as that which knows things only

through the accidents following from the true essences of things (1423).41Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance, 14.42See, for example, letters Pecham writes in 1285 to the Bishop of Lincoln and cardinals in

which he describes the dierences between the Augustinian and the Aristotelian camps and

poses the question of what could be more important than supporting the authentic Augustinian

views against dangerous (presumably, Aristotelian) falsehoods.


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of his project at a time when received scholarly opinions identify him as, atheart, either resolutely Augustinian or entirely Aristotelian.43

Calvin College

43I owe many people thanks for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, including the

long-suering audiences at the Midwestern Conference in Medieval Philosophy, the Cornell

Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy, the Posterior Analytics and Aristotelian Sciences

Marquette Summer Seminar in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, and Baylor University. In

addition, I appreciate the useful discussion of this paper in my departments Colloquium, as

well as individual comments from Jeremiah Hackett at the Marquette seminar. Support from a

Calvin Research Fellowship allowed me the time o from teaching to take all this feedback into

consideration and use it to improve the paper. Most of all, however, I owe Scott MacDonald

my continuing gratitude not just for comments on every incarnation through which this paper

went, but also for the discussions of his translation of Grossetestes commentary that sparked

the idea for this paper in the rst place and for his support and encouragement since then.


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