## 1. Life and Work



Olivi (ca. 1248-1298) was born in Serignan, in the
Languedoc region of southern France. He entered the Franciscan order
at the age of twelve, studied in Paris from 1267 to about 1272 (during
the final years of Bonaventure's generalate) without becoming a
master of theology, and spent the remainder of his life teaching at
various Franciscan houses of study in southern France, with a stay in
Florence from 1287-89. (For biographical details, see Burr 1976
and 1989, and especially Piron 1998, 1999, 2006a.) Olivi's
outspoken originality led him into conflict with religious
authorities: his writings were condemned by the Franciscan authorities
in 1283, and although he was later rehabilitated by the new minister
general Matthew of Aquasparta, he remained a controversial figure. He
spent the last part of his life as a lector at Montpellier and
Narbonne. Soon after his death the Franciscan order renewed the
prohibition on reading or retaining his works. Although his
philosophical views were controversial, what proved to be fatal was
his reputation within the so-called "Spiritual" reform
movement of the Franciscan order. Olivi's understanding of the
Franciscan vow and poverty became influential among the spiritualists,
and after his death he was venerated by fervent laymen in Languedoc.
When Church officials took action against the spiritual movement,
Olivi's reputation suffered a blow, which limited the influence
he would have on posterity. (See Burr 1989, 1993, 2001.)



Olivi produced a large and wide-ranging body of work, much of which
has survived. By far the most important philosophical text is his
*Summa* of questions on Peter Lombard's *Sentences*, a
massive work he began writing soon after leaving Paris and redacted to
its final form in the mid-1290s. This masterpiece of medieval
philosophy remains still largely untranslated, and edited only in
part. Olivi's views on metaphysics and human nature are mostly
found in his questions on Bk. II (ed. Jansen, 1922-26). Material
on the virtues is found in Bk. III (ed. Emmen and Stadter, 1981).
Other philosophically relevant works include his *Quodlibeta*
from 1289-95 (ed. Defraia, 2002), a set of questions on logic
(ed. Brown, 1986), and the *Questions on Evangelical Perfection*.
Many of his biblical commentaries, the historically significant
*Commentary on the Apocalypse*, and various texts pertaining to
his condemnation have survived and are available in modern editions.
(For a recent list of editions, see Konig-Pralong et al. 2010;
for the dating of works, see Piron 2020a.) In this article we provide
a brief outline of the most significant philosophical views that Olivi
defended, both in theoretical and practical philosophy.


## 2. Theoretical Philosophy


### 2.1 Metaphysics


#### 2.1.1 Rejection of categories



According to traditional medieval interpretation, Aristotle's
ten categories (substance and nine accidental categories, such as
quality, quantity, and relation) represent both ontological and
conceptual divisions of the world. On the one hand, the world really
is divided into ten ontologically distinct types of things; and on the
other hand, our conceptual scheme employs the ten categories because
there is an isomorphism between how things really are and how we
understand them to be (see the entry
 on medieval theories of the categories).



This traditional interpretation was not universally agreed upon, and
various interpretations and modifications were presented, especially
towards the end of the thirteenth century. In particular, the realist
idea that categories are populated by different kinds things
(*res*) came under pressure. Olivi is among the first authors to
explicitly reject the idea that Aristotelian categories can be
considered as ontologically distinct kinds of things, and he also
points out that Aristotle does not offer any good reason to believe
that there are exactly ten categories (*Summa II* q. 28, pp.
490-91). According to Olivi, there are more ways of conceptually
carving the world than the Aristotelian categorical scheme, and we
cannot infer the ontological structure of the world from our
conceptual divisions. Olivi argues that "the diversity of modes
of predication does not necessarily entail a diversity of modes of
being, because the mode of predication follows the mode of
understanding rather than the mode of being [...]" (ibid.,
pp. 485-86; see also q. 54, pp. 262-63). Things that
really exist are substances and qualities; the remaining categories
are different ways to conceptualize things that really exist (Pini
2008, pp. 160-62; Pini 2005, pp. 74-77; Pasnau 2011, pp.
235-38).



However, Olivi finds a simple division between really existing things
(substances and qualities) and conceptualizations that the mind makes
too coarse. Although he goes some way towards nominalism, he does not
go all the way (Boureau 1999, 45). In many contexts, he upholds the
realist intuition that our concepts are based on how things really
are--they are ontologically committing. To achieve this aim, he
uses the notoriously difficult concept of *rationes reales*,
which can be translated, for instance, as "real aspects"
(Pini 2008, pp. 160-61; Pasnau 2011, p. 236), or "modes of
partial intelligibility" (Piron 2016, par. 8). The core idea is
that the human mind can consider the reality from different
perspectives, by focusing on some aspect of it and leaving other
aspects aside. For instance, it is possible to think about Socrates
from the point of view of his quantity. Ontologically speaking the
object of thought is still the individual rational substance
Socrates--the fact that we think about his quantity does not
entail real existence of quantity as a distinct thing
(*res*)--but we focus only on his height and weight and, as
it were, abstract them from him. These properties are not
mind-dependent but real in the sense that Socrates really is of a
certain quantity, but the core of Olivi's view is that these
qualities are nevertheless not ontologically distinct from
Socrates' substance. The category of relation functions in a
similar way:



> 
> 
> it does not seem that a relation adds anything real to that on which
> it is immediately founded, but only means another *ratio realis*
> of the same thing, which is real to the extent that such a
> *ratio* of the relation really is in the thing, and not solely in
> the intellect. But it is not really another in the sense of being
> another 'thing' or essence; it is only another
> *ratio* that is included in the thing without any difference
> [between the *ratio* and the thing] (*Summa II* q. 54, p.
> 260).
> 
> 
> 



*Rationes reales* are further distinguished from
conceptualizations that are completely mind-dependent, the so-called
verbal accounts (*rationes secundum dici*): I said
'*rationes reales*' because also some <other>
*rationes* are attributed to things, and they do not name
anything real or anything that is in the thing itself (*a parte
rei*) but only in the intellect, or according to the intellect.
(*Summa II* q. 54, p. 247; see Bettoni 1959, pp. 236-43;
Piron 1999, ch. 2; Piron 2016, par. 7-9) The crucial difference
between *rationes reales* and *rationes secundum dici* is
that the former are conceptualizations that are based on the nature of
things themselves (although they do not reflect any real ontological
distinctions or elements in them), while the latter are completely
mind-dependent modes of thinking:



> 
> 
> [...] they said that there seem to be several *rationes
> reales*, not only in God, but also in created things. They call
> these *rationes reales* in distinction to *rationes* which
> consist only of modes of being understood--such are the
> *ratio* of universality which the intellect attributes to things
> that are considered without their individuality, and relations
> *secundum dici* which posit nothing <real> in neither of
> their extremes or at least in the other extreme--just like
> 'to be praised or loved' taken in passive sense posit
> nothing in the thing praised or loved. Therefore, in distinction to
> these, they call *rationes reales* those, the truth of which lies
> entirely in the thing, so that they are not attributed to things on
> the basis of various modes of understanding, but rather on the basis
> of the real nature and truth itself (*Summa II* q. 7, pp.
> 134-35).
> 
> 
> 



The ontological status of *rationes reales* is unclear. Some
scholars seem to interpret them in a reductionist manner (Pini 2005,
pp. 74-75; Piron 2016, par. 7) but it has also been argued that
they, or at least some of them, should be taken as modes, understood
as an ontological category that is distinct from substances and
accidents but equally real (Pasnau 2011, pp. 247-49). Either
way, clearly they function as a theoretical tool which is unknown to
Aristotelian metaphysics and which allows Olivi to develop rather
nuanced positions in several metaphysical, epistemological and
theological questions.


#### 2.1.2 Universal hylomorphism and matter



Olivi accepts a doctrine that is known as "universal
hylomorphism", i.e. the view that every substance, except God,
is composed of form and matter. The hylomorphic scheme as such is of
course taken from Aristotle, but the idea that it must be applied also
to spiritual entities, such as the human soul and angels, is an
extension that was popularized by Dominicus Gundissalinus. The
philosophical reason behind this view is related to the idea that
forms are fully actual. Everything that can undergo a change from one
state to another requires potentiality, and thus all created
substances must have a material constituent (*Summa II* q. 16, p.
304). In particular, Olivi holds that although the human soul is a
spiritual entity, it is not a pure form but a hylomorphic combination
of form and what Olivi calls "spiritual matter" (for
details and qualifications, see
 SS 2.3
 below). Thus, Olivi, following Bonaventure, divides matter into two
radically different kinds: corporeal and spiritual. All physical
things around us are composed of corporeal matter and a form that
actualizes and organizes it. The metaphysical structure of spiritual
substances (angels and intellectual souls) is similar but the matter
that enters their metaphysical composition is of a different kind.
(Ribordy 2010; Suarez-Nani 2009, 29-44)



Moreover, Olivi rejects the Aristotelian notion of matter as pure
potentiality and attributes a certain level of actuality to it:
"The essence of matter means some act or actuality, which is
nevertheless sufficiently distinct from the act which is a form"
(*Summa II* q. 16, pp. 305-6). A number of different views
on the nature of matter were debated in the thirteenth century, and
Olivi's theory was an original contribution to the debate.
According to him, 'actuality' can be taken as an analogous
notion that applies both to forms that are actual in a
"determining and indeterminable" way, and matter that is
actual in an indeterminate way and needs to be perfected by a form to
turn into an actual substance. Olivi is careful to explain that
matter's having both actuality and potentiality does not mean
that it is *composed of* act and potency, as if from form and
matter. Rather, the actuality of matter is indeterminate and in that
sense it is the same thing as the potentiality of matter, and
therefore these two aspects of matter should be understood as two
*rationes*, which do not introduce any real distinction (ibid.,
pp. 309-10; see Rodolfi 2010; Suarez-Nani 2009, 29-44).
However, Olivi rejects Bonaventure's theory of seminal reasons
(*rationes seminales*), i.e. the idea that matter was imbued in
the creation with latent structures that are actualized over time and
thus explain the emergence of new substantial forms from the
potentiality of matter. He accepts the term itself, but proposes a
deflationary interpretation of it as various forms of efficient
causality (*Summa II* q. 31).


#### 2.1.3 Causality



It has been argued that Olivi is one of the few medieval authors to
argue that God is not a concurrent cause of actions of created beings
(Frost 2014; the following is based on this article). Although not a
completely novel idea, this position was almost obsolete in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the only author in addition to
Olivi to defend it was Durandus of St. Pourcain (ca.
1275-1332). Medieval authors typically argued that God is the
universal first cause and, as such, he must directly take part in
every causal process that is brought about by created things. This
position, known as "concurrentism," was defended as an
effort avoid occasionalism (defended mainly by Islamic philosophers)
while preserving the theological idea that nothing in this world
happens or exists without God.



It should be emphasised that Olivi accepts the idea that nothing can
remain in existence without God (*Summa II* q. 116, p. 346:
"That which arises indirectly from the first cause requires the
first causes's power and sustenance no less than does that which
arises immediately. Hence at the cessation of God's entire
influence it would be deprived of its existence no less than would
those things that arise immediately"). His claim has a more
limited scope, as it pertains to the nature of causality in a world
that remains in existence only with the help of God. Although natural
agents need God to exist, they can cause their effects without
God's direct participation in the causal process:
"[...] many natural powers are sufficiently applied to
their acts from their creation or generation, so that they need only
the presence of a suitable object" (*Summa II* q. 116, p.
340).



Olivi explicitly rejects two competing views that give God a more
central role in causal processes. According to one view, defended
mainly by Dominicans, God contributes to the causal process
indirectly, by applying created causes to their actions. The other
view, favored by Franciscan authors such as John Duns Scotus and
William Ockham, God acts as a co-cause that brings about the effect
together with the created cause (Schmutz 2001). Olivi claims that both
of these have problematic consequences when they are applied to sinful
actions of humans--in particular to the original sin, which is
the explicit topic of question 116 of the second book of his
*Summa*, where he develops his position. Unsurprisingly, he wants
to keep God clear from all moral responsibility for our sins.



The position that God is not responsible for our sins was of course
uncontroversial. None of the authors who defended the idea that God is
a concurrent cause (in one way or the other) thought that God thereby
becomes morally responsible for them. But what is philosophically
important in Olivi's view is that he refuses to accept any other
way to safeguard the impeccability of God except the denial of his
role as a concurrent cause in the free actions of our will. This view
is closely related to his conception of the freedom of the will but he
seems to extend the argument from the human will to created causes in
general; at least he uses physical causation as an example that
illuminates the mutual roles of created causes and God:



> 
> 
> Likewise, the immediate effects of secondary causes are likenesses of
> their active powers, as a ray <of light> is a likeness of the
> light of the sun, and the first effect of heat is nothing else than a
> likeness of heat. If therefore the mentioned divine cooperation is of
> different species than the heat, how can the likeness of heat be from
> it? (*Summa II* q. 116, p. 339)
> 
> 
> 



Olivi suggests here that God cannot bring about any effect in the
created cause, which would help that cause to bring about its effect.
The only way God can take part in the causal process is by acting
directly as a co-cause, and this won't do for reasons that Olivi
laid down earlier. The upshot is that God cannot be a concurrent cause
in any way. The main purpose of the examples involving heat and light
is to make the philosophical (and theological) point clear: Olivi
appeals to created causes in general to make his point about sinful
actions of the will more plausible. But he does this in such a way
that there seems to be little reason to doubt that he means to extend
the rejection of concurrence to created causes generally.


#### 2.1.4 Freedom of the will and personhood (personalitas)



Olivi devotes several extended questions of his *Summa* to the
topic of human freedom, beginning with the question of whether human
beings even have free will (*liberum arbitrium*). Olivi's
own argument for the affirmative begins by listing seven pairs of
attitudes (*affectus*), each of which testifies to the existence
of free will (*Summa II* q. 57, p. 317):


1. Zeal and mercy
2. Friendship and hostility
3. Shame and glory
4. Gratitude and ingratitude
5. Subjugation and domination
6. Hope and distrust
7. Carefulness and heedlessness



Each of these attitudes, Olivi claims, is intelligible only given the
existence of free will. More specifically, they are "its
distinctive products, or its distinctive acts and habits"
(*Summa II* q. 57, p. 317). As he runs through the list,
explaining how each attitude entails free will, it becomes clear that
many of these claims are familiar ones. Zeal, for instance, is an
angry reaction to bad deeds, motivated "only against the bad
that one judges to have been done voluntarily, and thus which could
have been freely avoided" (ibid., p. 318). Without free will,
this attitude is based on an assumption that is "thoroughly
false and grounded on a thoroughly false object" (ibid., p.
317). As zeal goes, so do the related phenomena of accusations,
excuses, blame, and guilt. Generally, "a human being could no
more be accused of some vice than he could be accused of death, for he
could avoid the one as little as the other" (ibid., p. 336).
Carefulness and heedlessness, the last pair on the list, likewise
become meaningless: "For it is foolish to be careful about
things that will occur necessarily" (ibid., p. 323). It becomes
pointless to be careful about deliberation, for instance,
"because the deliberation itself will or will not happen
necessarily, and even one's carefulness will or will not occur
necessarily" (ibid., p. 323).



For Olivi, these and other data stand as unshakeable evidence for the
existence and nature of free will. He makes this clear from the
beginning of his reply, when he introduces two premisses that
"no one of sane mind ought to doubt" (*Summa II* q.
57, p. 317). First, it is impossible for all of the attitudes of
one's rational nature to be "thoroughly false and perverse
and grounded on a thoroughly false and perverse object." Since
Olivi thinks that the attitudes that distinguish us as rational
creatures are founded on free will, giving up on free will would be to
abandon most of what makes us human. We would cease to be what we
properly are, persons, and we would become only "intellectual
beasts" (ibid., p. 338; see below). Second, it is impossible for
attitudes to be entirely illusory when human beings improve and
perfect themselves by assuming those attitudes (ibid., p. 317). If the
practices of zeal, deliberation, friendship, love, political power,
etc. were all founded on a false assumption, then surely these
practices would not be so crucial to human well-being. Thus "no
one of sane mind will believe that something could be the truth which
so sharply puts an end to all good things and brings on so many bad
things" (ibid., p. 338). In the face of these implications, we
should reject whatever stands in the way of free will, whether that be
the authority of Aristotle or some abstruse principle of metaphysics.
"Even if there were no other argument establishing that [the
denial of free will] is false, this alone ought to be sufficiently
persuasive" (ibid., p. 338). Moreover, as he explicitly notes,
we should be persuaded not just of our own free will, but of the free
will of all human beings, since these arguments are based not on
private experience, but on our relationships with others.



Having proved that human beings have free will, Olivi sets out to
explain what he means by freedom. His conception obviously belongs
within the libertarian camp in the free will debate, and its central
feature is that in order to be free, the will must be active and
capable of reflexively moving itself to action. True, the will's
choices are not necessitated by reason or anything other than by the
will itself, but Olivi does not merely conclude that the will is not
necessitated; the further conclusion he reaches is that the will,
until it makes a choice, is entirely undetermined one way or another,
and that it determines itself in the direction it chooses. This is
something "every human being senses with complete certainty
within himself" (*Summa II* q. 57, p. 327). In arguing that
the will determines itself, he means that it is a first mover, in need
of no efficient cause other than itself. "Its free power is the
cause of its motion, when it is moved, and the cause of its rest, when
it rests" (ibid. ad 5, pp. 341-42; Yrjonsuuri 2002).
If the will did not have this capacity for self-movement, then it
would have to be determined by something else, and so it would not be
making its own choices. But this violates the unshakeable assumptions
from which Olivi begins, because it would then turn out that the will
is not autonomous and hence not a suitable object of one's zeal
or friendship, among other things.



Olivi is well aware that the lack of autonomy does not entirely
preclude a sort of pseudo-zeal or pseudo-friendship. One might be
angry with someone, for instance, not out of the conviction that the
bad action was that person's fault, but simply in an effort to
change that person's ways. But this line of thought does
violence to our conceptions of ourselves and our fellow human beings.
We want people to do the right thing not because they have been
effectively manipulated, but "solely and purely because of the
love of justice" (*Summa II* q. 57, ad 22, p. 368).
Further, when we urge a person to do the right thing, "we do not
intend simply to move someone toward what is good, but rather to make
it that he voluntarily moves himself toward the good" (ibid., p.
369).



Another distinctive feature of Olivi's theory of the freedom of
the will is that he criticizes Anselm of Canterbury's asymmetric
notion of freedom, according to which the will is free only when it
conforms to the normative standard of justice. Olivi argues that the
ability to sin *is* a part of freedom and that the ability to
choose between alternatives--including vices--is part of the
definition of freedom (*Summa II* q. 41, pp. 696-702, q.
57, 359; Kent 2017; Bobillier 2020, pp. 178-79). Moreover, Olivi
argues fervently against the view that the will is a power for
opposites only with respect to a future instant. In order to be truly
free, the will must, in the same instant it wills 'A', be
capable of willing 'not-A'. Olivi's conception seems
to have been the source of John Duns Scotus' revolutionary
theory of synchronic contingency (Dumont 1995), and although Scotus is
better known as an early proponent of libertarian freedom, his view is
heavily indebted to Olivi. Indeed, it is arguable that Olivi deserves
credit as the founder of this conception of freedom of the will.



Finally, one of the original moves that Olivi makes with his theory of
the freedom of the will is that he proposes a novel interpretation of
the notion of 'personhood,' i.e. the property of being a
person (see Perler 2020; Piron 2007; Bobillier 2020, pp.
102-37). This notion is put to several uses in different
contexts, but philosophically the most pertinent idea is that which he
develops in relation to self-consciousness and the freedom of the
will: "personhood is the same as per se existence, governing,
free, and reflexively turned (or turnable) to itself in a possessive
way--that is, possessing itself by a certain free
reflextion" (*Summa II* q. 52, p. 200). To be a person, one
must have two highly sophisticated abilities, namely a mind that
provides self-awareness by turning reflexively towards itself (see
below) and freedom of the will understood in terms of activity and
self-movement. Some elements of Olivi's innovative notion are
more well-known from authors of much later periods, such as Descartes,
Locke and Kant; but it was Olivi who first formulated this notion of
personhood and used it in his metaphysical, epistemological and moral
theories (Bobillier 2020, pp. 133-34).


### 2.2 Epistemology


#### 2.2.1 Rejection of divine illumination



The idea that certain knowledge requires divine illumination enjoyed
steady popularity from antiquity to late thirteenth century. The
philosophical appeal of the view is familiar from Plato's
epistemology, and Augustine's remarks popularized it among early
medieval theologians. These remarks do not constitute a detailed
theory of how illumination takes place, but in the mid-thirteenth
century prominent authors such as Bonaventure and Matthew of
Aquasparta developed a systematic defence of it. At the influence of
Aristotelian epistemological theory, the theory of divine illumination
came under pressure and it was both attacked and defended from many
perspectives, e.g. by explaining illumination by separating the agent
intellect from individual human beings and identifying it with God.
Olivi was the first Franciscan author to launch a heavy critique of
the Augustinian idea that universal cognition requires divine
illumination. He presents (in *Summa I*, q. 2) a thorough
criticism of the reasons that were used to defend it, and although he
ends up accepting the position, he emphasizes that the theory must be
carefully formulated so that it takes into account the shortcomings he
has pointed in it--all of which can be taken to qualify it to the
brink of rejection (see the entry on
 divine illumination).
 After all, one of the conditions that he sets for the true theory is
that "it does not take away the possibility of true and certain
judgement and understanding" (*Summa I*, q. 2, p. 510) from
the human mind, and in another context he argues that the acts of
understanding originate in the human intellect (*Summa II* q. 74;
Caldera 2010, pp. 235-36).



Another issue that leads Olivi to questions the idea of divine
illumination is related to Henry of Ghent's realistic view
(realistic of the Platonist breed), that knowledge of universal
propositions provides a proof for the existence of God. In
Olivi's eyes, the problem here is that if such knowledge is
based on grasping the eternal reasons in God (which God used in
creation), there is no way to preserve the theological doctrine that
we cannot see God in this life. While Henry's argument is based
on the realist idea that necessary truths would exists even in the
absence of thinking subjects, Olivi holds that necessary propositions
are necessary only because they cannot be formed by a mind without
their being true. Having thus undermined the fundamental basis of the
theory of divine illumination, Olivi goes on to propose a theory of
knowledge that is closer to Aquinas' view in its appeal to
empiricism, but that is more radical and preserves certain aspects of
Augustine's neoplatonist theory--especially as it
emphasizes the active nature of the mind in cognitive processes (Piron
2020b, par. 2-3).


#### 2.2.2 Direct realism



Olivi's direct realism is central to his thinking about
cognition. If he were willing to say that the object of our spiritual
attention is not the external object but an internal species of the
object, then he could reformulate his theory of cognitive attention in
a more plausible way, as a matter of grasping an internal impression
from the object. But Olivi works very hard to avoid falling into any
kind of position that might be called representationalist--that
is, a view on which the immediate objects of cognition are internal.
This epistemological commitment to direct realism is one of the most
important philosophical reasons for Olivi to reject the standard
scholastic account of sensible and intelligible species. On that
standard account, species serve as forms that provide the intentional
content of sensation and thought. Although these forms were standardly
described as merely the means by which we grasp external things, Olivi
argued that in fact the proponent of species was committed to
representationalism.



Olivi argues against the species theory by advancing through a series
of ever-more-serious charges. First, the theory is committed to taking
species as the objects of cognition:



> 
> 
> A species will never actually represent an object to the cognitive
> power unless the power attends to the species in such a way that it
> turns and fixes its attention on the species. But that to which the
> power's attention is turned has the character of an object, and
> that to which it is first turned has the character of a first object.
> Therefore these species will have the character of an object more than
> the character of an intermediate or representative source (*Summa
> II* q. 58 ad 14, p. 469; cf. *Summa II* q. 74, p. 123).
> 
> 
> 



His argument for this conclusion turns on the first sentence of the
passage, in which he claims that a species cannot represent an object
to a cognizer unless the cognizer attends to the species. For Olivi,
such attention to some thing is both a necessary and a sufficient
condition for that thing's being cognized. So if we do have to
focus our attention in this way on species, he infers that those
species will be the object of cognition, not merely causal
intermediaries.



Next, Olivi argues that species would have to be the first object of
cognition. To turn toward a species in the way that we must if that
species is to represent the external world "is the same as to
attend to it as a first object" (Summa II q. 74, p. 123).
Elsewhere, "we would always cognize the species before the thing
itself that is the object" (*Summa II* q. 58 ad 14, p.
469). The point Olivi wants to make is one more often made by denying
that the world is seen *directly* or *immediately*. If we
see the external world at all, we see it only at second hand,
indirectly.



The argument goes one final step. Someone who wants to claim that our
internal sensations are themselves perceived has to choose whether or
not to claim that the external world is also perceived. Olivi holds
that, on the species account, we would not perceive the external world
at all, only images of it:



> 
> 
> The attention will tend toward the species either in such a way that
> it would not pass beyond so as to attend to the object, or in such a
> way that it would pass beyond. If in the first way, then the thing
> will not be seen in itself, but only its image will be seen as if it
> were the thing itself (*Summa II* q. 74, p. 123; cf. q. 58 ad
> 14, pp. 469-70, 487-88).
> 
> 
> 



The argument is based on a dilemma. Granting that cognizers must
attend to species, there either will or will not be a separate and
further attention to the object itself. It would of course be quite
odd to say that there is such a further attention. This would entail,
as Olivi goes on to say, that one "considers the object in two
ways--first through a species, second in itself" (*Summa
II* q. 74, p. 123). This seems too much at odds with the phenomenal
feel of perception to be a serious possibility. The obvious way out of
the dilemma, then, is to say that there will not be any further
attention: one apprehends the external world, if one does at all, in
virtue of attending to the species themselves. This is what the
representationalist will likely say. But if this were the case, Olivi
argues, then we would be seeing only the images of objects, not the
things in themselves. Memorably, he remarks that a species
"would veil the thing and impede its being attended to in itself
as if present, rather than aid in its being attended to"
(*Summa II* q. 58 ad 14, p. 469; Pasnau 1997).



In place of the species theory, Olivi offers an interesting
alternative. Rather than treat mental representations as something
separate from an act of cognition, Olivi proposes identifying the two.
On his view, an act of cognition in itself represents the object that
is perceived. There is no need to postulate any further representation
beyond the act itself: that inevitably results in the mediation that
Olivi wants to avoid. This act theory would prove influential on later
scholastics, most notably William Ockham. And in our own era it has
been reinvented and renamed, as the adverbial theory of thought and
perception.


### 2.3 Philosophy of Mind


#### 2.3.1 Soul and body



With the rediscovery of Aristotle's metaphysical and ethical
works, thirteenth-century theologians devoted an increasing portion of
their time to interpreting and developing Aristotelian accounts of
human nature. Olivi was very far from a slavish admirer of
Aristotle's, and his theory of the nature of the soul and its
relation to the body differs radically from those medieval
interpretations which endeavor to be faithful to the Philosopher.
Nonetheless, he employs the Aristotelian theoretical framework, and
although he often seems to be rather hostile to Aristotle's
pervasive influence, once remarking that "without reason he is
believed, as the god of this age" (*Summa II* q. 58 ad 14,
p. 482; see Burr 1971), the main thrust of his criticism is directed
at contemporary Averroist interpretations of Aristotle rather than at
Aristotle himself (Piron 2006b). The critical, even harsh passages
must be understood in this light.



Nonetheless, he rejects many principles that are crucial for
Aristotle's account of the soul-body relationship. He argues
that it is "not only contrary to reason but also dangerous to
the faith" to hold that "the [soul's] intellective
and free part is the form of the body per se and considered as
such" (*Summa II* q. 51, p. 104). Others had questioned the
extent to which soul and body could be analyzed in terms of form and
matter, but Olivi goes further because he explicitly denies that one
part of the soul, the rational part, can be understood as the form of
the body. This denial is ultimately based on his view that the
intellectual part of the soul must be spiritual and incorporeal
because otherwise it cannot be immortal, intellectual, and free. Yet
he does not want to jeopardize the substantial unity of the soul and
the body, and he works towards a theory which incorporates both of
these doctrines.



Olivi's denial that the soul's intellectual part is the
form of the body matches fairly closely with a doctrine that was
condemned by the Council of Vienne in 1312, when Pope Clement V
declared in the bull *Fidei catholicae fundamento* that it is a
heresy to hold that "the rational or intellective soul is not
per se and essentially the form of the human body" (Denzinger
1965, n. 902). However, it is easy to misunderstand what Olivi is
saying, and a closer analysis shows that his position is far more
nuanced than the wording of the condemnation suggests. First, he is
not denying that the rational part of the soul is a form, or even that
it is the form of a human being. To begin with, he follows Bonaventure
and makes the distinction discussed above between two kinds of matter.
The human body and all material objects are made of corporeal matter,
but spiritual entities (angels and human souls) also have a material
substratum, the so-called spiritual matter. Olivi argues that the
rational part of the soul, intellect and will, is a form of this
spiritual matter. It is acceptable to speak of intellect as the form
of a *human being* since the spiritual matter belongs to the
human being. But because the spiritual matter of the soul is distinct
from the corporeal matter of the body, Olivi can maintain that the
rational part is not the form of *the body* (see e.g. *Summa
II* q. 51 appendix, p. 138).



Second, Olivi is not denying that the *soul* is the form of the
body. What he denies is that the rational *part* of the soul
("the intellective and free part") is the form of the
body. He resorts to a doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms,
according to which complex substances, such as human beings, have
several more or less distinct forms that together make the complete
human being. The intellectual part of the soul is distinct from
another part, the sensory part, and only the latter is the form of the
body. Because the two parts of the soul are united in the spiritual
matter, it is acceptable to say that the whole soul is the form of the
body:



> 
> 
> It is said that the whole rational soul, rather than the sensory part,
> is the form of the body, even though it is informed by the whole only
> insofar as it is informed by the soul's sensory and nutritive
> part. (*Summa II* q. 51 app., p. 146)
> 
> 
> 



We should say that the whole soul is the form of the body, in much the
same way that we say that a person talks, not a tongue (ibid., p.
144). But if we direct our attention to the various parts of the soul,
then it is wrong to say that the rational part, "per se and
considered as such," is the form of the body. The soul is the
form of the body only with respect to its sensory and nutritive part.
Given Olivi's argumentation against the formal union between the
intellectual part of the soul and the body, it may seem that the unity
of the human being is compromised. Olivi argues, however, that the
relation between these two parts is substantial even though it is
mediated by the sensory part and the spiritual matter of the soul. He
writes:



> 
> 
> If the human body is united and inclined to the sensory form, which is
> inclined and united to the intellectual form; and the intellectual
> form is essentially united to the sensory form, which is inclined to
> the body; then by the same token the intellectual form and the body
> are necessarily substantially united to each other. Still, this does
> not mean that they would be united as form and matter. (*Summa
> II* q. 51, p. 134)
> 
> 
> 



The substantial union between the intellectual and sensory parts is
due to their being the forms of the same spiritual matter of the soul.
In this way, all the metaphysical components constitute a single
substance. A human being is an essentially unified entity even though
the intellectual part of the soul is not the actuality of the body or
any of its parts.


#### 2.3.2 Cognitive activity and attention



One of the most interesting and original aspects of Olivi's
philosophy is his critique of the standard Aristotelian model of
cognition. The starting point of this critique is the Augustinian
conception of the ontological superiority of the soul with respect to
the body, which leads Olivi to insist that perception and intellectual
understanding cannot be passive reception of external stimuli but must
be understood as active processes. On the conventional medieval view,
a cognitive power simply receives impressions from the world, in the
form of sensible or intelligible species. Olivi argues that such an
account leaves out a crucial element, the focusing of the cognitive
power's attention on the object to be cognized:



> 
> 
> However much the cognitive power is informed through a disposition and
> a species differing from the cognitive action, it cannot advance to a
> cognitive action unless before this it actually tends toward the
> object, so that the attention of its intention should be actually
> turned and directed to the object. (*Summa II* q. 72, p. 9)
> 
> 
> 



Olivi gives the kinds of examples that one would expect. The ears of
someone sleeping, for instance, receive the same impressions as the
ears of someone awake, but the sleeper does not sense these
impressions. Even when we are awake, we sometimes do not perceive
objects right in front of us when we are intently focused on something
else (*Summa II* q. 73, pp. 89-90).



Olivi argues that this kind of cognitive attention requires a
"virtual extension" toward the object. Though he accepts
the traditional theory of *species in medio*, sensible qualities
that fill the air between the senses and their objects (for details,
see Demange and Kedar 2020), he denies that these species are the
efficient cause of cognition. One striking consequence of this claim
is that the object itself need not exert any causal influence, not on
the cognitive powers nor even on the physical sense organs. The
external object need only be close enough to be apprehended by the
cognizer's spiritual attention. In the cases of both perception
and understanding, the efficient agent is the cognitive power. The
external object is merely a kind of final cause or, more precisely, a
"terminative cause" (*Summa II* q. 72, p. 36;
*Epistola*, n. 12). It is merely by being the object of the
cognitive power's attention that the external object plays a
role in cognition.



Olivi treats virtual attention--or directedness--not as a
sui generis activity of the mind, but as a general kind of causal
relationship that can be applied to physical agents just as much as to
mental ones. For him, every natural physical agent has a virtual
attention of this sort that extends as far as its causal force does
(*Summa II* q. 23, pp. 424-25). One authority comments that
Olivi's virtual attention is "in fact equivalent to action
at a distance" (Jansen 1921, p. 118), a characterization that
seems apt in the case of physical effects such as the light of the sun
that illuminates distant objects.



However, the case of cognitive acts is different. Olivi carefully
avoids committing to real extramission of vision, and he argues that
perceptual acts take place in the powers of the soul, not in the
perceived object (*Summa II* q. 58, p. 482; Silva & Toivanen
2010). The virtual extension of the soul's attention is not
real, not even in some special nonphysical sense. When Olivi explains
that the extension is 'virtual', he means to contrast it
with 'real'. He explicitly denies, for instance, that this
virtual extension involves "any real emission of its
essence" (*Summa II* q. 73, p. 61). Elsewhere, considering
the claim that "our mind is where it fixes its intention,"
he says that "these words are metaphorical, for we are not there
really or substantially, but only virtually or intentionally"
(*Summa II* q. 37 ad 13, p. 672). On this basis it is fair to say
that the soul does not actually perform any action at a distance,
although its attention can be directed to distant objects.
Accordingly, Olivi's view is best described as an intentional
theory of cognition (Perler 2002; Toivanen 2013a).



Olivi allows that the object itself, through *species in medio*,
can indirectly act on our spiritual faculties, through what he calls
the *via colligantiae* (way of connection). A flash of lightning
will make a physical impression on our eyes, and this physical
impression can, through the *via colligantiae*, affect the
spiritual sensory powers. But, crucially, this connection is not what
brings about sensation. We *see* this flash, as opposed to
receiving merely a physical impression from it, when we direct our
spiritual attention toward it (*Quodlibet* I.4). This *via
colligantiae* plays an important role across Olivi's
philosophical psychology, being his general method of explaining the
vexed connection between mind and body (see *Summa II* q. 59, pp.
546-54; ibid. q. 72, pp. 30-35; Jansen 1921, pp.
76-90).


#### 2.3.3 Words and concepts



Olivi extends his critique of species to the mental word
(*verbum*), which was standardly postulated as the product of
intellectual thought. His treatment of the *verbum* raises
different issues from those associated with species. Here the issue is
not direct realism, precisely, but rather the nature of concept
formation. Near the start of his commentary on the Gospel of John,
Olivi describes the standard view as follows: "Our mental word
is something following an act of thought [...] and formed by that
thought. [...] After it has been formed [...] the
[extra-mental] object is clearly understood or viewed in that word as
if in a mirror" (*Tractatus de verbo* 6.1). This word,
moreover, "is that which is first cognized by intellect and is
its first object;" the extra-mental object is cognized
secondarily. This description closely matches a characterization Olivi
gives in his later *Sentences* commentary:



> 
> 
> Some maintain that a kind of concept, or word, is formed through an
> abstractive, investigative, or inventive consideration, in which real
> objects are intellectively cognized as in a mirror. For they call this
> the first thing understood, and the immediate object; it is a kind of
> intention, concept, and defining notion of things. (*Summa II* q.
> 74, pp. 120-21)
> 
> 
> 



This view has two characteristic features. First, it postulates a
mental representation--a concept or word--that is the
product of intellectual activity. Second, it supposes that we
understand the world through these representations, in such a way that
we get at the world indirectly, or secondarily, "as if in a
mirror." Call this an object theory of the *verbum*.



Olivi's own view is that the *verbum* should be identified
with a particular act of thought: "our mental word is our actual
thought" (*Tractatus* *de verbo* 6.2.1). When we
engage in abstract intellectual cognition, Olivi says, "nothing
serving as an object is really abstracted or formed that differs from
the act of consideration already mentioned" (ibid., 6.2.3). His
*Summa* offers a concise characterization:



> 
> 
> This [sort of intervening concept] ought not to be called a
> *verbum*, nor can [such a concept] be anything other than the act
> of consideration itself or a memory species formed through that act.
> (*Summa II* q. 74, p. 121)
> 
> 
> 



There are, then, acts of intellect, but there are no separate inner
concepts that are the objects of those acts. Call this an act theory
of the *verbum*.



Why is this act theory superior to an object theory? One line of
argument holds that the object theory "contains in itself
obvious absurdities and thus contradicts sound reason"
(*Tractatus* *de verbo* 6.2.2). This claim is argued in
different ways, with the following dilemma often playing a crucial
role: On one hand the *verbum* is said to be the product of
intellectual cognition. But on the other hand the *verbum* is
said to be required for cognition as the "first thing
understood." How can it be both? Olivi thinks his opponents will
have to maintain that in some way the *verbum* is the product of
one act of intellect and the object of a second. This leads him to
argue that his opponents are treating the *verbum* as merely a
memory. But Olivi is happy to countenance representations of this
sort. Thus the object theory collapses into the act theory.



The second line of attack holds that the theory lacks support because
"there is no necessity or utility in postulating such a
*verbum*" (*Tractatus de verbo* 6.2.3). Here Olivi
considers two parallel lines of argument that a proponent of the
mental word might make against this charge of superfluity.



> 
> 
> First, [...] we experience in ourselves that we form in our mind
> new concepts of many propositions and conclusions. These concepts
> remain in us later and we return to them when we want to remember such
> propositions. [...] Second, [...] from individuals seen or
> imagined by us we abstract and form defining characterizations of
> their universal features [...] and we come back to these when we
> wish to view such universal features. (*Tractatus* *de
> verbo* 6.2.3)
> 
> 
> 



Each argument appeals to our experience of forming within ourselves
abstract ideas: in the first case propositional ideas, in the second
universals. Intellect in each case is said to form a *verbum*.
Olivi replies that no such inner word is necessary. In each case we
have an act of conceptual thought, but no object is formed in
intellect over and above the act of thinking itself. Indeed, if
anything, such an object "would be an impediment"
(ibid.)--alluding to the epistemological difficulties discussed
in the previous section.



By eliminating the representations that might intervene between
intellect and external reality, Olivi gives us what we might be
tempted to think of as a direct realist theory of intellectual
cognition. Yet direct realism faces a serious problem at the
intellectual level, a problem that Olivi's discussion fails to
acknowledge. Direct realism is attractive as a theory of sensation
because it seems clear what the objects of sensation are. But what are
we directly in touch with when our intellect thinks abstractly or
propositionally? One answer to this question is Platonism: universals
and/or propositions have some kind of abstract mode of existence,
independently of the human mind. Like almost all the scholastics,
Olivi firmly rejects this kind of account (*Summa II* q. 13).
Another kind of answer, sometimes called conceptualism, treats
universals and/or propositions as mental constructs. Defenders of the
object theory can take this approach. They can hold that although
there are no universals or propositions in external things (*in
re*), there are universals and propositions in the mind (*in
mente*). The *verbum*, serving as universal or as proposition,
will (in some cautiously described sense) be the object of
thought.



Olivi's act theory would seem to rule out this kind of
conceptualism. But what then will Olivi put in its place? He speaks of
intellect's "attending to and considering the real
character of a common or specific nature" (*Tractatus de
verbo* 6.2.3; Pasnau 1999, 271-276), as if he has an
unproblematic account of intellect's relationship to the
external world. Yet he says nothing to clarify the status of this
relationship. He simply does not seem to have recognized the problem
of abstract knowledge as a fundamental metaphysical motivation for the
object theory. In this respect his overall account, although
conceptually innovative, remains fundamentally incomplete.


#### 2.3.4 Self-Awareness and reflexivity



Olivi extensively discusses various types of self-reflexivity in his
writings. He adopts the traditional idea that the intellect is capable
of turning reflexively toward itself, but he also attributes certain
types of reflexivity to the sensory powers of the soul and argues that
the will is a reflexive power.



The most rudimentary type of self-reflexivity takes place in the sense
of touch. Aristotle argues in *De anima* II.11 that the organ of
the sense of touch is the heart and that the flesh of the body is
nothing but the medium that transmits the sensations from an external
object to the heart. Olivi rejects the Aristotelian theory. He thinks
that the whole body functions as the organ of the sense of touch.
Moreover, he argues that the body is the primary object of the sense
of touch, while external objects are perceived secondarily by
perceiving the harmful and beneficial changes that they cause in the
body. This position leads to the obvious problem that the sense of
touch seems to be a reflexive power, as it is capable of sensing the
state of its own organ. Olivi recognizes this problem and gives two
possible solutions: either the sense of touch which is in one place of
the body senses the state of the adjacent part of the body, or the
sense of touch really is capable of a certain type of reflexivity. In
the latter case, Olivi argues, the sense of touch would be capable of
sensing the state of its own organ but not its own act or itself as a
psychological power. He does not make up his mind between these two
explanations, but he clearly thinks that the sense of touch enables a
certain kind of bodily self-perception. Inasmuch as every animal has
the sense of touch, it follows that even the simplest animals are
capable of perceiving their bodies (*Summa II* q. 61, pp.
575-85; Yrjonsuuri 2008a; Toivanen 2013a).



The sense of touch is not the only sensory power that is capable of
reflexivity. Another such power is the so-called common
sense--the highest cognitive power of the animal soul and the
only internal sense Olivi acknowledges. Although he does not provide a
systematic discussion of the reflexivity of the common sense, he
suggests in several places that it is capable of apprehending its own
activity by turning toward itself incompletely (*semiplene*)
(*Summa II* q. 62, p. 595). This ability is related to the
Aristotelian conception of perception of perception, but Olivi
suggests something more than the traditional Aristotelian picture.
Following Augustine, he argues that animals are aware of their own
bodies and the purpose and value of their organs and body parts, since
otherwise they would not be able to use their bodies effectively and
preserve their lives:



> 
> 
> When a dog or a snake sacrifices one of its members in order to save
> its head or sacrifices some part in order to save the whole, then it
> prefers the whole over the part and the head over the other member.
> Therefore, these animals must have some common power which shows both
> extremes simultaneously, their mutual comparison, and the preference
> of one over the other--although it does not do this with the same
> fullness and degree of reflexive judgement as does the intellect.
> (*Summa II* q. 62, p. 588)
> 
> 
> 



The common sense enables animals to perceive their own bodies, the
parts and their functions, and the relative value of the parts for the
well-being of the animal as a whole, thus making animals capable of
self-preservation that goes beyond the ability to avoid pain (see
Toivanen 2013b).



The difference between intellectual self-reflexivity and the
reflexivity of the common sense is based on the spiritual nature of
the intellectual soul. Unlike the common sense, the intellectual mind
is spiritual and immaterial and therefore capable of being directly
and immediately aware of itself. Certain authors (most notably
Aquinas) had argued that this kind of direct awareness is not possible
because considered in itself the intellect is fully potential. It must
be actualized by thinking something else before it can be cognized. By
contrast, Olivi argues that the soul is directly aware of itself.



> 
> 
> The soul knows or is able to know itself in two ways. The first of
> them is an experiential and as if tactile sensation by which the soul
> undoubtedly senses that it is, lives, cognizes, wills, sees, hears,
> moves the body, and likewise for its other acts, whose principle and
> subject it knows and senses itself to be. And this [happens] to such
> an extent that it cannot actually know or consider any object or any
> act without always knowing and sensing itself to be the subject
> (*suppositum*) of the act by which it knows and considers that
> [object or act] ... The other way of knowing itself is by
> reasoning. In this way the soul investigates the genera and
> differences that it does not know in the first way. (*Summa II*
> q. 76, pp. 146-47)
> 
> 
> 



By separating these two types of knowledge that the soul or mind has
of itself, Olivi is in a position to explain why we do not have
certain knowledge of the nature of the soul. The direct awareness
tells us only that the soul lives and acts, but in order to know the
essence of the soul, we must compare this immediate awareness to our
knowledge of the species and genera of the things in the world, and
this process is not infallible (Putallaz 1991; Brower-Toland
2013).



The highest level of reflexivity, however, is found in the will,
because only the will is capable of moving itself to action. In order
to be free, the will has to be able to move itself in such a way that
it can also refrain from moving itself. It has this ability because it
is related to itself as a mover to a moved thing: "Insofar as
the will is free, it has another kind of reflexivity upon itself which
the intellect lacks: for, the will is turned toward itself not only as
to an object, but also as a mover to a moved thing" (*Summa
II* q. 51, p. 115). In fact, the reflexivity of the intellect is
based on the will's ability to direct other powers of the soul.
(*Summa II* q. 57, pp. 364-66; ibid., q. 58, pp.
421-23.) Usually human beings are able to control themselves by
their will, and this ability is what makes them persons. Reflexivity
of the will plays a crucial role in the process, as we can see from a
passage in which Olivi explains how sleep affects the psychological
processes of the soul:



> 
> 
> Sometimes the attention of the superior part of the soul is in such a
> state that it is able to invent and form various things with respect
> to the cognitive powers and, similarly, to refuse and approve with
> respect to appetitive powers; then it is said to deliberate and
> combine, to consent and choose. And nevertheless it does not move to
> these acts freely, as it does when awake, because it moves itself to
> these acts in such a way that it does not have a power to move itself
> otherwise. (*Summa II* q. 59, p. 564)
> 
> 
> 



Experience shows that the will can act also when a person is asleep,
as we often make choices in our dreams. But because the reflexivity of
the will is hindered, it does not make these choices freely. In this
way, the ability to move the will to its acts is the crucial factor
that makes us free, and our personhood is dependent on the highest
type of reflexivity, which ensures that our choices and actions
originate in us.


## 3. Practical Philosophy


### 3.1 Ethics


#### 3.1.1 Virtue ethics



Like most medieval authors, Olivi can be understood as a virtue
ethicist. As with many of them, however, he does not defend virtue
ethics in its strict Aristotelian guise. To begin with, he criticizes
the Thomistic position, according to which some moral virtues are in
the sensory part of the soul, but he is also critical of Bonaventure,
who held that virtues belong to the free choice (*liberum
arbitrium*) and thus include both the will and the intellect.
Instead, Olivi places all virtues, including prudence, firmly in the
will. Other powers of the soul may participate in these virtues due to
their connection to the will, but apart from this connection they have
no real virtues (Kent 1995, 233-36; *Summa III* q. 4, pp.
224-25, 231). Virtues, on Olivi's account, are stable
dispositions (or habits, *habitus*) of the will, which are
generated by repeated actions, and they make good choices easier for
the agent (*Summa II* q. 58, p. 432).



Moreover, Olivi is careful to secure the freedom and autonomy of the
will even against its own dispositions: virtues and vices do not
determine our choices. A virtuous person is more likely to make good
choices than a vicious one, but ultimately every choice is always up
to the will (Bobiller 2020, 155-56), and the agent can always
act against her virtuous or vicious dispositions. Olivi emphasizes
that this kind of freedom is a necessary condition for being morally
responsible of one's actions: "Where the freedom of the
will is missing, there is absolutely no ground for merit and
demerit" (*Summa II* q. 57, 337). Another important aspect
of Olivi's virtue ethics is that he plays down the role of
external action and focuses instead on the will of the agent: the
moral value of our actions stems from the internal intention and the
free decision to perform those actions (see, e.g. *Summa II* q.
113, p. 307; ibid., q. 118, p. 443; Normore 2004, p. 144).



Due to the emphasis on the freedom of the will and the internal
intention, the individual moral agent is at the center of
Olivi's ethics. In particular, his notions of person and
personhood are ethically significant, as they comprise two properties
that make human beings moral agents: awareness of oneself as the
subject and origin of one's actions and choices, and freedom of
the will. The moral agent, for Olivi, is first and foremost a free
person, an autonomous individual, who is aware of her own actions as
something that originates in her and who must judge the moral worth of
her choices by herself (Bobillier 2020, 27-137). In order to
make this judgement, the agent must be able to reflect her own (past,
present, future) choices against the objective normative order that is
the natural law/will of God, which they know via innate conscience and
"experiential taste" that explains the affective aspect of
moral knowledge (Bobillier 2020, 144-67; *Summa II* qq.
81-82).



Olivi's radical voluntarism leads him also to treat Aristotelian
*akrasia* in a special way: literally as weakness of *the
will* that explains why the agent chooses agains his better
knowledge. Genuine cases of akrasia (in which the person is not making
an intellectual error, e.g., due to the influence of emotions) exist
and they reveal the fundamental nature of the will, namely, that its
freedom is not bound by intellectual judgments or emotional outbursts
(Kent 1984, 184-205; Bobillier 2020, 239, 252-60). Olivi
argues explicitly against the view he takes to be Aristotle's,
namely that the conclusion of the practical syllogism is action or
necessarily turns into action. He emphasizes that since the will is
absolutely free, the conclusion of the practical syllogism must be
accepted by the will before it turns into action, and the will can
always reject the conclusion, thus leading the agent to reconsider the
situation at hand. Moreover, he thinks that when an akratic person
chooses to perform a morally wrong action, he may be fully aware that
it is against the moral law. In Olivi's view, human beings are
able to consider one and the same action from many angles at the same
time; they can think simultaneously several universal premises and
combine them freely with the particular premise, thus reaching
contrary conclusions: this act of fornication is *both* morally
blameworthy *and* pleasant, and I am free to choose whether I go
for it or not (*Summa II* qq. 85-86, 186-91; ibid.,
q. 57, pp. 309-10; see Toivanen 2012).



Thus, an akratic person knows actually that what he is about to do is
a sin, but his knowledge is theoretical and lacks the experiential
affective aspect. By contrast, he finds the sinful action pleasant
because his thought concerning it has this aspect to it (Bobillier
2020, 257-58; *Summa II* q. 86, p. 193). To be sure, even
this experiential mode of thinking does not determine the will, and
thus an akratic can always decide to do otherwise, and he is fully
responsible for his choice. Olivi criticizes the Aristotelian theory
for taking away the responsibility due to a momentary lack of
understanding, caused by emotion (see e.g. Bobillier 2020, pp.
254-56). In the end, there is no other explanation for bad
choices except that the person wills to make them.



One central difference between Olivi's and Aristotle's
approaches to virtue ethics is that while the latter thinks that a
person's moral character determines how he acts after the
practical reasoning is done, Olivi argues that there always remains a
choice. Although one's moral character may statistically guide
him to choose a certain type of action, Olivi's focus is more on
the actual choice, which is in all cases completely free. Moral
education and habituation may improve one's ability to make
morally good choices, but ultimately moral improvement is a matter of
simply starting to do the right thing instead of wrong one. Thus,
Olivi is a virtue ethicist but his virtue ethics is of a different
breed than Aristotle's.


#### 3.1.2 Unity of virtues



One question that late thirteenth-century authors discussed was
related to the unity of the virtues. It was prompted by
Augustine's critique of the Stoic position as well as by
Cicero's *De officiis* (Kent 1984, pp. 523-25), and
it received a new impetus with Aristotle's argument that a
virtuous person necessarily has all virtues of character because
prudence is necessary for each genuine virtue, and prudence in turn
entails all other virtues (*EN* 6.12-13). The idea is
roughly that a prudent person can grasp what is the best course of
action *all things considered*, and this requires finding a
correct balance that meets the requirements of all virtues: one who
acts bravely must also act justly because unjust bravery is not a real
virtue.



Many medieval philosophers accepted this view, but not all, and
towards the end of the thirteenth century critical voices were raised;
Olivi seems to be one of the first to reject it completely. He thinks
that it is possible to have one virtue while lacking others, and his
strategy to ward off the Aristotelian theory is to argue that prudence
itself is not one monolithic whole. Even if prudence turns out to be
necessary for every moral virtue, it is possible to possess only the
part of prudence that is proper to one particular virtue:



> 
> 
> [...] as moral virtue contains many virtues that differ from each
> other by their genera and species, so prudence contains many prudences
> or many partial dispositions. (*Summa III* q. 6, p. 277)
> 
> 
> 



It is possible to, e.g., exercise moderation with respect to food and
drink and yet be covetous and amass money without limits, and the
prudence that aids the agent to exercise moderation does not
necessarily convince him of the viciousness of covetousness. Virtues
are essentially independent of each other. However, Olivi acknowledges
the unity of virtues in the sense that in order to become a fully
virtuous person, one must acquire all specific virtues. A virtuous
agent functions as the unifying factor (Wood 1997, pp.
51-53).



Moreover, Olivi thinks that virtues may support each other in
practical life. In particular, he argues that voluntary poverty is not
only one of the virtues but actually the highest virtue (*QPE* q.
8, p. 85). It is not suitable for everyone but only for those who are
able to follow Franciscan ideals. However, for the latter it proves to
be essential as it leads to a host of other virtues such as chastity,
fortitude, generosity, magnanimity--and to humility, which Olivi
considers as abandonment of oneself and submission to the will of God
(Bobillier 2020, 193-222). In contrast to humility, wrongly
directed self-love and pride are the sources of all vices (Bobillier
2020, pp. 217-21, pp. 236-52).


### 3.2 Political Philosophy


#### 3.2.1 Poverty



Although Olivi did not leave behind systematic treatises on political
philosophy, his works touched upon several politically loaded
theological and philosophical ideas. In particular, he played a
central role in the controversy over how rigorously to understand the
Franciscan vow of poverty, which would have a lasting effect on
medieval political reality (Burr 1989, 2001). Although the controversy
centered on Franciscan poverty and was thus strongly motivated by
theological worries and Church politics, it is not difficult to see
that it has several philosophical dimensions to it. For instance, it
has been argued that the modern conception of subjective rights was
first developed in the debate between the Franciscan order and the
pope over the correct interpretation of poverty and the vow (see,
e.g., van Duffel 2010).



Franciscans held that the vow of poverty requires renouncing ownership
(*dominium*), but that *using* products owned by someone
else (e.g., the Church) does not violate the vow. However, the
question that divided them in the latter half of the thirteenth
century was whether the vow requires that, even when merely using the
goods of another, one adheres to strict standards of austerity, the
so-called "poor use" (*usus pauper*). Olivi insisted
on these strict standards but claimed that they are part of the vow
only indeterminately. This means first that not every violation is a
mortal sin, provided that one's general tendency is to strive
for spiritual humility by living poorly. It also means that what
exactly counts as poor use depends on the circumstances and situation,
since it is impossible to find a precise and fixed line between poor
and lax use of commodities. In other words, Olivi admitted a certain
latitude and flexibility in this notion (Burr 2001, pp.
51-53).



Another central idea for Olivi was that one should not obey
one's superiors if obeying their commands entails sinful action
or the violation of the Franciscan vow, thus endangering one's
salvation. Given Olivi's flexible view of the scope of the poor
use, this last restriction makes the limit between the duties of
obedience and disobedience vague. Each individual friar must judge in
his own conscience whether he should obey or disobey (and ultimately
protest) the commands of their superiors. It is not surprising that
Olivi's theoretical model of the vow, in conjunction with the
potential for disobedience, fueled the political controversy within
the Franciscan order and the Church (Burr 2001, pp. 64-65).



From a philosophical perspective, one of the most important aspects of
Olivi's view is the connection between the freedom of the will
and the evangelical vow's renunciation of ownership understood
as dominion (*dominium*). The idea that ownership is a form of
dominion stems from a more general theory according to which freedom
of the will can be understood as a dominion that one has over
one's will. This dominion is extended to one's body and
external actions, and ultimately to external goods. Olivi thinks that
the Franciscan vow means not only giving up the dominion over external
goods but also over one's own actions (obedience) and ultimately
one's own freedom, as it means subjection to the will of God.
Yet, when someone voluntarily subjects his will to God, he
paradoxically proclaims his ultimate freedom: the vow must be
continuously renewed. The choice to give up the freedom of the will is
a voluntary choice that is freely given every moment as long as one
keeps to the vow (*QPE*, q. 8, p. 169; *QPE*, q. 14, p.
135; Piron 1996; Toivanen 2016a).


#### 3.2.2 The nature of political power



One of the most important texts where Olivi deals with political
philosophy is his *Quid ponat ius* (= Summa IV q. 1). His aim in
this text is to provide a theoretical foundation for his discussion on
the sacraments, and he considers it useful to start with a detailed
analysis of the ontology of political power and property rights.
Although it has been pointed out that Olivi seems to prefer a mixed
form of government (Blythe 1992, pp. 151-52), this particular
text does not aim at offering a political theory; it is a
philosophical exercise in social ontology, which centers on a question
concerning the ontological foundation of relational terms such as
'right' (*ius*), 'authority'
(*auctoritas*), 'power' (*potestas*),
'obligation' (*obligatio*), and 'property
right' (*proprietas*). (For discussion, see Piron 1996,
2016; Rode 2014, 2016; Toivanen 2016a.)



Olivi develops his view in relation to two opposing views. According
to the first view, there must be something real in the end-terms of
these relations because otherwise they would not be real: "a
relation that posits nothing in the related things is only a relation
according to what is said (*relatio secundum dici*) [...]
but it is clear that the power of a king, or any real jurisdiction, or
obligation, or subordination of some people are really actual even
when none of us thinks or talks about them" (*Summa IV* q.
1, par. 7). The second view holds that relational properties such as
*dominium* are radically different from natural properties, and
that no ontological change takes place when, for instance, someone is
crowned a king. Olivi seeks for a position between these two views,
and he finds one when he argues that relations of this kind are based
on *rationes reales* (see
 SS 2.1).
 They are real relations in the sense that they do not depend on
someone actually thinking of them but they do not entail any real
(Aristotelian) ontological addition to the *relata*.



The relation that a ruler has to the subjects is a form of dominion,
and it it principally related to the will of the ruler:



> 
> 
> Therefore, since this kind of power does not add anything intrinsic to
> the person of the king, it can relate to the whole person of the king
> in such a way that it will not determinately relate to any of his
> powers, unless it perhaps relates to the free will (*liberum
> arbitrium*) and the powers that are bound to it, insofar as they
> are such. (*Summa IV* q. 1, par. 53)
> 
> 
> 



Coronation extends the dominion of the king over his subjects, and
this is due to the human ability to change the normative reality by
establishing new relations between human beings, between human beings
and property, and so forth (Rode 2014, pp. 377-78). Although the
normative reality ultimately depends on the will of God and natural
law (Rode 2016, pp. 117-19), the human will plays an important
role in the detailed explanation of how it works.


#### 3.2.3 Economic theory



In addition to his philosophical and theological ambitions, Olivi took
part in a theoretical discussion concerning economic justice. He
composed a short treatise *Tractatus de contractibus* (ed. Piron
2012) while he was working at the Franciscan *studium generale*
of Narbonne in mid-1290s. The work is a theoretical treatise that is
related to the moral dimension of economic activities and it was
probably occasioned by pastoral duties that Franciscan friars had in
an urban context. Although Olivi's views can be traced back to
earlier discussions on Roman and Canon law, as well as other works
dealing with just price, scholars have also argued that his overall
approach profoundly changed medieval economic theory (Kaye 1998, 2014;
Langholm 1992, 1998; Piron 2012; Todeschini 2009; a more critical
evaluation is Kirshner and Lo Prete 1984).



In *De contractibus* Olivi discusses several topics related to
the morality of economic activity, such as contracts, commerce, usury,
value, and capital. The first question of the treatise serves as an
illustrative example of his general approach to economics. It focuses
on the notion of just price, which Olivi analyzes with the intention
of setting normative limits that regulate but do not completely
prevent economic activity. As in *Quid ponat ius*, he proposes a
theory that reconciles two sets of opposing arguments. According to
the first set of arguments, a voluntary contract between a buyer and a
seller suffices to establish a just price. The price the parties
freely agree upon is just, because any other way of setting the just
price would make commercial activities liable to immorality. Without
full knowledge of the just price, the buyer and the seller might
accidentally deviate from it and thus sin. By contrast, the second set
of arguments aims to prove that there must be objectively determinable
limits for the just price. Otherwise there might be a situation in
which someone charges an extremely high price for a glass of water,
and one who is dying of thirst pays it voluntarily, thereby making the
price just. Thus, all deviations from the objectively just price are
against the principles of justice.



Olivi treats just price in a similar way as *usus pauper*: it
cannot be a pre-fixed and universally applicable single point but
there must be some amount of latitude and flexibility to it. He adopts
the Aristotelian idea of virtuous action as a middle-point between two
opposing vices: just as virtue is not a fixed middle that can be known
a priori but depends on the context and situation, so just price has
limits but is open to variation due to various contextual factors.
(Piron 2012, p. 45.) There are normative limits for the just
price--for instance, vital needs may force the buyer to agree on
a price that is unjust, but the seller should refrain from asking more
than a fair price. Yet, the flexibility of the limits of just price
leave room for economic activity and allow merchants to profit, and
within these limits the participants agree on the price freely. Olivi
also submits that if neither party deceives the other and both enter
the transaction freely (no compelling circumstances obtain), one may
even give away one's commodities for free.



Olivi provides more detailed set of criteria for determining the
limits of just price in various situations in scholastic literature
(Kaye 2014, p. 114). Among these criteria are the obvious quality of
the commodity, the materials and the amount of work needed to produce
it, and rarity, but also individual desires and personal values (*De
contractibus* 1.1, pp. 98-102; Toivanen 2016b). Further, he
argues that the just price is affected by social factors such as
common estimation and common needs, and that ultimately economic
activity exists for the sake of the common good of the community
(*Tractatus de contractibus* 1.2, pp. 108-10). In this way,
Olivi's analysis reflects the fact that medieval economic
discourse was fundamentally normative and related to moral
theology--unlike contemporary economics, which is more
descriptive and lacks the normative dimension (Piron 2012).