## 1. Philip's Life




Philip was born in Paris probably in the 1160s, the exact date
unknown. He was a member of a prominent Parisian family; many of his
relatives held important positions, in service to the French kings or
to the church. Several were bishops of prominent sees, in particular,
his uncle, Peter of Nemours, who was bishop of Paris from 1208 to 1218
and who helped to foster Philip's career. Most likely, Philip
received his education at the nascent University of Paris, where he
also taught. Sometime in the early 1200s, he was appointed archdeacon
of Noyon, a position he held even after becoming chancellor of the
Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 1217. Philip died in 1236, most
likely on December 26. 


## 2. Philip's Career as Chancellor




The position of chancellor at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was
one of some importance, although it was the lowest ranking office in
the administrative hierarchy of the chapter. Minor duties included
keeping the official seal of the chapter, executing the official
decrees of the administrative body, maintaining the non-musical books
of the library, and serving in the liturgy of the daily office. His
most significant responsibility was in the area of education. The
chancellor was originally the head of the cathedral school. As masters
began to flock to Paris in the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries, especially to the Ile-de-la-Cite, where Notre Dame
is located, the chancellor's supervision was extended to include
these masters as well. His power lay in his authority to grant the
teaching license, which was required in order to hold classes in one
of the schools springing up on the Ile-de-la-Cite. It was the
chancellor's duty to evaluate candidates applying for this
license. Moreover, the chancellor had the right to revoke the license
should a master prove unworthy or incompetent, as well as the
responsibility for maintaining order and discipline among the scholars
within his jurisdiction. 




By the time Philip became chancellor in 1217, the masters of the
various schools in Paris had begun to seek autonomy from the cathedral
chapter and had won a number of important concessions by papal decree.
In 1215, the papal legate, Robert of Courcon, drew up a number
of formal statutes, codifying the *de facto* practices
regarding matters such as the examinations for teaching licenses,
accepted dress and behavior, curriculum, and discipline of
students. As a result, by the time that Philip became chancellor, at
least on paper, it appeared as if the power of his office had been
greatly reduced, even with respect to granting the teaching
license. For although the chancellor retained the power to grant these
licenses, the statutes dictated that he could not turn down anyone the
masters deemed fit to teach. But in reality, a long struggle ensued
between the masters and the chancellor, who sought to retain his
power, beginning with Philip's predecessor (Stephen of Reims)
and continuing into much of Philip's own tenure. Finally, in
the late 1220s and early 1230s, Philip made his peace with the
masters, who had gone on strike and left Paris along with many of
their students in response to a conflict with the secular authorities.
No doubt recognizing that their departure imperiled the continuing
prestige of Paris as a center of education, as well as his own
position, Philip worked hard to convince the scholars to return to
Paris and reconvene their classes. His efforts were successful, and
the masters returned in 1231 (for more on Philip's life and
career, see Payne 1991).


## 3. Philip's Philosophical Significance




In his major philosophical work, *Summa de bono*, Philip uses
the notion of the good as an organizing principle for his study. He
divides the text roughly into four sections. Philip discusses first
the nature of good in general terms, and then the highest good and its
relationship to created goods. After this rather short introduction to
the notion of the good, Philip goes on to examine in some depth the
various sorts of created goods. He divides his discussion of created
goods into three parts. First, he looks at the good retained by
creatures by virtue of their natures (*bonum naturae*). In
turn, these goods fall into two categories: those goods that cannot be
diminished by evil and those goods that can be lost through evil. In
his discussion of the former, Philip focuses first on the angels and
their properties, and then on human beings and their properties. Those
goods that can be affected by evil are discussed in conjunction with
Adam's fall from grace in the Garden and its
consequences. Following the discussion of *bonum naturae*,
Philip considers what he calls *bonum in genere*. Although this
sort of good has a rather peculiar title, the *bonum in genere*
represents goods that come about as a result of an agent's
actions. These goods have this title because what determines whether a
given act is good depends not only on the sort of act it is (its
"form" so to speak) but also what the act has to do with
(its "matter" so to speak), thus suggesting that these
sorts of goods can be classified along the lines of genera and
species. Moreover, these sorts of generic goods contrast with the
meritorious goods brought about as the result of God's
grace. After discussing the
*bonum in genere*, Philip goes on to look at the good that is
associated with grace. Here, he divides his treatment into the graces
that pertain to angels (as well as their ministries) and the graces
that pertain to human beings. Philip includes the virtues in his
discussion of human graces. Although he denies that the virtues are a
type of grace, he includes them in this section because virtues come
about as a result of grace working within human beings. This idea is
most naturally associated with the theological virtues of faith, hope,
and charity, and indeed, Philip discusses these virtues here at some
length. But he also includes in this section a lengthy discussion of
the cardinal virtues: prudence, fortitude, temperance (and the
associated virtues of modesty, sobriety, continence, and virginity),
and justice, virtues which one might argue have no direct connection
with grace. Philip admits that strictly speaking cardinal virtues are
not divine virtues since they have to do with what is for the sake of
the end and not directly with the end itself (the end of course being
God). But he argues that justice has to do both with God and with human
governance; perhaps because of this connection, he felt justified
in including them in a broader discussion of grace. Philip ends his
work with another source of grace, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
His discussion of the good of grace in human beings occupies over
half of *Summa de bono* with his unit on the virtues accounting
for a large portion of this section. 




Philip's *Summa de bono* represents a significant innovation
in medieval philosophical work. His use of the good as an organizing
principle is a departure from the explicitly theological structure of
other well-known texts of the time including Peter Lombard's
*Sentences* and William of Auxerre's *Summa
aurea*. Philip is certainly concerned with theological issues;
Aertsen points out that in the prologue, Philip explicitly mentions
the need to provide a philosophical response to the Manichean heresy
as part of his justification in developing an account of the good
(Aertsen 2012). It is also true that Philip discusses the difference
between God's goodness and created goodness. Nevertheless, these
theological notions do not provide the intellectual framework for
Philip's discussion. Unlike the
*Sentences* or *Summa aurea*, Philip devotes no
significant sections of his work to topics such as God's nature, the
Incarnation, or the sacraments. Whereas often William's or
Lombard's examination of a philosophical issue arises in the context of
a larger theological issue, this is not generally the case for Philip. For
example, in William's *Summa aurea*, the issues of human action
and its freedom arise within a discussion of Adam's fall in the Garden.
William raises these issues here because he recognizes that holding
Adam responsible for his sin requires that Adam acted freely. Philip
places his treatment of free action within an examination of human
psychology. It is not until after he discusses the character and
the powers of the human soul that he gets around to examining
theological issues such as the origin and the immortality of the soul.


Philip is one of the first major thinkers in the Latin West whose
work reflects the influence of the recent influx of newly translated
texts from Aristotle and his Arabic commentators, particularly in the
area of metaphysics. This helps to explain the distinctive character
of his work (see MacDonald 1992). His use of Aristotelian metaphysics
is especially interesting given that many of Aristotle's
metaphysical treatises and work in natural philosophy were officially
banned at Paris during the time that he was working on *Summa de
bono*. Philip's text greatly influenced that of his
contemporaries and successors, including Albertus Magnus, Alexander of
Hales, and even Thomas Aquinas (see MacDonald 1992, Houser 2004,
Lottin 1957).


## 4. Philip's Innovative Theory of the Transcendentals




Philip's influence in the thirteenth century was especially felt
in the area of the transcendentals and in action theory. In this
section, I will consider his theory of the transcendentals (although
he does not in fact use that term; see Aertsen 2012). I will examine
his theory of action in the following section. To some extent, the
doctrine of the transcendentals has its roots in the
Christian-Platonic discussions of the relationship between created and
divine being and goodness, in particular, in Boethius's *De
hebdomadibus*, which greatly influenced William of Auxerre's
treatment of goodness prefatory to his examination of the virtues
in *Summa aurea* (see Aertsen 2012). However, its more
immediate ancestor is Aristotle's doctrine of the categories
(see MacDonald 1992). Certain properties fall into none of
Aristotle's categories; rather they are properties of all of the
things to which the categories are applicable. For this reason, these
properties are said to "transcend" the
categories. Although there is some variation in what is counted as a
transcendental, the list generally included being, unity, truth, and
goodness. Thus, everything that falls into any of Aristotle's
categories is a being, has a certain sort of unity, and is true and
good to a certain extent. 




Not only do these properties transcend the categories and as a result,
apply to everything classified by the categories, but they are held to
be convertible with each other as well. This could mean one of two
things. The transcendentals could be coextensional, so that whatever
has being also has unity, truth, and goodness. This leaves open the
possibility that the transcendentals are separate and distinct from
one another. The second option of the convertibility thesis involves a
stronger claim, namely, the idea that the transcendentals differ from
one another only in concept, not in reality. Unity, truth, and
goodness add nothing to a particular being over and above what is
already there; everything that is a being is also one, true, and good
in virtue of the very same characteristics. But to describe something
as a being and to describe it as, say, good is to express two
different things about it since the concept of a being and the concept
of a good are two very different concepts. Thus, while being and
goodness are extensionally equivalent, they are intensionally
distinct.




Philip adopts the second notion of convertibility. The various
transcendentals do not differ in reality, only in concept. The concept
of being is fundamental in that the concepts of the other
transcendentals presuppose it. However, the concepts of all of the
other transcendentals add a certain basic notion to the notion of
being in order to differentiate them from being (see Aertsen 2012,
MacDonald 1992). This basic notion is the notion of being that is
undivided. Because this is a purely negative notion, it picks out no
additional property in reality. The addition of indivision alone
yields the concept of unity. To derive the concepts of the true and
the good, one adds further the notion of the appropriate cause. The
concept of truth involves the idea of the formal cause, that is, the
cause in virtue of which matter is enformed, and a thing becomes what
it is. Things are true, that is, genuine instances of the kind of
thing they are to the extent that they instantiate the form of things
of that kind. Thus, the concept of truth is the concept of being that
is undivided from a formal cause. Goodness, on the other hand, has to
do with being that is undivided from a final cause, that is, a cause
that has to do with goals or ends, especially those goals that have
been brought to fulfillment. Everything has a particular nature, that
is, properties that make that thing a thing of that type. But things
can exemplify those properties to a greater or lesser extent. Philip
claims that everything has as its goal its own perfection, which means
that things move toward exemplifying their specifying characteristics
to the greatest extent possible. To the extent that a thing does so,
that thing will be good. But that thing will also have being to the
same extent. Thus, goodness and being in a given thing coincide in
reality, and a thing's goodness adds nothing over and above the
thing's being. But of course, goodness and being involve two
different concepts. Thus, being and goodness have the same extension
while differing intensionally.




It has been argued (by Pouillion and others) that Philip's
discussion of the transcendentals in *Summa de bono* represents
the earliest formal treatise on the transcendentals in the history of
Western philosophy (see Pouillion 1939, Aertsen 2012). About ten years
earlier, William of Auxerre also discussed the relationship between
being and goodness; he raises the issue of whether being and being
good are the same. But in resolving this issue, William never
considers the central issue of the transcendentals, the idea that they
are extensionally equivalent while intensionally different. It appears
that Philip is the first to do so. MacDonald argues that
Philip's greater familiarity with the metaphysical works of
Aristotle and the Arabic commentators accounts for the startling
innovations of his work on the transcendentals (MacDonald 1992). It is
likely that Philip encountered the fundamental notion of extensional
equivalence and intensional difference in the work of the Arabic
commentators of Aristotle; both Avicenna and Averroes argue that unity
and being have the same extension while differing conceptually. Philip
extends this idea to include not only being and unity, but also the
true and the good. Philip's work in turn sets the stage for the
development of this topic throughout the thirteenth century,
influencing the work of such notable thinkers as Alexander of Hales,
Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas (see Aertsen 2012).


## 5. Philip's Psychology




Although not as well known, Philip's psychology also exhibits
some innovative features and influenced later thinkers, in particular,
Albert the Great. In the early thirteenth century, theorists accounted
for human abilities by arguing that in order to do what they do,
agents must possess certain capacities or powers. Thus for every
ability, there must be a corresponding and separate power. Human
beings have the ability to think; therefore, they must have a
cognitive power, often called intellect or reason. Medieval
philosophers also adopted Aristotle's distinction between
practical intellect, which discerns what to do, and speculative
intellect, which discerns the truth about the way things are. Human
beings have the capacity for desire; therefore, they must have
appetitive powers. Medieval philosophers distinguish between two kinds
of appetite; a rational appetite, called the will, that is responsive
to the dictates of the intellect, and an appetite that is responsive
to sensory apprehension, called the sensory appetite. Since activities
such as thinking and desiring are different sorts of activities, most
theorists thought of their corresponding powers, the (practical)
intellect and the will, as separate. However, on Philip's
account, the practical intellect and the will are not separate powers
(see McCluskey 2001). He argues that with respect to the capacity for
performing actions, there is only one power with two separate acts.
Philip gives a number of arguments for this position. One of them is
particularly interesting because Philip uses the doctrine of the
transcendentals to establish his conclusion that the practical
intellect and will are one and the same power. Philip first notes that
the intellect and the will have different ends. The intellect, even as
practical intellect, has truth as its goal or end since its job, so to
speak, is to ascertain the way things are, to make judgments about the
state of reality, including what alternatives for action are available
for the agent. The will, on the other hand, is an appetite for the
good; it inclines the agent toward what she judges to be good. Thus,
its end is the good. But according to the doctrine of the
transcendentals, the true and the good differ only intensionally, not
extensionally. Philip thinks that if the ends of the powers do not
differ extensionally, then the powers themselves do not differ
extensionally as well. Thus, with respect to action, there is only one
power with two different acts, acts of conceiving and judging on the
one hand, and acts of desiring (the good) and willing on the other.
Talking about the will is merely shorthand for referring to acts of
willing or desiring. Talking about the intellect is merely shorthand
for referring to certain cognitive judgments about what to do or how
to act. 




Although Philip denies that the practical intellect and the will are
separate powers, he argues for a distinction among the various
apprehensive powers (McCluskey 2001). Thus, he sees a genuine
distinction between the speculative intellect, the practical
intellect, imagination, and the sensory apprehensive powers. This is
because what is apprehended by each of these powers is different in
nature. Philip denies that any such distinction is present among
motive powers. Insofar as the appetite is moved by a sensory
apprehension, we call it the sensory appetite. Insofar as the appetite
is moved by the judgment of intellect, we call it the will. However,
in reality, there is only one motive power to account for both of
these sorts of desires, according to Philip. Philip's position
on the inseparability of practical intellect and will does not appear
to have convinced his thirteenth-century contemporaries or
near-contemporaries. Albert the Great in *Summa de homine*
(*circa* 1245) addresses the arguments given by Philip for his
position although as was the custom of the time with respect to
one's contemporaries or near-contemporaries, he does not refer
to Philip by name. Albert rejects Philip's position, but the
fact that Albert examines the issue at all indicates something about
the esteem given to Philip's work.




An important part of thirteenth-century psychology was the development
of a theory of free action. This was especially important both for
theology and for ethics. Medieval thinkers, beginning with Augustine,
recognized that moral responsibility requires freedom and so the
possibility of that freedom needed to be explained. Along those same
lines, they argued that unless human beings are able to act freely,
God is not justified in punishing sins. Furthermore, human freedom
plays a major role in theodicy; for example, Augustine argues that God
is not responsible for the evil found in the world because that evil
is perpetrated by the free choices of human beings (*De lib
arb*). Thus, given this background and these commitments, it was
common for medieval philosophers to examine the topic of freedom
somewhere in their writings. In the first half of the thirteenth
century, it was customary to examine these issues in the context of a
treatise on what became known as *liberum arbitrium* (see Kent
1995, McCluskey 2001). In medieval theories of action in the early
part of the thirteenth century, "*liberum
arbitrium*" is a technical term. It is a placeholder for
whatever it is that enables human beings to act freely. The term
originates in the work of Augustine who wrote a treatise
entitled *De libero arbitrio*. The starting point for
thirteenth-century treatises on *liberum arbitrium* was a
definition taken from Peter Lombard's
*Sentences*: "*liberum arbitrium* is a faculty of
reason and will, by which good is chosen with the assistance of grace,
or evil, when grace is not there to assist. And it is called
'*liberum*' with respect to the will, which can be
turned toward either [good or bad], while [it is called]
'*arbitrium*' with respect to reason, as it has to
do with that power or faculty to which the discerning between good and
evil belongs." Although Lombard's main discussion
of *liberum arbitrium* is found in book two, distinction
twenty-five of his *Sententiae in IV libris distinctae*, this
definition is found in the twenty-fourth distinction of book two,
chapter three. This definition was commonly but mistakenly attributed
to Augustine by commentators in the thirteenth century. Lombard
himself does not reveal his source. References to Augustine dominate
his discussion of *liberum arbitrium*, which might account for
the association of the definition with Augustine.




Philosophers in the early thirteenth century faced the task of how
to understand this definition. Although it is obvious from Lombard's
formulation that both intellect and will have something to do with
*liberum arbitrium*, their exact relationship is unclear. The
phrase "*liberum arbitrium*" itself contributes to
the uncertainty (on this issue, see Korolec 1982, McCluskey 2001). The
first part of the phrase, "*liberum*," is
uncontroversial; it simply means "free." Difficulties
arise with respect to the notion of "*arbitrium*."
This notion has both cognitive and appetitive connotations, for it can
have meanings as diverse as "judgment,"
"decision," "wish," or
"inclination." It can also refer to a power or ability to
make judgments or decisions or to the very agent who makes these
judgments or decisions. Thus, the term covers a lot of territory,
territory that has to do with both cognitive and appetitive
capabilities. Accordingly, it is natural to connect
*liberum arbitrium* with both intellect and will. In writing
treatises on *liberum arbitrium*, thirteenth-century
philosophers sought to sort out the connections between intellect and
will on the one hand and the production and freedom of human action on
the other. Some of these philosophers argued that free action results
from the interaction of intellect and will, while others argued that
although the intellect is an important precondition for an action's
being free, the will is the true instrument that brings about a free
action. Still others argued that *liberum arbitrium* is a
separate faculty altogether although it is closely linked with and
interacts with the intellect and will in the production of a free
action. The practice of writing treatises on *liberum arbitrium*
began to die off toward the later decades of the thirteenth century
when philosophers started examining the topic of *voluntas
libera* (free will) instead (see Kent 1995, Lottin 1957).




In his treatise on *liberum arbitrium* in *Summa de
bono*, Philip adopts John Damascene's basic description of action.
According to Damascene, an eighth-century patristic, a number of
different stages come together in the production of an action. These
stages include desiring, considering the various courses of action that
will satisfy one's desires, deliberating over those courses of action,
judging which one is to be performed, willing and choosing a particular
alternative, and initiating the action. Since each of these activities
are activities of the will or of the intellect, it follows that actions
result from the activities of the will and the intellect. Damascene
also claims that each of these stages are performed freely. Because
each stage is performed freely, the resulting action is also free.




Philip modifies this position (McCluskey 2001). He thinks that only
the final activity of the intellect is performed freely, that is, the
final judgment about what course of action to take. This is because
Philip thinks that with respect to the previous activities of the
intellect, activities such as identifying possible courses of action
and deliberating over them, the intellect suffers from certain
constraints. These constraints have to do with the structure of the
world around us which in turn structures our beliefs. Beliefs play a
role in our deliberations over what to do; thus the constraints placed
upon beliefs in turn constrain the intellect in its activities. But
according to Philip, the intellect retains some freedom for the final
judgment about what to do is made freely. Thus, the intellect need not
judge that a particular course of action be performed; it could have
judged differently. In Philip's view, the will does not suffer
from such constraints. The will is an appetite for the good so that
whatever it wills, it wills a good. But a thing's being a good
is merely a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. A thing's
being good does not compel the will's act. Moreover, no judgment
of the intellect constrains the will's choice; the will is free
either to will the alternative put forth by the intellect or to reject
it and will something else. It is because of this capacity of the will
that Philip sees the will as the primary source of freedom in a human
being. For in the final analysis, it is the will rather than the
judgment of the intellect that determines the action the agent
performs. Because the will wills freely, the agent performs the action
freely. Thus, while both intellect and will have important roles to
play in the production of a free action, freedom is primarily a
function of the will. Philip's theory of action helps to set the
stage for the prominent voluntarist movement that rose later in the
thirteenth century with thinkers such as Peter John Olivi and John
Duns Scotus (see Kent 1995, McCluskey 2001).


## 6. Philip's Discussion of Time and Eternity




Philip does not interpret his organizing principle of the good in an
unduly narrow or restrictive manner. Among the goods of nature he
considers not to be diminishable by evil are time and eternity. After
a discussion of whether good and evil are contraries and whether evil
can be a principle or a genus, Philip launches into a discussion of
whether the world is eternal and follows that by a comparison of time
and eternity. The topic of eternity is one of some importance and was
much discussed in the Middle Ages. Medieval philosophers in the
Christian tradition to which Philip belonged believed that the world
was created
*ex nihilo* by God with a beginning and at some point in time
will end. It soon became apparent that the newly rediscovered Aristotle
did not share this commitment as he famously argues that the world is
eternal. Thus, this was an issue that medieval philosophers needed to
address.




Philip attempts to reconcile Aristotle's position with his own
commitments first by distinguishing the domain of philosophy from the
domain of theology, an approach that will appeal to later thinkers as
well (see Dales 1990). Not surprisingly, Philip argues that Aristotle
should be taken as a philosopher and not as a theologian. But Philip
also tries to reinterpret Aristotle's position so that it will
be compatible with his Christian commitments. He argues that strictly
speaking, Aristotle's argument establishes only that the world
is perpetual, not that it is eternal (see Yarbrough 2015). Philip
defines the perpetual as that which is measured in the whole of time
and mobility. Eternity, on the other hand, is such that it has no
beginning and will have no end. Thus, Philip's concept of the
perpetual is compatible with the view that what is perpetual has a
beginning and an end. The world could have existed for all of time,
but since Philip thinks that time has a beginning and will at some
point have an end, such an understanding of the world is compatible
with the Christian doctrine of creation. Philip also defends his
position by arguing that Aristotle's task is to show that time,
motion, and what is movable are all co-equal and that it is not
appropriate to the discipline of philosophy to demonstrate anything
beyond this claim. Finally, Philip draws upon Averroes (referring to
him as the Commentator) to support his claim. He argues that according
to Averroes' commentary on the eleventh book of
Aristotle's
*Metaphysics*, Aristotle is describing the origin of motion from
the first mover. Thus, Aristotle is not discussing the origin of the
world as such, but rather what takes place once the world exists.




In his comparison between time and eternity, Philip argues that both
have duration and as a result are contained in the same genus. But
time differs significantly from eternity in a number of important
respects. First, time has a beginning and an end while eternity does
not. Secondly, time by nature has succession and thus, motion, while
eternity does not; it is entirely immobile and immutable. In fact,
Philip argues that eternity and the divine essence are the same in
reality although conceptually distinct. Time of course for Philip is
something created and so cannot be identified with God's
essence, which is wholly uncreated. Finally although both time and
eternity involve the idea of "now," they do so in
different respects. The "now" involves the past and the
future, while the "now" of time is defined by or comes
about in virtue of the past and the future.




Philip also considers the relationship between time and eternity. He
is concerned with Plato's position, which he quotes, that
"time is a part of eternity." This is a claim that Philip
wishes to deny. Although time and eternity are found in the same
genus, they differ in character, as I noted above. Philip appeals to
Boethius's definition of eternity from *The Consolation of
Philosophy*: "Eternity is the possession of unending life,
wholly present and perfected." Philip argues that the notion of
"wholly present" removes the idea of succession from the
concept of eternity while the notion of "wholly perfected"
removes the idea of division into parts from the concept of
eternity. Succession and division into parts are of course part of the
notion of time. Thus, it is incompatible with the nature of eternity
that time be a part of it. Rather, Philip views them as two separate
durations, each differing in character. No doubt Philip's
positions on time and eternity and his interpretation of Aristotle
raise a number of pressing questions and objections, but as Dales
notes, his distinctions greatly influenced thinkers later in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Dales 1990).