 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
the stream divides
[ 81 ]
Anselm wrote that the soul may be described as “movement toward God.” In
its attempt to reach God, it goes through three stages: first, from a collection of
sensible images it unifies individuals by assembling them into species and gen-
era, ultimately relating them to the unity of God’s transcendence. In this ascent,
the soul unifies itself as it deepens its identification with God. Humans, com-
posed of body and soul, return to God through the resurrection of their bodies,
which are spiritualized or glorified. Anselm agreed that mutable and unspiritu-
alized matter, which Eriugena, following Gregory of Nyssa, viewed as mere
appearance, will perish. In the end, everything goes back to God: “For God will
be all in all when there is nothing but God.”
7
But even though humans, along with
everything else, are absorbed into God, in Anselm’s view, unlike in Eriugena’s,
humans, as pure spirits, somehow retain their individual identities. Anselm left
the issue of how they manage to do this a mystery.
Other thinkers, influenced by Anselm, tended in their discussions
of human
nature to keep the focus on universals. William of Champeaux (1070?-1121), for
instance, held that human beings are composed of increasingly more specific uni-
versals. Socrates, say, is composed, first of substance, then of bodiliness, then of
life, then of animality, then of humanity, then of Greekness, and so on. Socrates
himself is the sum total of these layered universals. Thus, William claimed that
all humans share the same humanity rather than each having his own ontologi-
cally distinct humanity. Of course, this view tells us nothing about how humans
experience the world or think or behave. In these respects, William’s reflections
are a far cry from Augustine’s and a still farther cry from what was about to
come. But before getting to that, it is necessary to trace developments in Middle
Eastern thought.
Arab Philosophy
Islam was located just beyond the Latin world, in Spain, Sicily, North Africa,
Palestine, Persia, Syria, and Turkey. Between the seventh and twelfth centuries
it spawned a brilliant civilization whose scientific, philosophical, and artistic cul-
ture absorbed and augmented the heritage of Greece, Rome, Judaism, and
Christianity.
When the Arabs translated Greek works, they focused on the most authoritative
writers they could find in such fields as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, astrol-
ogy, alchemy, and philosophy. Initially, these works provided the basic subject mat-
ter in these disciplines. Subsequently, Arabs added their own contributions. In
philosophy, Arabs acquired almost all of Aristotle’s systematic writings, along with
 |