Siger of Brabant

Siger of Brabant (Sigerus, Sighier, Sigieri or Sygerius de Brabantia; c. 1240 – before 10 November 1284) was a 13th-century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism.

Life

Early life

Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266, he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken.

Works

In the ten years following the riot, he wrote the six works which are ascribed to him and were published under his name by Pierre Mandonnet in 1899. The titles of these treatises are:

De anima intellectiva (1270)
Quaestiones logicales
Quaestiones naturales
De aeternitate mundi
Quaestio utrum haec sit vera: Homo est animal nullo homine existente
Impossibilia

Rectorship

In 1271, he was once more involved in a party struggle. The minority among the "nations" chose him as rector in opposition to the elected candidate, Aubri de Rheims. For three years the strife continued, and was probably based on the opposition between the Averroists, Siger and Pierre Dubois, and the more orthodox schoolmen. The matter was settled by the Papal Legate, Simon de Brion, afterwards Pope Martin IV. Siger retired from Paris to Liège.

Time in Liège

Siger was accused of teaching "double truth"—that is, saying one thing could be true through reason, and that the opposite could be true through faith. Because Siger was a scholastic, he probably did not teach double truths but tried to find reconciliations between faith and reason.

In 1277, a general condemnation of Aristotelianism included a special clause directed against Boetius of Dacia and Siger of Brabant. Again Siger and Bernier de Nivelles were summoned to appear on a charge of heresy, especially in connection with the Impossibilia, where the existence of God is discussed. It appears, however, that Siger and Boetius fled to Italy and, according to John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, then perished miserably.

Death

The manner of Siger's death, which occurred at Orvieto, is not known. A Brabantine chronicle says that he was stabbed by a seemingly-insane secretary (a clerico suo quasi dementi). The secretary is said to have used a pen as the murder weapon and Siger's critics claimed that, since he had done so much damage with his pen, he had deserved that kind of death. Dante, in the Paradiso (x.134–6), says that Siger found "death slow in coming", and some have concluded that this indicates death by suicide. A 13th-century sonnet by one Durante (xcii.9–14) says that Siger was executed at Orvieto: a ghiado il fe' morire a gran dolore, Nella corte di Roma ad Orbivieto. The date of this may have been 1283–1284, when Pope Martin IV was in residence at Orvieto. Siger's fellow radicals were lying low in the face of the Condemnations of 1277 and there was no investigation into his murder.

In politics Siger held that good laws were better than good rulers, and criticised papal infallibility in temporal affairs. The importance of Siger in philosophy lies in his acceptance of Averroism in its entirety, which drew upon him the opposition of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas.

In December 1270, Averroism was condemned by ecclesiastical authority, and during his whole life Siger was exposed to persecution both from the Church and from purely philosophic opponents.

Cultural references

In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, Siger of Brabant is found in the Fourth Sphere of Paradise, together with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, for being a positive example of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude (Paradiso, x.97-99, 133-8),

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Siger of Brabant — Indisputably the leader of Latin Averroism during the sixth and seventh decades of the thirteenth century. Many influential masters of art espoused his principles, and Pierre du Bois praised his oral teachings; finally Dante immortalized his name in these flattering verses of the "Divina Commedia: Paradiso", X, 136:

Essa e la luce eterna di Sigieri Che, leggendo nel vico degli strami, Sillogizzo invidiosi veri.

His illustrious colleague, St. Thomas Aquinas, expressly refuted his teachings. There are few authentic details of the life of Siger of Brabant. He was a master of arts at Paris, and for ten years the guiding spirit of the agitations that troubled the university. From 1266 he was with the legate, Simon de Brie, in disciplinary affairs. From 1272 to 1275 he held in check the rector of the university, Alberic of Reims, placing himself at the head of the opposition, which he recruited from the Garlande Quarter (scholares golardie). Though condemned in 1270 Siger still continued the propagation of his ideas, and his opposition to his Scholastic masters. A second condemnation, in 1277, put an end to his teaching. He was brought before the tribunal of the Grand Inquisitor of France, was condemned, and took an appeal to the Roman Court. He died at Orvieto, between 1281 and 1284, having been assassinated by his secretary.

Of the works of Siger there are still extant: "De anima intellectiva", "De aeternitate mundi", "Quaestiones naturales", "Quaestiones logicales", "Quaestio utrum haec sit vera: Homo est animal, nullo homine existente", and a collection of six "Impossibilia". Another unpublished "Quaestio" has just been discovered by Pelzer of Rome. Siger was the adversary of Albertus Magnus and of St. Thomas Aquinas, "contra praecipuos viros Albertum et Thomam". His principal work (De anima intellectiva) called forth St. Thomas's treatise on the unity of the intellect (De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas). Siger in fact supported all the beliefs of the Averroist philosophy - the monism of the human intellect; one intellectual spirit for all men, separate from the body, is temporarily united with each human organism to accomplish the process of thought. Man is mortal, but the race is immortal. Hence the question of a future life is without meaning; immortality cannot be personal. The world is produced by a series of intermediary agencies; hence there is no providence in the government of men and of earthly things. All these productions are necessary, coeternal with God. All is ruled by cosmic and psychical determinism. Celestial phenomena and the conjunction of the planets control the succession of events on our globe, and the destinies of the human race. Man is not a free agent. There is an eternal reversibility of civilizations and religions, the Christian religion included, which is governed by the reversibility of the stellar cycles. Siger wished to remain a professing Catholic, and to safeguard his faith he had recourse to the celebrated theory of the two truths: what is true in philosophy may be false in religion, and vice versa. It is hard to tell whether such a mental attitude indicates buffoonery or sincerity. One is lost in conjecture as to the motive which impelled Dante, the admirer of Thomism, to place in the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas the eulogy of Siger of Brabant, the apostle of Averroism.

MANDONNET, Siger de Brabant et l'averroisme latin in Philosophes belges, VI, VII part i: Etude critique (Louvain, 1910), part ii, Textes (Louvain, 1909), contains all the works of Siger; BAUMKER, Die Impossibilia d. Siger von Brabant, eine philosoph Streitschr. aus. d. XIII Jahrh. in Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. Mitt. II (1888), 6; IDEM, Zur Beurteilung Sigers von Brabant in Philosophisches Jahrbuch (1911); MANDONNET, Autour de Siger de Brabant in Rev. thomiste, XIX, 1911. For the relations between Siger and Dante, see the studies published by LANGLOIS, GASTON PARIS, and CIPOLLA.

Bibliography

On the Eternity of the World, trans. Lottie H.Kendzierski (Marquette UP, 1964) [mainly translations from Thomas Aquinas, but the book includes selections from Siger of Brabant]
Hissette, R. (1977) Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars, 1277, Louvain: Publications Universitaires, Paris: Vander-Oyez.
Mandonnet, P. (1908–11) Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsme latin au XIIIe siècle, Les Philosophes Belges VI–VII, Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 2 vols.
Rubenstein, Richard E. Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages. New York: Harcourt, 2003.
Van Steenberghen, F. (1977) Maître Siger de Brabant, Louvain: Publications universitaires, Paris: Vander-Oyez.
Tony Dodd: The life and thought of Siger of Brabant, thirteenth-century Parisian philosopher: an examination of his views on the relationship of philosophy and theology. E. Mellen Press, Lewiston 1998, ISBN 0-7734-8477-9
A. W. DeAnnuntis, Master Siger's Dream, What Books Press, Los Angeles 2010, ISBN 978-0-9823542-7-8

External links

De aeternitate mundi, translated into English by Peter King, Professor of Philosophy and of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto.