## 1. Life



As with so many important medieval figures, we know little about
William's early years. According to one manuscript source, he
was born in Aurillac, in the province of Auvergne in south-central
France. His birth date is unknown, but since he was a professor of
theology at the University of Paris by 1225, a position rarely
attained before the age of 35, he is not likely to have been born
later than 1190, and scholars have placed his probable birth date some
time between 1180 and 1190. He may have come from a poor background,
as the Dominican, Stephen of Bourbon (died c. 1261), tells a story of
William begging as a young child (Valois 1880, 4). He was a canon of
Notre Dame and a master of theology by 1223, and is mentioned in bulls
of Pope Honorius III in 1224 and 1225.



The story of his elevation to the episcopacy in 1228 paints a picture
of a man of great determination and self-confidence. The previous year
the Bishop of Paris, Bartholomeus, had died, and the canons of the
chapter of Notre Dame met to select his successor. The initial
selection of a cantor named Nicholas did not secure unanimous
agreement and was contested, in particular, by William. Nicholas
excused himself, and the canons went on to choose the Dean of the
Cathedral. William again contested the election and went to Rome to
appeal to the Pope to vacate it. He made a favorable impression, for
the Pope, impressed by his "eminent knowledge and spotless
virtue," as he put it (Valois 1880, 11), both ordained him
priest and made him Bishop of Paris, a position he retained until his
death in 1249.



It was not long before the Pope would have regrets. In February 1229 a
number of students were killed by the forces of the queen-regent,
Blanche of Castile, when they intervened in a drunken student riot
during Carnival. Outraged, the masters and students appealed to
William for redress of their rights, but William failed to take
action. The students and masters went on strike, dispersing from Paris
and appealing to Pope Gregory IX. It was apparently during this period
that William gave the Dominicans their first chair in theology at the
university. The Pope, who was to remark that he regretted
"having made this man," rebuked William, appointed a
commission to settle the dispute, and ordered William to reinstate the
striking masters. Nevertheless, William went on to receive important
missions from the Pope in subsequent years, acting, for example, as a
papal representative in peace negotiations between France and England
in 1231.



In 1239 William was closely involved in the condemnation of the
Talmud. The Pope had asked him for his response to a list of heresies
in the Talmud proposed by a converted Jew, Nicholas. William's
response led to a papal bull ordering the confiscation of sacred books
from synagogues in 1240, and to their burning in 1242 (for details,
see Valois 1880, Smith 1992 and de Mayo 2007).



William died at the end of March (the exact date is unsure) in 1249,
and was buried in the Abbey of St. Victor.


## 2. Works



William's most important philosophical writings form part of a
vast seven-part work he calls the *Magisterium divinale et
sapientiale*, a title Teske translates as *Teaching on God in
the Mode of Wisdom*. The *Magisterium* is generally taken
to consist of the following seven works in the order given:


* *De Trinitate, sive de primo principio* (*On the
Trinity, or the First Principle*)
* *De universo* (*On the Universe*)
* *De anima* (*On the Soul*)
* *Cur Deus homo* (*Why God Became Man*)
* *De fide et legibus* (*On Faith and Laws*)
* *De sacramentis* (*On the Sacraments*)
* *De virtutibus et moribus* (*On Virtues and
Morals*).



William did not compose the parts of the *Magisterium* in their
rational order, and appears to have developed his conception of its
structure as he wrote its various parts. He viewed it as having two
principal parts. The first part is comprised of *De Trinitate*,
*De universo*, and *De anima*. In this, the most
philosophical part of the *Magisterium*, William proceeds by
"the paths of proofs" or philosophizing rather than by an
appeal to the authority of revelation. He intends to combat a range of
philosophical errors incompatible, as he sees it, with the Christian
faith. In *On the Trinity* he develops his metaphysics,
attacking, among others, errors regarding creation, divine freedom and
the eternity of the world, and follows it with a philosophical
treatment of the Trinity. William's vast work, *On the
Universe*, is divided into two principal parts. The first part
(Ia, i.e. *prima pars*) is concerned with the corporeal
universe and is in turn divided into three parts, the first (Ia-Iae,
i.e. *prima pars primae partis*) arguing for a single first
principle and for the oneness of the universe, the second (IIa-Iae)
taking up the question of the beginning of the universe and its future
state, and the third (IIIa-Iae) treating the governance of the
universe through God's providence. The second principal part
(IIa) is concerned with the spiritual universe, and is divided into
three parts concerning, respectively, the intelligences or spiritual
beings posited by Aristotle and his followers (Ia-IIae), the good and
holy angels (IIa-IIae), and the bad and wicked angels, that is, demons
(IIIa-IIae). *On the Soul* is concerned with the human soul. It
is divided into seven parts concerning, respectively, its existence,
its essence, its composition, the number of souls in a human being,
how the human soul comes into being, the state of the soul in the
body, and the soul's relation to God, with a focus on the human
intellect.



The works comprising the second part of the *Magisterium* are
more expressly theological in nature and appeal to the authority of
revelation. Nevertheless, William continually recurs to his
philosophical doctrines in all his works, and even his most
theological writings contain material of considerable philosophical
interest. In particular, his treatises *On Virtues and Morals*
and *On Faith and Laws* are of great importance for his moral
philosophy.



Scholars agree that *On the Trinity* is the earliest work in
the *Magisterium* and that it was probably written in the early
1220s. The other works can be partially dated by references to
contemporaneous events, though the sheer size of many individual works
suggests they were probably written over a period of years. The whole
*Magisterium* itself was probably written during a period
extending from the early 1220s to around 1240, with *On the
Universe* written in the 1230s and *On the Soul* completed
by around 1240.



Besides the works contained in the *Magisterium*, other works
of philosophical importance are *De bono et malo I* (*On
Good and Evil*), where William develops a theory of value; *De
immortalitate animae* (*On* *the Immortality of the
Soul*), a companion to the treatment of immortality in *On the
Soul*; and *De gratia et libero arbitrio* (*On Grace and
Free Choice*), a treatment of the Pelagian heresy.



In addition, William wrote some biblical commentaries, a number of
other major theological works, and a large number of sermons (for
details, see Ottman 2005). The more than 550 sermons that can be
attributed to William have recently been critically edited by F.
Morenzoni; they comprise four volumes in the *Corpus
Christianorum* series (*Opera homiletica*, CCCM
230-230C).



With the exception of the sermons, most of William's works have
not been critically edited; several are extant only in manuscript
form. The standard edition, which includes all the works that comprise
the *Magisterium*, is the 1674 Orleans-Paris *Opera
omnia* (OO). (The sermons contained in this edition are by William
Perrauld, not William of Auvergne.) As might be expected, the texts in
this old edition are often in need of correction; Teske has
conjectured many corrections in his translations.


## 3. The Character of William's Philosophical Works



The reader of William's philosophical works is struck by their
difference in character from the mainstream of philosophical and
theological writing of the early thirteenth century. Whereas
William's contemporaries tend to compose works as a series of
linked questions, each treated according to the question method (a
paradigm of which is Aquinas's later *Summa theologiae*),
William instead follows the practice of Avicenna and Avicebron and
composes treatises much more akin to a modern book. Indeed, William
even models his writing style to some degree on the Latin translations
of these authors. These features, together with William's
frequent use of analogies, metaphors and examples drawn from everyday
life, his long-winded, rambling prose and frequent digressions, his
harsh assessments of opponents as imbeciles or morons, and his urging
that proponents of dangerous doctrines be wiped out by fire and sword,
make for an inimitable and immediately recognizable style.



One of the costs of this style, however, is that at times it can be
hard to tell precisely what William thinks. Too often he lets
metaphors or analogies bear the argumentative burden in lieu of more
careful analysis. And while William's inventive mind could
generate arguments for a position with ease, their quality is uneven:
often he proposes problematic arguments without appearing to recognize
the difficulties they contain, as may be apparent below to the
discerning reader, while at other times he shows an acute awareness of
the fundamental problems an issue raises.


## 4. Sources



William was one of the first thinkers in the Latin West to begin to
engage seriously with Aristotle's writings on metaphysics and
natural philosophy and with the thought of Islamic and Jewish
thinkers, especially Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) and
Avicebron (Solomon Ibn Gabirol, 1021/2-1057/8) (see e.g.
Bertolacci 2012, Caster 1996c, de Vaux 1934 and Teske 1999). The works
of these thinkers, which had been coming into circulation in Latin
translations from around the middle of the twelfth century, presented
both philosophical sophistication and theological danger. Indeed, in
1210, public and private lecturing on Aristotle's works on
natural philosophy and commentaries on them was forbidden at Paris,
and in 1215 the papal legate, Cardinal Robert of Courcon
forbade "masters in arts from 'reading,' i.e.,
lecturing, on Aristotle's books on natural philosophy along with
the *Metaphysics* and *Summae* of the same (probably
certain works of Avicenna and perhaps of Alfarabi)" (Wippel
2003, 66). This prohibition remained in effect until it unofficially
lapsed around 1231. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that personal
study of these texts had not been forbidden, and William clearly
worked hard to master them. He came to be keenly aware of the
incompatibility of much of the teaching of these works with Christian
doctrine, yet at the same time he found them to be a source of
philosophical inspiration, and his thought brims with ideas drawn from
Avicenna and Avicebron. His attitude to these thinkers is expressed
well in a passage in *On the Soul*, where, regarding Aristotle,
he writes that:



> 
> though on many points one must contradict Aristotle, as is really
> right and proper--and this holds for all the statements by which
> he contradicts the truth--he should be accepted in all those
> statements in which he is found to have held the right view. (OO II
> suppl., 82a; Teske 2000, 89)
> 



Of course, William was also strongly influenced by Christian thinkers.
In particular, his writings are permeated by the thought of Saint
Augustine, whom William refers to as "one of the more noble of
Christian thinkers," if perhaps in a less obvious way than by
the thought of Avicenna. Indeed, as the list in Valois 1880,
198-206, attests, William employs a remarkable range of sources
and must be reckoned one of the most well-read thinkers of his
day.



The focus of the following outline is William's views on
metaphysics and the soul, but even within these limits the vast range
of his thought has required that many issues in these areas not be
treated. In a future supplement, William's views on value theory
and morality will be addressed. Teske's English translations are
quoted whenever possible; otherwise, translations are my own (i.e. N.
Lewis's).


## 5. Metaphysics



William is the first thinker in the Latin West to develop a systematic
metaphysics (as ontology) based on the concepts of being
(*esse*) and essence (*essentia*). Influenced by
Boethius and Avicenna, he develops this metaphysics in his early work,
*On the Trinity*, as a preliminary to his account of the
Trinity, and he returns to it in other works, especially in *On the
Universe*. The central theme of his metaphysics is that all
existing things, besides God, are composites of essence, on the one
hand, and their being or existence, on the other, which is said to be
acquired or partaken from God, the source of all being. God, in
contrast, involves no composition of essence and being, but is his
being.



Inspired by Boethius's distinction in *De hebdomadibus*
between what is good by participation and what is good by substance,
William works these ideas out in terms of a distinction between a
being by participation (*ens participatione*) and a being by
substance or essence (*ens substantia / ens per essentiam*). By
the essence of a thing William means what is signified by its
definition or species name. Under the influence of Avicenna, he often
refers to essence as a thing's quiddity (*quidditas*,
literally, "whatness"), which he identifies with
Boethius's notion of *quod est* or "that which
is." Analogously, he identifies a thing's being
(*esse*) or existence with the notion of *quo est* or
"by which it is." In the case of a being by participation,
its essence and features incidental to the essence are distinct from
its being; William describes its being as clothed by them or as what
would be left if they were stripped away. Such a being (*ens*)
is said to participate in or acquire its being (*esse*). At
times William, following Avicenna, speaks of its being as accidental
to it, by which he just emphasizes that its being is not part of the
essence.



A being (*ens*) by substance, in contrast, does not participate
in or acquire being but is its very being: "there is also the
being whose essence is for it being (*esse*) and whose essence
we predicate when we say, 'It is,' so that it itself and
its being (*esse*) ... are one thing in every way"
(Switalski 1976, 17; Teske and Wade 1989, 65).



In the second chapter of *On the Trinity*, William also notes
that the term "being" (*esse*) may be used to mean
a thing's essence (similar to Avicenna's *esse
proprium*), but this sense of "being" plays a minor
role in his thought.



William argues that there must be a being by essence; otherwise, no
being could be intelligible. Thus, if there were just beings by
participation, there would have to be either a circle of beings each
of which participates in the being of what is prior to it in the
circle, with the absurd consequence that a thing would ultimately
participate in its own being; or else there would have to be an
infinite series of beings, each member of which participates in the
being of what is prior in the series. But then, for a member of the
series--say, *A*--to be, would be for it to have or
participate in the being of *B*; and for *B* to be, in
turn, would be for it to have or participate in the being of
*C*, and so on. But if this were so, the being of no member of
the series could be intelligible, since any attempt to spell it out
would result in an account of the form: *A*'s having
*B*'s having *C*'s having *ad
infinitum*. Since being is intelligible, William concludes that
there is a being by essence.



Besides the distinctions between being by participation and being by
essence, William mentions sixteen other distinctions, including the
distinctions between being of need (*esse indigentiae*) and
being of sufficiency (*esse sufficientiae*), possible being
(*esse possibile*) and being necessary through itself (*esse
necesse per se ipsum*), false and true being, and flowing and
lasting being. William takes these distinctions to be coextensive with
the distinction between being by participation and being by essence.
Using a form of argument drawn from Avicenna, he argues that given the
first member of each distinction, we can prove the existence of the
second (see *On the Trinity*, ch. 6).



The distinction between possible being (*possibile esse*) and
necessary being through itself (*necesse esse per se ipsum*),
which William draws from Avicenna, plays a prominent role in
William's thought. William's notion of a possible is not
that of something that exists in some possible world, but is rather
the notion of something whose essence neither requires nor rules out
its having being. William treats such possibles as in some sense prior
to being. In the case of those that have being and thus actually
exist, he holds that the possible "and its being
(*esse*), which does not belong to it essentially, are really
two. The one comes to the other and does not fall within its
definition or quiddity. Being (*ens*) [i.e., a being] in this
way is, therefore, composite and also resolvable into its possibility,
or quiddity, and its being (*esse*)" (Switalski 1976, 44;
Teske and Wade 1989, 87). Some commentators see in such remarks the
idea that a real or mind-independent distinction obtains between being
and essence in possible beings.



In contrast, the being and essence of a being necessary through itself
are not two; such a being does not participate in being but is its
being and cannot but exist.



William argues there can be only one being by substance or being
necessary through itself. Speaking from a metaphysical point of view,
he follows Avicenna and calls it the First (*primum*). Speaking
as a Christian, he identifies it with God, the creator, as he thinks
is indicated by Biblical references to God as "he who is":
"being," he says, is a proper name of God (see e.g. *On
the Trinity*, ch. 4).



The uniqueness of a being by substance is, William argues, a
consequence of its absolute simplicity, since nothing could
differentiate two or more absolutely simple beings. The absolute
simplicity of a being by substance, in turn, is a consequence of the
fact that it cannot be caused (not, at least by an external causation;
William argues that the being by substance is the Christian Trinity of
persons and he admits a kind of internal causation in the Trinity).
For everything that is caused is other than its being and thus is a
being by participation, whereas a being by essence or substance is its
being. But a composite or non-simple being must have an external
cause, and must therefore be a being by participation. Therefore, the
being by substance, that is to say, God, cannot be composite, but must
be absolutely simple.



God's absolute simplicity also entails that he is neither a
universal (i.e., neither a genus nor species), nor an individual
falling under such. For, William argues, genera and species are
themselves composite, and the individuals that fall under them have a
quiddity or definition and therefore compositeness. Nevertheless,
William thinks God is an individual, since he holds that all that
exists is either a universal or an individual (OO I, 855ab).



William appeals to God's power to show God has will and
knowledge. He argues that God must be omnipotent: he cannot be forced
or impeded and has a "two-way" power (*potentia*),
identified by William with what Aristotle calls a rational power. This
is a power that "extends to both opposites, namely, to make and
not to make" (Switalski 1976, 57; Teske and Wade 1989, 99), in
contrast with something, such as fire, which when "it encounters
what can be heated is not able to heat or not to heat . . . but it
necessarily has only the power to heat" (Switalski 1976, 54;
Teske and Wade 1989, 97). However, because a two-way power is poised
between acting and not-acting, it must be inclined to acting by
something, and William thinks this can only be through a choice.
Therefore, God must have will and choice; and since "it is
impossible that there be will and choice where there is no
knowledge" (Switalski 1976, 59; Teske and Wade 1989, 101), God
must also have knowledge. William goes on to argue that God must
indeed be omniscient, since "his wisdom is absolute and free,
not bound in any way to things, nor dependent upon them"
(Switalski 1976, 61; Teske and Wade 1989, 102).



William takes his claim that God has a two-way power to imply that God
could have known or willed otherwise than he did. But, as William
realizes, this raises the difficulty that if God had known or willed
otherwise, it would seem that he would have been different, and this
seems to be impossible given his absolute simplicity. In response,
William frequently emphasizes that by the very same act of knowing or
will by which God in fact knows or wills one thing, he could have
known or willed something else (OO I, 780a; Teske 2007, 105). Thus,
when we say "God knows or wills X," we must distinguish
the act of knowing or willing, which is identical with God and utterly
the same in every possible situation, from the object X to which it is
related.


## 6. God's Relation to Creatures


### 6.1 God as the Source of Being



According to William, everything participates in or acquires its being
from God. But just what he means by this is less than clear. At times,
as in the following passage from *On the Universe*, he seems to
suggest that God is literally present in created things as their
being:



> 
> the creator is next to and most present to each of his creatures; in
> fact, he is most interior to each of them. And this can be seen by you
> through the subtraction or stripping away of all the accidental and
> substantial conditions and forms. For when you subtract from each of
> the creatures all these, last of all there is found being or entity,
> and on this account its giver. (OO I, 625b; Teske 1998a, 100)
> 



Yet William realizes that such statements may give an incorrect
impression of his thought. Thus, at one point in *On the
Universe* he writes that "every substance includes, *if
it is proper to say so* (*si dici fas est*), the
creator's essence within itself" (OO I, 920b), and he goes
on to note that it is difficult to state clearly the sense in which
the creator is in creatures. In other passages he emphasizes
God's transcendence of creatures: "the first being
(*esse*) is for all things the being (*esse*) by which
they are ... It is one essence, pure, solitary, separate from and
unmixed with all things." Often he appeals to an analogy with
light: the first being fills "all things like light cast over
the universe. By this filling or outpouring it makes all things
reflect it. This is their being (*esse*), namely to reflect
it" (Switalski 1976, 45; Teske and Wade 1989, 89). William
perhaps intends in such remarks to exploit the medieval view that a
point of light (*lux*) and the light emitted from that point
(*lumen*), though distinct, nonetheless are also in some deep
sense the same.


### 6.2 Against the Manichees



Regarding the procession of creatures from God, William is concerned
to attack a range of errors. In *On the Universe* Ia-Iae he
attacks the error of the Manichees. Though he refers to Mani, the
third-century originator of the Manichee sect, he seems chiefly
concerned with the Cathars of his day. The Manichees deny God is the
ultimate source of all things and instead posit two first principles,
one good and one evil. Only in this way, they think, can we explain
the presence of both good and evil in the world. William thinks a
fundamental motivation for this view is the principle that "from
one of two contraries the other cannot come of itself" (OO I,
602a; Teske 1998a, 54), and hence that evil cannot come from good but
must stem from its own first principle. He replies that although one
contrary cannot of itself (*per se*) be from the other, it is
perfectly possible for it to be from the other incidentally (*per
accidens*), and he gives everyday examples to illustrate. Thus,
"drunkenness comes from wine. In that case it is evident that an
evil comes from a good, unless one would say that wine is not
good" (OO I, 602a; Teske 1998a, 54). Likewise, there is a sense
in which evil is ultimately from God, though incidentally and not as
something God aims at or intends as such. The evil of sin, for
example, is a consequence of God's creating creatures with free
will and permitting their misuse of it.



William offers a host of arguments against the possibility of two
first principles. On metaphysical grounds, for example, he objects
that a first principle must be a being necessary through itself, and
that he has shown that a plurality of such beings is impossible. And
he gives arguments to the effect that the notion of a creative first
evil principle is incoherent. Such a being, for example, could not do
good for anything, and hence could not have created anything, for in
doing so it would have done good for what it created (see also
Bernstein 2005 and Teske 1993a).


### 6.3 Causation, and Creation by Intermediaries



William claims "the creator alone properly and truly is worthy
of the title 'cause,' but other things are merely
messengers and bearers of the last things received as if sent from the
creator" (OO I, 622a; Teske 1998a, 92). We speak of creatures as
causes, but William says this is "*ad sensum"*
(Switalski 1976, 79; Teske and Wade 1989, 117), that is, in respect of
how things appear in sense experience. Both medieval and contemporary
commentators have on the basis of such remarks attributed to William
the denial that creatures are genuine causes (see Reilly 1953).
Certainly he denies that any creature can exercise fully independent
causal agency, a view he thinks "the philosophers" have
adopted. But this claim is compatible with admission of genuine
secondary causes that are reliant for their exercise of causation on
the simultaneous activity of prior causes, and ultimately on that of
the first cause, God. Is William simply making this point but using
the term "cause" in a more restricted manner than his
contemporaries? A negative answer is suggested by William's
rationale for his usage. He thinks of causation as the giving of
being, and he thinks that anything that receives being, and therefore
all creatures, cannot itself give being but can merely transmit it.
Moreover, his metaphors of creatures as riverbeds or windows through
which the divine causal influence flows strongly suggest that he
really does wish to hold that creatures themselves do not really bring
anything about but are simply the conduits through which divine
causality flows (see Miller 1998 and 2002).



Whether in fact William admits genuine causal agency among creatures,
he clearly thinks that God alone can create from nothing. Thus, he
rejects Avicenna's so-called "emanationist" doctrine
of creation, according to which, as he puts it, God creates from
nothing only one thing, the first intelligence (or spiritual being),
which in turn creates the next intelligence, and so on until the tenth
or agent intelligence is reached, the creator of souls and the
sensible world. William thinks one ground of this doctrine is
Avicenna's principle that "from what is one in so far as
it is one there cannot in any way come anything but what is one"
(*ex uno, secundum quod unum, non potest esse ullo modorum nisi
unum*) (OO I, 618b; Teske 1998a, 82), and hence from God, who is
absolutely one, can at most come one thing. In fact, William agrees
with this principle and applies it in the context of Trinitarian
theology, but he thinks Avicenna has misapplied it by using it to
explain creation. Instead, William follows the Jewish thinker
Avicebron (whom he thought was a Christian) and holds that creatures
come from God not insofar as he is one, but "through his will
and insofar as he wills, just as a potter does not shape clay vessels
through his oneness, but through his will" (OO I, 624a; Teske
1998a, 96).


### 6.4 Against the Necessity of Creation



William thinks the will is necessarily free; thus the fact that God
creates through his will means that creation is an exercise of
God's free will. This point serves to undermine another aspect
of Avicenna's doctrine of the procession of creatures from God.
For Avicenna posits not only a series of creators, but also holds that
this procession is utterly necessary: the actual world must exist and
could not have been other than it is. William thinks this conclusion
stems from a failure to grasp God's freedom in creation.
Avicenna and others imposed "not only necessity, but natural
servitude upon the creator, supposing that he operates in the manner
of nature" (OO I, 614b; Teske 1998a, 72). Thus, they think the
universe issued from God as brightness issues from the sun or heat
from fire, and that God no more had it in his power to do otherwise
than do the sun or heat. Against this William argues that it is a
consequence of God's free creation that he had it in his power
to create otherwise than he did.


### 6.5 Against the Eternity of the World



One of the most contentious doctrines presented by Greek and Islamic
philosophy to thinkers in the early thirteenth century is that of the
eternity of the world, the view that the world had no beginning but
existed over an infinite past. This view seems to contradict the
opening words of the Bible: "In the beginning God created heaven
and earth." In response, a number of thinkers in the early
thirteenth century, including the Franciscan Alexander of Hales,
argued that Aristotle, at least, had been misunderstood and had never
proposed the eternity of the world. But William, like his Oxford
contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, would have none of this:
"Whatever may be said and whoever may try to excuse Aristotle,
it was undoubtedly his opinion that the world is eternal and that it
did not begin to be, and he held the same view concerning motion.
Avicenna held this after him" (OO I, 690b; Teske 1998a,
117).



The importance of this issue to William is indicated by the space he
devotes to it. His treatment of the question of the eternity
*aeternitas* of the world in *On the Universe* IIa-Iae
is one of the longest discussions of the issue in the middle ages, and
the first substantial treatment to be made in the light of Greek and
Islamic thought.



William thinks, in fact, that to call the world eternal in the
aforementioned sense is not to use the term "eternal" in
its strictest sense. Accordingly, he starts by explaining different
senses of the term in the first extended treatment of the distinction
between eternity and time in the middle ages. He then presents and
refutes arguments that the world has no beginning, and provides his
own positive arguments that the world must have a temporal beginning,
a first instant of its existence.



William's chief aim in his treatment of time and eternity is to
emphasize the fundamental differences between eternity and time. He is
especially concerned to attack a conception of eternity as existence
at every time, a conception he attributes to Aristotle. In his view,
eternity in a strict sense is proper to the creator alone and is his
very being, though "the name 'eternity' says more
than his being, namely, the privations of beginning and ending, as
well as of flux and change, and this both in act and in potency"
(OO I, 685b-686a; Teske 1998a, 109). The fundamental difference
between time and eternity is that "as it is proper and essential
to time to flow or cease to be, so it is proper and essential to
eternity to remain and stand still" (OO I, 683b; Teske 1998a,
102). William, like other medieval thinkers, tends to describe
eternity in terms of what it is not. It has nothing that flows and
hence no before or after or parts. Its being is whole at once, not
because it all exists at one time, but because it all exists with
nothing temporally before or after it. William speaks of duration in
eternity, but he holds that the term has a different (unfortunately
unexplained) sense in this context than when applied to time.



William had read Aristotle's *Physics* and agrees with
Aristotle that time and motion are coextensive (OO I, 700a). Yet he
does not propose Aristotle's definition of time as the number of
motion in respect of before and after. Rather, in his account of the
essential nature of time he describes time simply as being that flows
and does not last, "that is, it has nothing of itself that lasts
in act or potency" (OO I, 683a; Teske 1998a, 102). Echoing
Aristotle and Augustine, he holds that time has the weakest being, and
that "of all things that are said to be in any way, time is the
most remote from eternity, and this is because it only touches
eternity by the very least of itself, the now itself or a point of
time" (OO I, 748a).



William introduces his account of the eternity of the world in *On
the Universe* by reference to Aristotle, but he devotes the bulk
of his discussion to Avicenna's arguments for this doctrine. In
parallel material in *On the Trinity* he claims that at the
root of Avicenna's view lies the principle that "if the
one essence is now as it was before when nothing came forth from it,
something will not now come forth from it" (Switalski 1976, 69;
Teske and Wade 1989, 108). That is, nothing new is caused to exist
unless there is a change in the cause. Thus God, a changeless being,
cannot start to create the world after not creating it; and therefore
he must have created it from eternity and without a beginning.
Therefore, the world must itself lack a beginning.



William replies that Avicenna's principle leads to an infinite
regress; for if something's operating after not operating
requires a change in it, this change will itself require a new cause,
and that new cause will itself require a new cause, and so on *ad
infinitum*. William instead holds that it is possible that God,
without changing in any way, start to operate after not operating.
What William means by this is that the effect of God's eternal
will is a world with a temporal beginning. In general, he holds that
verbs such as "create" express nothing in the creator
himself but rather something in things. We might put "God begins
to create the world" to have the import of: "God by an
eternal willing creates the world, and the world has a
beginning."



William emphasizes that God does not will that the world exist without
qualification, but rather that it exist with a given temporal
structure, namely, a beginning (Switalski 1976, 67-68; Teske and
Wade 1989, 107). This might suggest that he thinks God might in fact
have created a world without a beginning, but chose not to do so, as
Aquinas would hold. But in fact, William argues that this option was
not open to God: a world without a beginning is simply not a creatable
item. William attempts to establish this point by a host of arguments,
many of which are found in his writings for the first time in the
Latin West and repeated by later thinkers such as Bonaventure and
Henry of Ghent. On the whole, these arguments either allege that the
notion of a created thing itself entails that what is created has a
temporal beginning or point to alleged paradoxes stemming from the
supposition of an infinite past.



For example, William argues (OO I, 696b; Teske 1998a, 133) that
because the world in itself is merely a possible, in itself it is in
non-being and non-being is therefore natural to it. Hence its
non-being, being natural to it, is prior to its being, and therefore
in being created it must receive being after non-being, and thus have
a beginning.



Among arguments involving infinity, William argues that if the whole
of past time is infinite then the infinite must have been traversed to
arrive at the present; but since it is impossible to traverse the
infinite (OO I, 697b; Teske 1998a, 136), the past must be finite. This
line of argument is frequently found in later thinkers.



William also presents arguments that the view that a continuum, such
as time, is infinite results in paradoxes (OO I, 698a-700b).
These arguments, which William develops at some length, constitute an
important early medieval engagement with puzzles relating to
infinity.


### 6.6 Providence



Part IIIa-Iae of *On the Universe* is a lengthy treatise on
God's providence (*providentia*). William believes the
denial of God's providence, and in particular the denial that
the good will be rewarded and the evil punished, is an error "so
harmful and so pernicious for human beings that it eliminates from
human beings by their roots all concern for moral goodness, all the
honor of the virtues, and all hope of future happiness" (OO I,
776a; Teske 2007, 92).



According to William, God's providence (*providentia*) or
providing for the universe differs from foreknowledge
(*praescientia*) in that, unlike foreknowledge, it embraces
only goods and not also evils (see OO I, 754b; Teske 2007, 30).
William is especially concerned to argue that God's providence
is not just general in nature, but extends to all individual
creatures. God's care for the universe and its constituents is a
matter of God's knowing and paying attention to all things. From
God's point of view, nothing happens by chance. William
introduces final causality into his explanation by describing the
universe as a teleological or goal-directed order, in which each thing
has a function or purpose established by God. God's care is his
concern that each thing fulfills its appointed function. Thus, God is
not necessarily concerned with what we might think is best for
individual things: flies get eaten by spiders, but this in fact is an
end for which they were created. And ultimately animals were created
for the sake of humans, as William points out (for details on animals
and providence, see Wei 2020, 49-74). In the case of humans,
however, who are the apex of creation, their end is to experience
happiness in union with God, and God's providential care of
human beings is aimed at this.



But if this is so, why do the evil prosper and the good suffer? What
are we to make of natural disasters, of pain, suffering, death, and
the like? What, in short, are we to make of evil in the world?
Although William does not take up the logical compatibility of evil
with an all-good, knowing and powerful god, he does attempt to explain
at length how a range of particular kinds of evil are compatible with
God's providence and care for human beings. His explanation, in
general, is not novel and has roots in Augustine. He distinguishes the
evils perpetrated by free agents and for which they are therefore to
blame from other forms of evil, and argues that these other evils are
in fact not really evil but good. Pain, for example, provides many
benefits, among which is that it mortifies and extinguishes "the
lusts for pleasures and carnal and worldly desires" (OO I, 764a;
Teske 2007, 58). In many cases, what we call evil is in fact
God's just punishment, which William implies always has
beneficial effects. As for the blameworthy evils done by free agents,
William thinks that God permits these, but that it is incorrect to say
they come from God or are intended by him. They are rather the
consequence of rational creatures' misuse of the free will with
which they were created, and the moral balance will be set right in
the future life, if not this one.



If the evils of this life appear to conflict with God's
providence, God's providence and foreknowledge themselves seem
to entail that everything occurs of necessity and hence that there is
no free will. This concern leads William to consider a number of
doctrines that aim to show that all events happen of necessity. In
addition to foreknowledge or providence, he considers the views that
all events are the necessary causal outcomes of the motion and
configuration of the heavenly bodies, or that all events result from
the *heimarmene*, i.e. the "interconnected and
incessantly running series of causes and the necessary dependence of
one upon another" (OO I, 785a; Teske 2007, 120); or finally,
that all things happen through fate (*fatum sive fatatio*).
William rejects all these grounds for the necessity of events (esp. on
fate, see Sannino 2016).



In an interesting discussion of foreknowledge in part IIIa-Iae,
chapter 15, he considers the argument that since it is necessary that
whatever God foresees will come about will come about, because
otherwise God could be deceived or mistaken, then since God foresees
each thing that will come about, it is necessary that it will come
about. William replies that the proposition "It is necessary
that whatever God foresees (*providit*) will come about will
come about" has two interpretations, "because the
necessity can refer to individuals or to the whole" (OO I, 778b;
Teske 2007, 99). The argument for the necessity of all events
equivocates between these two readings and is therefore invalid.
William notes that the distinction he makes is close to the
distinction between a divided and composite sense, but he is critical
of those who instead distinguish an ambiguity between a *de re*
(about the thing) and *de dicto* (about what is said)
reading.


## 7. The Soul



William's treatise *On the Soul* is one of the most
substantial Latin works on the topic from before the middle of the
thirteenth century. Although William begins this treatise with
Aristotle's definition of the soul as the perfection of an
organic body potentially having life, his conception of the soul is
heavily influenced by Avicenna and decidedly Platonic in character. He
interprets Aristotle's definition to mean that the body is an
instrument of the soul (as he thinks the term "organic"
indicates) and that "a body potentially having life" must
refer to a corpse, since a body prior to death actually has life. And
although he calls a soul, with Aristotle, a form, unlike Aristotle he
holds that a soul is in fact a substance, something individual,
singular and a "this something" (*hoc aliquid*),
not at all dependent on the body for its existence.



William adopts the standard view that souls serve to vivify or give
life to bodies, and thus he posits not just souls of human beings
(i.e., rational souls), but also those of plants and animals
(vegetative and sensitive souls respectively), as they all have living
bodies. But in the case of the human soul, William also identifies the
soul with the human being, the referent of the pronoun
"I."


### 7.1 The Existence and Substantiality of Souls



Among William's many arguments for the existence of souls is the
argument that bodies are instruments of souls and the power to carry
out operations through an instrument cannot belong to the instrument
itself. Thus, there must be something other than the bodies of living
things that operates by means of bodies, and this is their soul. In
the case of the human or rational soul, he argues that its existence
follows in particular from the fact that understanding and knowledge
are found in a human being but not in the whole body or any part of
it. Since these are operations of a living substance, there must be a
living incorporeal substance in which they are, and this is what
people mean when they speak of their soul.



These arguments serve not only to show the existence of souls, but
also that they are substances. In the case of the human soul, William
argues, the operations of understanding and knowing must be treated as
proper operations of the soul, and this requires that the soul itself
be a substance. To the objection that the soul itself does not
literally understand or know but is instead that thanks to which a
human being can understand and know, William will argue that the soul
and human being, which he equates with the referent of the pronoun
"I," are one and the same thing. More generally, the
substantiality of souls--and not just of human souls--is
indicated by the fact that bodies are their instruments.


### 7.2 The Incorporeality of Souls



William argues at length that a soul cannot be a body, a conclusion he
applies not just to human or rational souls, but also to those of
plants and animals. In the case of human souls, he uses, among others,
Avicenna's "flying-man" argument to establish this
point, arguing that a human being flying in the air who lacks and
never had the use of his senses would know that he exists but deny
that he has a body. Therefore "it is necessary that he have
being that does not belong to the body and, for this reason, it is
necessary that the soul not be a body" (OO II suppl., 83a; Teske
2000, 91) (For details, see Hasse 2000).



More generally, William argues that no body could perform the
soul's function of giving life to the body. For example, if a
body were to give life, it would itself have to be a living body, and
thus it would itself have to have a soul that rendered it alive. This
soul, in turn, would have to be a living body and thus have its own
soul, and so on *ad infinitum*. Thus, the doctrine that souls
are bodies leads to an infinite regress.


### 7.3 The Human Soul and the Human Being



Perhaps the most striking aspect of William's teaching about the
soul is his identification of the human soul with the human being and
his denial that the human body constitutes in whole or part the human
being. Instead, William describes the body variously as a house, the
soul its inhabitant; as a prison, the soul its captive; as a cloak,
the soul its wearer, and so on. Nevertheless, the definition of a
human being--he perhaps has in mind the Platonic conception of
the human being as "a soul using a body"--involves a
reference to the body, and it this, William thinks, that has led
people to believe that the body is a part of a human being. But this
is an error akin to thinking that because a horseman is defined by
reference to a horse, the horse must therefore be a part of the
horseman. William is aware, of course, that at times we do seem to
ascribe to ourselves, and thus to the human being, the acts of the
body or things that happen to the body, but he holds that these are
non-literal modes of speaking, akin to a rich man's complaint
that he has been struck by hail, when in fact it was his vineyard that
was struck.



William, as usual, offers numerous arguments for the identification of
the soul and human being. He argues that the body cannot be a part of
a human being, since the soul and body no more produce a true unity
than, for example, a carpenter and his ax, and a human being is a true
unity. And he notes that since the soul is subject to reward and
punishment in the afterlife for actions we correctly attribute to the
human being or ourselves, it must be identified with the human being.
He also points to cases where our use of names or demonstratives
referring to human beings must be understood as referring to their
souls, and concludes that this shows that human beings are their
souls.


### 7.4 The Simplicity of the Soul



According to William, souls are among the simplest of created
substances. Nevertheless, like all created substances, they must
involve some kind of composition. This composition cannot be a bodily
composition, of course, since they are not bodies and thus cannot be
divided into bodily parts. According to Avicebron, as well as some of
William's contemporaries, souls are composite in the sense that
they are composites of form and matter, though not a matter that
involves physical dimensions, but rather what some called
"spiritual matter." This view is part of the doctrine now
termed "universal hylomorphism," according to which every
created substance is a composite of form and matter (see Weisheipl
1979). William is one of the first to reject this doctrine; he is
later followed by Aquinas. In support of his rejection, in *On the
Universe* he makes one of his rare references to Averroes, citing
with approval his claim that prime matter is a potentiality only of
perceptible substances and hence is not found in spiritual substances.
He also argues that there is no need to posit matter in angels or
souls in order to explain their receptivity in cognition, as some had
thought necessary (OO I, 851b-852b). Rather, souls and other spiritual
substances are "pure immaterial forms" without matter.



William also denies a real plurality of powers in the soul. He holds
instead that each power of the soul is identical with the soul and not
a part of it. When we speak of a power of the soul, we are really
speaking of the soul considered as the source or cause of a certain
kind of operation. Thus, the power to understand characteristic of a
human or rational soul is the soul considered as a source or cause of
the operation of understanding.



What sort of composition, then, is to be found in souls and other
spiritual beings? William holds that every being other than God



> 
> is in a certain sense composed of that which is (*quod est*)
> and of that by which it is (*quo est*) or its being or entity
> ... since being or entity accrues and comes to each thing apart
> from its completed substance and account. The exception is the first
> principle, to which alone [being] is essential and one with it in the
> ultimate degree of unity. (OO I, 852a)
> 



Here William uses Boethius's language of *quod est* and
*quo est* to make the point that in souls, as in all created
substances, there is, to use Avicennian terms, a composition of being
and essence, a doctrine to be developed by Aquinas.


### 7.5 Denial of a Plurality of Souls in the Human Body



Besides rejecting universal hylomorphism, William also rejects the
doctrine of a plurality of souls in a human being. This doctrine,
which was popular among Franciscan thinkers, holds that the body of a
human being is informed not just by a single soul, the rational soul,
but also by a vegetative and a sensitive soul. This multiplicity of
souls, it is held, serves to explain how human beings have the vital
operations characteristic of plants and animals in addition to
peculiarly human ones, and also explains the development of the
fetus's vital functions. Against this doctrine, William claims
to have shown earlier in *On the Soul* that not only the
operation of understanding, but also the sensitive operations of
seeing and hearing "are essential and proper to the soul
itself" (OO II suppl., 108b; Teske 2000, 164) and "hence,
it cannot be denied except through insanity that one and the same soul
carries out such operations." Rather than posit a multiplicity
of souls, William holds that higher souls incorporate the kinds of
operations attributed to lower ones. The rational soul is infused into
the body directly by God when the fetus reaches a suitable stage of
organization, and the prior animal or sensitive soul in the fetus
ceases to be. In this case too a view along similar lines was to be
developed by Aquinas.



Scholars have noted, however, that while William rejects a plurality
of souls in the human body, he does subscribe to a version of the
doctrine of a plurality of substantial forms in the sense that he
treats the human body as itself a substance independent of its
association with the soul, and hence having its own corporeal form,
while also being informed by the human or rational soul, which renders
it a living thing. (For details see Bazan 1969.)


### 7.6 The Immortality of the Soul



According to William, the immortality of the human soul would be
evident if not for the fact that the soul has, as it were, been put to
sleep by the corruption of the body stemming from the punishment for
sin. In our current state, however, William thinks the human
soul's immortality can be shown by means of philosophical
arguments, to which he devotes considerable attention, both in *On
the Soul* and in a shorter work, *On the Immortality of the
Soul*.



He believes the error that the soul is naturally mortal
"destroys the foundation of morality and of all religion"
(Bulow 1897, 1; Teske 1991, 23), since those who believe in the
mortality of the soul will have no motive for acting morally and
honoring God. Thus, he notes that if the soul is not immortal, the
honor of God is pointless in this life, since in the present life it
"involves much torment and affliction for the soul"
(Bulow 1897, 3; Teske 1991, 25) and receives no reward.



From a metaphysical point of view, William argues that the soul does
not depend on the body for its being, and therefore the destruction of
the body does not entail the non-existence of the soul. The rational
soul's independence from the body is due to the fact it is a
self-subsistent substance whose proper operations do not involve or
require a human body.



Since William takes the souls of plants and animals to be incorporeal
substances, it might be thought that he would treat them as immortal
too. But William holds that these souls cease to exist upon the death
of the plant or animal. This is because all their proper operations,
unlike those of the rational soul, depend on the body, and thus there
would be no point for their continued existence after the destruction
of the body.


### 7.7 The Powers Characteristic of the Human Soul



Characteristic of human souls, or human beings, are the intellective
and motive powers, that is to say, the intellect and will. William
thinks that of these, the will is by far the more noble power, and he
is accordingly puzzled by the fact that neither Aristotle nor Avicenna
have much to say about it. These authors do, however, discuss the
intellective power at great length, and William accordingly devotes
considerable attention to combating errors he sees in their teachings
on the intellect.


#### 7.7.1 The Motive Power: the Will



William develops his account of the will using the metaphor of a king
in his kingdom. The will "holds the position in the whole human
being and in the human soul of an emperor and king," while
"the intellective or rational power holds the place and function
of counselor in the kingdom of the human soul" (OO II suppl.
95a; Teske 2000, 126, 129). William treats acts of
will--expressed in the indicative mood by "I will"
(*volo*) or "I refuse" (*nolo*)--as a
kind of command that cannot be disobeyed, as distinguished from mere
likings expressed in the form "I would like"
(*vellem*) or "I would rather not'
(*nollem*). He holds that as a king must understand in order to
make use of his counselors' advice, so the will must not simply
be an appetitive power but must also have its own capacity to
apprehend. Likewise, the intellect must have its own desires. But he
notes in *On Virtues*, that like a king the will need not heed
the advice of its counselor; it may instead "give itself over to
the advice of its slaves, that is, the inner powers and the
senses"; in so doing it "gives itself over into becoming a
slave of its slaves and is like a king ... who follows the will
and advice of senseless children" (OO I, 122a).



William frequently emphasizes the difference between voluntary action
and the actions of brute animals. Animals operate in a
"servile" manner, in the sense that they respond to their
passions without having control over these responses. A human being,
in contrast, has power over the suggestion of its desires; its will is
"most free and is in every way in its own power and
dominion" (OO II suppl., 94a; Teske 2000, 123). This is why
human beings, unlike animals, can be imputed with blame or merit for
their deeds.



According to William, the freedom of the will consists in the fact
that the will "can neither be forced in any way to its proper
and first operation, which is to will or refuse, nor prevented from
the same; and I mean that it is not possible for someone to will
something and entirely refuse that he will it or to refuse to will
something, entirely willing that he will it" (OO I, 957aA). In
other words, William defines force and prevention of the will in terms
of higher-order volitions and refusals: for the will to be forced is
for it to refuse to will *X* and nonetheless be made to will
*X*, and for it to be prevented is for it to will to will
*X* and be made to refuse *X*. In a number of works,
William argues that neither force nor prevention of the will is
possible: if someone refuses to will *X*, this must be because
he takes *X* to be bad and thus he must refuse *X*
rather than will it; and if someone wills to will *X*, this
must be because he takes *X* to be good, and thus he must will
*X* rather than refuse it.


#### 7.7.2 The Intellective Power



William's discussions of the intellective power are driven by a
concern to attack errors he sees in his contemporaries and Greek and
Islamic thinkers. While his reasons for rejecting these errors are
clear enough, if at times based on a confused understanding of his
sources, his own views on the nature of cognition are less well
developed. Yet it is clear that, with the exception of our knowledge
of first principles and the concepts they involve and certain cases of
supernaturally revealed knowledge, William wishes to present a
naturalistic account of cognition in this life in which God plays no
special role.



In both *On the Soul* and *On the Universe* William
attacks at length theories of cognition that posit an agent intellect
(*intellectus agens*) or agent intelligence (*intelligentia
agens*). He incorrectly ascribes the latter theory to Aristotle,
although in fact it is Avicenna's teaching; he ascribes the
former theory to certain unnamed contemporaries. These theories view
cognition as involving the active impression of intelligible signs or
forms--what we might call concepts--on a receptive or
passive recipient. The agent intellect or agent intelligence is taken
to perform this function of impressing intelligible forms on our
material intellect, which is so-called because like matter it is
receptive of forms, albeit intelligible forms. The chief difference
between the agent intellect and agent intelligence, as far as the
theory of cognition is concerned, is that the former is treated as a
part of the human soul, while the latter is taken to be a spiritual
substance apart from the human soul, identified with Avicenna's
tenth intelligence. William notes how the agent intellect or agent
intelligence is viewed by analogy with light or the sun; as light or
the sun through its light serves to render actual merely potentially
existing colors, so the agent intellect or intelligence serves to
render actual intelligible forms existing potentially in the material
intellect.



William as usual offers a large number of objections to these
theories. He attacks as inappropriate the analogies with light or the
sun, and argues that the theory of the agent and material intellects
is incompatible with the simplicity of the soul, as it posits these
intellects as two distinct parts of the soul, one active and one
receptive. In the case of both the agent intellect and the agent
intelligence, he argues that their proponents will be forced to hold
the absurd result that human beings know everything that is naturally
knowable, whereas in fact we must study and learn and observe in order
to acquire much of our knowledge.



As for his own views on the intellective power, William holds that,
like all the powers of the soul, the intellective power in the present
life of misery has been corrupted. Therefore an account of it must
distinguish its operation in its pure, uncorrupted state from its
operation in the present life. In its pure state it is capable of
knowing, without reliance on the senses, everything naturally
knowable, even sensible things, and thus presumably also is capable of
possessing the concepts in terms of which such knowledge is
formulated. In its present state, however, most of its knowledge and
repertoire of concepts stems in some manner from sense experience.



The knowledge of which the intellective power is naturally capable
extends not just to universals, but also to singulars. For the
intellect is naturally directed at the true as the will is at the
good, and has as its end knowledge of the first truth, the creator,
who is singular. William also notes our knowledge of ourselves and the
importance of singular knowledge for our dealings with the world.
Unfortunately, he provides no theory of the nature of singular
cognition, and this issue must be left on the agenda until taken up by
thinkers such as Scotus and Ockham in the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries.



William proposes a representationalist theory of cognition. He holds
that it is not things or states of affairs themselves that are in the
intellective power but rather signs or intelligible forms that serve
to represent them. He takes these signs to be mental habits, that is
to say, not bare potentialities but potentialities most ready to be
actualized. Propositions are those complexes formed from signs through
which states of affairs are represented to the mind. Although William
speaks of these signs as likenesses, he is well aware of the
difficulty in thinking of concepts as such, and he concludes that in
fact there need not be a likeness between a sign and that of which it
is a sign (OO II suppl. 214b; Teske 2000, 454).



A key question William confronts is how we acquire concepts and
knowledge in the present life. In *On the Soul* he draws an
important distinction. In the case of the first rules of truth and
morality, he speaks of God as a mirror or book of all truths in which
human beings naturally and without an intermediary, and thus without
reliance on sense experience, read these rules. Likewise, God
impresses or inscribes on our intellective power the intelligible
signs in terms of which these first rules or principles are
formulated. Thus, William posits at least some innate concepts; he
notes, for example, in *On Virtues and Morals*  that the
concept of the true (*veri*) is innate (OO I, 124a). God also
reveals to some prophets in this life "hidden objects of
knowledge to which the created intellect cannot attain except by the
gift and grace of divine revelation" (OO II suppl., 211b; Teske
2000, 445).



Does William therefore hold, as some have held (Gilson 1926), that at
least in the case of these rules God in some special manner
illuminates the human intellect? This might be suggested by his
references to the intellective power as spiritual vision and his
frequent use of the language of vision and illumination in his
accounts of cognition. And yet, according to William, the first rules
of truth and morality are "known through themselves" or
self-evident. They are "lights in themselves ... visible
through themselves without the help of something else" (OO II
suppl., 210b; Teske 2000, 443), and they serve to illuminate to the
intellect the conclusions drawn from them. God's role, it would
seem, is to impress upon or supply to our intellect, in some way,
these principles, but William gives no indication that he takes God to
shed a special light on these principles in order that they may be
known: once possessed they are, as it were, self illuminating.



The first rules of truth and morality and the concepts in terms of
which they are formulated form only a small subset, however, of our
cognitive repertoire. The remainder of our concepts and knowledge,
leaving to one side the special divine revelation made to prophets,
stems in some way from our dealings with the sensible world. But the
problem William faces is to explain how this is so. The problem, he
says, is that "sensation ... brings to the intellect
sensible substances and intellectual ones united to bodies [i.e.,
souls]. But it does not imprint [*pingit*] upon it their
intelligible forms, because it does not receive such forms of
them" (OO II suppl., 213a; Teske 2000, 449).



William's response to this problem is to hold that the senses
have the role simply of stimulating the intellective power in such a
way that it "forms on its own and in itself intelligible forms
for itself" (OO I, 914b), a doctrine he draws from Augustine.
According to this account, the intellect is fundamentally active in
the acquisition of intelligible forms. William speaks of the intellect
as able, under the prompting of the senses, to consider the substances
that underlie sensible accidents, and speaks of the intellect as
"abstracting" from sense experience in the sense that it
forms concepts of so-called "vague individuals" by
stripping away perceptible features that serve to distinguish one
individual from another. In these cases, William says, "the
intellect is occasionally inscribed by these forms that are more
separate and more appropriate to its nature" (OO II suppl.,
213b; Teske 2000, 450).



A third cognitive process William mentions, conjunction or connection,
is concerned not with the acquisition of intelligible forms, but
rather with how knowledge of one thing brings with it knowledge of
another. In particular, William argues that knowledge of a cause
brings with it knowledge of the effect.



William is particularly concerned, however, that his account of the
intellect's generation of intelligible forms will require a
division of the intellect into active and passive parts--the very
distinction between an agent and material or receptive intellect he
has devoted so much energy to attacking. The need to make this
division of the intellect into two part is because it is impossible
for the same thing to be both active and passive in the same respect,
and yet in treating the intellect as indivisible it looks as though
William is in fact committed to its being both active and passive in
the same respect in the formation and reception of intelligible
forms.



William's attempts to resolve this problem are repeated in a
number of works and couched in highly metaphorical language that poses
severe problems of interpretation. The intellective power is both
"a riverbed and fountain of the scientific and sapiential waters
... Hence, in one respect it overflows and shines forth on
itself, and in another respect it receives such outpouring or
radiance" (OO II, suppl. 216b; Teske 2000, 457). William holds
that because on this account the intellective power is not active and
passive *in the same respect*, he is not forced to divide the
intellect into two distinct parts, one active and one passive.


## 8. William's Influence



Scholars have devoted little attention to William's influence on
later writers. Nevertheless, it is clear that he gave rise to no
school of thought, and subsequent thinkers seem to have picked and
chosen from his works the parts they would accept and the parts they
would reject. Thus, William's arguments that the world must have
a beginning probably influenced thinkers such as Bonaventure and Henry
of Ghent, while his rejection of universal hylomorphism and his
metaphysics of being and essence may have influenced Aquinas, who
presents similar views. There is also little doubt that some of
William's views were the subject of criticism, as for example
his apparent denial of genuine secondary causation (see Reilly 1953).
The large body of manuscripts in which William's works survive
suggests he was being read throughout the middle ages; Ottman 2005,
for example, lists 44 manuscripts known to contain *On the
Universe*. William's works were also published in a number
of printed editions in the 16th and 17th
centuries.