Book of Causes

However, the path which the book de causis original: "Book of Causes" took through the Christian speculation of the Middle Ages was much more clearly defined and much easier to follow than previous accounts had led one to expect.

In the historiography of medieval philosophy, the book de causis played the role of an unknown quantity which, it seemed, was invoked all the more readily from many sides, at times suspected and slandered, at times recognized and celebrated in the most unmerited manner, the more it eluded control.

Hauréau concludes the aforementioned overview of content with the phrase, lacking any and all substantiation: Voilà ce 'Livre des causes' qui a fait tant de bruit; qui, suivant l'Église, a perdu tant de consciences; qui a produit, du moins, tant de scandales. Translation: "Behold this 'Book of Causes' which has made so much noise; which, according to the Church, has lost so many souls; which has produced, at the very least, so many scandals."¹

M. Joel, on the other hand, led by Albert the Great to believe that our book was of Jewish origin, refers with strange gravity to Ibn Gebirol and the author of the book de causis as "the two Jewish philosophers whose works are known to have helped build and form the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century." ²

The judgment of E. Renan sounds, if possible, even more peculiar: The undecided character (le caractère indécis) of the book de causis kept all of Scholasticism in indecisive tension (a tenu en suspens toute la scolastique).³

I draw upon assertions of more general significance. In individual cases, one would have to refer to the contentions of A. Jourdain and others regarding the origin of the teachings of Amalrich of Bène and David of Dinan, to Hauréau's statements about Alanus of Lille and Robert Greathead, and to C. Prantl's judgment on Thomas Aquinas.⁴

The result of my investigations can be summarized by saying that the book de causis was indeed, according to Hauréau's expression,¹ accepted and welcomed by the Latins as "the last word of Peripatetic metaphysics," that even after the error was recognized quite soon, the esteem for the book did not diminish, but that it, according to the expression of Hertling,² led far "more to a quasi-decorative utilization of the profoundly sounding maxims than to a substantive influence on Scholasticism."

1 De la phil. scol. I, 389—390; Hist. de la phil. scol. II, 1, 53.
2 Something about the influence of Jewish philosophy on Christian Scholasticism -- in Frankel's Monthly, Vol. 1860, pp. 205—217 -- p. 214. A reprint of this treatise concludes the first volume of the Contributions to the History of Philosophy by Joel (Breslau 1876). A more detailed report on it was given by Schneid in the aforementioned place, pp. 71—74.
3 Averroès et l'Averroïsme, 3rd ed. (Paris 1866), p. 93.
4 See below, pp. 221—222, p. 211 and p. 228, p. 256.