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In 1325, nine years after the death of Raimundo Llull, Tomás Le Myésier, canon of Arras published the Electorium , which would become known as the first synthesis of the lulian thought. Le Myésier, educated at Sorbonne, knew Llull since 1287 and became his disciple and admirer. He believed that the writings of his master would be important to solve the serious doctrinal crises in which the philosophical thought had been engulfed in the first quarter of the XIVo century. Upon his death, Le Myésier donated the Electorium to the Sorbonne College. In the Pars antecedens of his Electorium, Le Myésier gives a thorough overview of the state of logics, physics, metaphysics and ethics at the time and explains the group of texts he considers as a minimum basis to the reader, since "with a sound grasp of the philosophy ... in a short time it is possible to acquire Llull's Ars" . This is followed by the Pars prima disponens ad Artem Remundi, a strenuous introduction by the author of his master's doctrine, full of articulated schemes. The remaining of the manuscript is composed by 52 works by Llull, unabridged or as selected parts, of which the nucleus is the Ars magna generalis et ultima, the definite version of the Llull. The work is completed by a summary of Llull's biography and a presentation of the meaning and intention of the lulian work. Which objective Le Myésier
sought doing such an extended compilation ? With no doubt, to shorten
the assimilation of the lulian doctrine " but maintaining the integrity
of its meaning in order to clarify the studies and alleviate the reader's
eyes'. The "moderns", as it seems, already appreciated brevity
. A detailed examination of the work, certifies that the canon of Arras
had great success in his endeavor and the critics that followed confirms
that the Electorium reflects adequately the lulian thought. After all, what does Llull's Arts consist of ? No better way to answer this question than to fall back upon Le Myésier own explanation. The Lulian Ars We may start saying that the Ars presents itself, roughly, as a relational system of universal concepts . Its structure is composed by a set of principles, its definitions and operational conditions. The first impression suggests its assimilation to an exclusively formal logic, but soon it becomes clear that its scope is far superior, since the all systems aims at the knowledge of reality. In fact, Le Myésier starts his introduction describing what has become known as the "figure of the act of Being" , which, rigorously corresponds to the whole Being as perceived by the human spirit: a sphere in which center the man is situated and from which, in concentric circles, appears the sensible real being, after this, a zone representing all we can grasp with the imagination and, finally, the spiritual world; indeed, the understanding , confirms Le Myésier, may have more form, act, nature and being, than the corporal nature, it reaches spiritual substances. What may be called the subject of the lulian Ars is, therefore, the intelligible Being. Its form, the real truth. It is implicit in its operation that the Being is intelligible and that it may be reached by the human understanding. In the same way as a healthy eye sees the body in front of it, mentions Le Myésier, a healthy understanding, in a healthy body, will necessarily understand, and cannot but understand, the truth of its object - the propositiones per se notae - , if this object is present in him. The Ars seeks, therefore, to conclude veritable propositions. He emphasizes, however, that the truth of the propositions depends on the real truth of the object outside the mind and that it is with the latter - the truth of the being - that the Art is concerned. The theory of knowledge included
in the Ars is, therefore, realistic. It could be summarized in the following
few words: what is in the human understanding is not the thing but a
resemblance or intelligible What calls our attention in the "Figure of the Being" is the very fact that it is entirely constructed on the Being. To be even more concrete, on the act of Being. The creatures descend from God following an order of resemblance, from the greatest to the minor. From the more subtle, pure and glittering to the less subtle, pure and glittering until we reach the body. Llull, in no way, builds an universe of essences. As a real philosopher he wants to know the concrete empirical being. Thus, he admires the esse mundi, where he introduces all possible beings . It is over this universe of real verities, which extends itself from God down to the most insignificant bodies, that the human spirit will spread itself in its eagerness to know. Why should we be admired that the rational man wants to know all these things with his utmost fervor ? . According to Llull, everything created is initiated and made from the most universal principles - kindness, greatness, duration, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory - which can be found in God in a divine way, constituting his Pure Act of Being. However, one should distinguish the differences not only between each of these principles as compared to the others but also between each one of them and their intrinsic and natural acts . Here Llull reveals to us his reflection on the intrinsic nature of the act as he describes the so called correlatives of the act or its triple internal constitution . Thus, it is not possible for an act of kindness to happen without the kindnificative, the kindnificatable and the kindnificate. Well then, every created being participates on the Being through the intrinsic and natural acts of these principles - in God called Dignities or attributes - through which act everything that is it is found in a prime or second act . In addition to these universal principles, Llull introduces other principles, also most general and necessary, which will integrate every being without exception, principles without which nothing could be truly in act. Thus, besides the "difference" between the principles and their operation referred to above, the mallorquin indicates the "agreement" between all principles, one in relation to the others, between the principles and their mutual acts and respective influxes ; the "disagreement" which appears when the "agreement" is destroyed ; the very "principle" which necessarily initiates what is initiated ; the "mean" through which the principle reaches its end and perfection, from which it follows that the end reason must also be a necessary principle. Llull classifies the principle which tends to an end not yet possessed as a minor principle. For this reason, there will be in the things the principles of "majority", "equality" and "minority", without which there could not exist either order, peace and tranquillity, or things moved from minor to major, but only confusion and separation e, therefore, lack of knowledge and operation . The Ars system includes in this way a constellation of beings in act, as substances, accidents, beings of reason, instrumental, artificial and possible beings, with all their possible immanent and transient operations, all of them initiated by the above mentioned principles. This cognoscitive realism will be always present in the operation of the mechanism of the Ars: meaning presupposes understanding and understanding always presupposes being. In other words, understanding depends on the thing and meaning depends on the understand and understanding. It will be always necessary also to express the concepts of the mind through voices expressing the most intimate reality of the object and, at the same time, what it is said by the names. In what follows, nine groups, or ambits, are defined in which it can be addressed all human doubts or ignorance: God, angel, heaven, man, the world of imagination, the sensitive world, the vegetable world, the elementary world and the artificial world. These domains cover all possibilities of human error and action . Finally, it should be noticed concerning the beings implicated in these domains, it is possible to doubt in nine different ways: if it is, what it is, of what it is, why it is, how much it is, which it is, where it is, when it is, in which way it is and with what it is. Through these questions, and always obeying the definitions, rules and conditions described in the Ars, Llull offers a solid system in support of human thought. After this brief presentation of the Ars, and before going into the description of its operation, two short observations are appropriate. First of all, one should mention that lulian Llull is not a logic but the assemblage of all logic's. Indeed, considering all being from the point of view of the act of being, Llull achieves his unity. Only this perspective, the perspective of the act, allows a transcendental unity. It should be noticed that not only the physics and metaphysics forms are acts ; the concepts and words are also acts. Well then, every act in the measure that it is an act, it is intelligible and consequently logic. Therefore, beyond the logic of the concepts, there will be a logic of the words and a logic for each physic or metaphysic being. One is God's logic and another man's logic ; another, of the animals, and so forth. This is due to the fact that it exists different levels of actualities in the universe of the beings. Aristotle which attributed to the substance more actuality than to the accident, knew this, and for this reason he put the unity of the categories , in a different act, exterior to them, the act of judgment In the judgment we think simultaneously about the subject and the predicate . In the aristotelism, therefore, it is the act of being of the thought that definitely unifies. Llull, on the contrary, unifies all beings under the perspective of the act of being, since, in fact, it corresponds to the act the being own sense. Aristotle knew perfectly well that the act of being of the judgment corresponded to a different meaning of being, a meaning incapable to "manifest that any nature of being is outside the mind" . For this reason the act of being of the thought "does not allow to consider the causes and principles of the being as a being" . It is precisely this obstacle that Llull overcomes as he constructs a logic of the act that considers the being starting from its principles . Having this objective, the Llull will have to be based on the intentiones primae or the mental sins of external realities and, in the end, it will be a Logic as well as a Metaphysics. In the first chapter of the Introductoria Artis demonstrativae , Llull confirms this as he declares: "Metaphysics considers thing that are outside the spirit whistle it is convenient in the reason of being. Logic however considers these things according to the being that they have in the spirit, since it deals with certain intentions we derive from intelligible things, such as, gender, species and others similar and also from those things which constitute acts of the mind, such as syllogisms, consequences and so on. However, this Art, as supreme among all human science, considers the being from this or that mode indifferently" . The Ars is thus the logic of logics, a prime logic of acts, a Logos, which covers all the Being, since the Being, as the act, is intelligible . In the second place, it is appropriate to indicate that the mechanism of the Ars is, at the same time, inventive and demonstrative. The first designation of the Llull was Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (ca. 1274) and at that time it was considered "inventive" a logic based on the Topics of Aristotle, in other words, a logic of arguments which are probable but not demonstrable . A dialectic. In fact, the method of the Ars is dialectic: it teaches to propose questions and to solve them by the disclosure of several compound propositions - the consequentiae materiales bonae simpliciter - of different kinds, among which the artist will have to choose one, based on the rules of inference of the prepositional logic. It so happens, however, that the argumentative part of the Ars is based, as we have already seen, on the prime intentions, and this is the main difference between the Ars and the Aristotle's Topics. The Llull makes it possible to analyze
the being from its principles. The matter of the argumentation are the
principles in God, or the several levels of their combination in the
creatures, so it covers all the contents of the thought, may even included
contents of faith . The form through which this matter is worked is
given by the second group of principles - difference, equality, contrary,
beginning, middle and end, and equality, majority and minority - acting
as conditions of veracity. The method is thus From this derives two import consequences: in the first place, the propositions the artist may extract are infinite. The mallorquin states: "Thus, through this Art we may find infinite relationships, and accordingly we may form several propositions" . In the second place the relationships that are discovered are real relationships between existent things and thus may confer real veracity to the inferences, which does not happen with the Aristotelian topics since, constructed over common notions, these topics apply between things that may not have any relationship. The lulian topic has a superior epistemological dignity , its arguments are necessary, and, therefore, demonstrative. In the first Arts, Llull strengthened his dialectics arguments with analogies taken from the physics as was known at his time - the examples, semblances or exemplis - but, as he realize the demonstrative power of his dialectics, he abandons this practice, being aware of the fact that acts at corporal level are only figures of metaphysic acts. His Art examines the acts at the level of his principles: for this reason he maintains the classical demonstrations, the propter quid and the quia, and develops the demonstration per aequiparantiam, in his opinion, the most demonstrative of all, since it is based on congruency arguments from principles constitutive of the real, whereas the principles from which the other two Aristotelian demonstrations start, are the common notions of what is known as causes, in the first case, and as consequences, in the second case. The operation of the lulian Ars Once the definite version of the Ars was finished in 1308, the Ars generalis et ultima, Llull put together a series of opuscules dedicated to the application of the Art. It should be particularly pointed out the Liber de lumine, the Liber de regionibus sanitatis et infirmitatis, the Ars de iure, the Liber de intellectu, the Liber de voluntate and the Liber de memoria. Finally, in his Lectura Artis, quae intitulata est brevis practica tabulae generalis , he shows how the artistic system developed by him can be applied to all branches of knowledge . Let us take, for instance, Lull's investigation on understanding in his Liber de intellectu. In the first distinction, Llull presents the conceptual tools the artist will use. He starts describing nine groups of combinations of the most general principles constitutive of the being of the understanding and, in sequence, he puts the conditions that derive from the comparison of these groups between themselves. It immediately appears the conditioning exercised by the will and the memory on the understanding beyond those imposed by its own nature which consists in being always inquisitive. Other conditionings of the intellectual acts come from the necessity to reduce to an explanation by the principles of the aspects implicated in its objects: the efficient and formal causes to its beginning and end, the nothingness to the minority, the sin to the privation, the malice as opposed to goodness, the foolishness to greatness, God to eternity, light to wisdom, etc. The Art does not operate by itself but it is a subsidy to the artist who has to formulate the questions and answer them. Hence, it becomes necessary to learn the definitions of the principles. With the definitions at hand, the artist has at his disposal ten rules that summarize all the motives of a doubt, ©"ready mentioned above - if it is, what it is, of what it is, why it is, how much it is, which it is, where it is, when it is, in which way it is and with what it is - . Some of these questions may have sub-species ; for instance, the question "of what is the understanding" may have two meanings: to the first meaning one may answer by saying that it is not made of other ; the second sub-specie refers to its constitution by the co-essential principles - the correlated - and answering by saying that the understanding is constituted by its intellective, its intelligible and its understand. In the second distinction, Llull, following the definitions of the principles, combines four of them, always taken from two groups and develops the universal and necessary precepts which will be applies to the rules and questions. Thus, for instance, combining the first and fourth group, he deduces the following precept: "If kindness is the being in the reason from which the good acts on the goodness; and will is the being in the reason from which such acting is desirable ; and act without distinguishing is impossible ; and not even goodwill without this action can remain tranquil; it follows that the goodness acts on the desired and tranquil good, under the assumption, however, that it is not hindered. The understanding is necessarily compelled to understand this, and against this cannot understand" . This precept, and others similar, have to be put in contrast against the conditions for understanding, which are ten. Understanding is diffusive, since it multiplies its resemblance rendering things intelligible ; it is composite since it composes specie with specie ; it is causative since it creates the species ; it is dispositive as it disposes the will to loving and the memory to remembering, etc, etc. Putting the precepts together , the conditions of the understanding and the principles, the artist will be in condition to apply the rules and questions and develop from the complete set, innumerable propositions or questions contained in it. The propositions that obey the precepts and conditions have to be accepted as truth ; those which do not, have to be rejected. The application of the rules is long and detailed since it contemplates every case and conditions of the understanding.. For instance, when one asks about the "possibility" of the act of understanding, it clarifies that one has always to analyze the greatness of the intelligible act as a function of the greater intelligibility, the greater memory and the greater love of the will. And the same is done in relation to the truthfulness of its act and to the other principles. Besides, it is also pertinent to combine questions, so that in the end it results in an enormous group of ways to find answers to the most diversified questions , of the type "how does the understanding dispose itself to understand the true and the false ?", "why is the understanding formal ?", " will and memory are servants of the understanding ?", "why does the understanding reach God ?", and in a similar manner up to 275 questions are listed and solved in the final part of the Liber de intellectu. One should not be surprised by the complexity of the lulian Llull. Intending to grasp the differences of the being in the level of the real, Llull does not consider sufficient the apprehension of the conceptual differences of the being thought, which are the limits of Aristotelian logic. In other words, we could say that both the Aristotelian logic and lulian Llull are based on the same psychology , the latter tries to get closer and closer to the real being from its principles and causes of the act , the co-relatives of the act. Transcendence and immanence in the lulian Art At this point of our work on the lulian Llull we must go into the intricate problem of the relationships between being and thinking. As the Llull is a universal logic based in the act of being of all beings, the movement which is implicit in this act, rises an important question. In the lulian Llull, thinking is based on the being, or is it the being that is based on thinking, as all the immanentisms support ? To answer this question it is good to remember that the main immanentist theses does not limit itself to identifying being and thinking, as Parménides did. The eleata was totally conscious about the impossibility of an act of thinking without an object thought ; however, due to the difficulty he found in understanding the being of the sensible things, he concluded that the being of the sensible things in a certain sense, is not; and, from this conclusion, he directed his attention to the activity of thinking, eliminating the importance of the object thought, and opening the path for the subsequent immanentism. From Descartes onwards, the identification between being and thinking will end by losing its central nucleus - that which still allowed to reach a solution for the problem of the relationship between thinking and reality -, due to the fact that the Cartesian immanentism was based in a thought empty of any content. It was conceived, for the first time, a thinking activity without any object, and this attitude will lead necessarily to a statement, in a first instance, that the being is given by the thinking, and, finally, that nothing has value, which is coherent, since one begun from nothing. Quite different is the lulian metaphysics. According to Llull, thinking will always be included in the being and will always have a content. Thought is the proper act of the intelligent being. Let us remember again that nothing would be in act if it were not through the acts of the most general principles and it is through the path of the principles that proceeds the lulian investigation. What things are in reality, the value of the things, will be given, following the Llull, by their constitutive principles. We will know the value of the beings as we discover their relationships with the whole, above all their relationships with the personal beings, and chiefly with God, in whom these principles are infinitely actual and identify themselves with his Essence . Lulian metaphysics is a metaphysics of acts and co-actualities, and in Llull human thought, being also an act - the act of the intelligent being -, will be always subsidiary to the concrete being. In the different historical immanentisms the verum is the basis of the ens, whistle in the realisms, the ens is the basis for the verum and the bonum. What has Llull to tell us on this matter ? In the summer of 1300, in his birthplace of Mallorca, the catalan philosopher finished his Principia Philosophie which had the objective to displaying the philosophical principles which could be derived through his Ars method. His speech, extremely systematic as usually, consists of an extensive analysis of the being. He starts with reflections about the being as a being, and, with the help of the Ars, obtains innumerable true and necessary conclusions. In sequence, his method takes him to investigate the being through binary inquiries of the type being and non-being, possible and impossible being, true and false being, good and bad being, and so on. It is evident the realism of the reasoning. Not only implicit but explicit. When it is asked, for instance, about the possibility of a non-being to be in any way a true being, he answers by saying no since no non-being is a being outside the thought, and the non-being inside the thought is only a resemblance of a real being. He clearly affirms the reality of the extra-mental being and says that the non-being is built only by the thought . In any way, the basic realism of the Ars has to be well understood. It is a method of approximation to the acts of the beings, which, being acts, are intelligible. But by intelligible one should not understand conceptualizable. Our understanding reaches the acts of the beings but does not posses them. The understanding only possesses the forms with which the act always manifests itself; however, these thought forms are in the understanding through its own act of knowing; the being of what is known whistle known is the being of knowing. Well then, to know the beings is not knowing only their forms ; it is also to know their being, and to this will the Ars address itself. But the being, we repeat, is not conceptualizable. The forms close the being but not the act of being. However, the identity of the ens does not derive from the form, but from the being. Llull knows this and also knows that the mechanism of the Llull only approximates to this identity of the being in itself, without ever possessing all its richness obviously, since the being of the concrete ens is activity. Thus, it is proper to say that the forms thought, hiding the active character of the being, exercise a limiting role to the knowledge, and, from this, the mechanism of the Ars presents itself as a subsidiary to knowledge, as it tries do approximate itself to real truth of the concrete ens, through the knowledge of its act. Therefore, Llull with his Llull,
offers us a tool to help penetrating into the act of the concrete ens.
As we have just seen, the mechanism of the Llull supposes the realism
and always starts in the real. Nevertheless, some authors have seen
in the lulian "figure of the ens", and in the Llull, a system
close to the Perhaps the best way to demonstrate what was said in the previous paragraphs, is to present the lulian demonstration of the existence of only one God. His argumentation will be another example of the operation of the universal principles constitutive of the act, in which the mallorquin master always relies upon. First of all, starting from the real: "There is real finite goodness. Therefore, some goodness should be by itself. Such goodness will be in superlative degree, since there will be no other, of its gender, above it, and also because it fulfills every other goodness that are not by themselves". In this way, in a single step, Llull rises from the imperfect goodness, the goodness that cannot be by itself, to the reality of the most perfect goodness, the subsistent goodness. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the catalan master does not derive the existence of God from his essence, as if the former were an additional perfection, necessary perfection, of his infinite essence, which is the procedure adopted by ontologists and immanentists rationalists. On the contrary, Llull follows the avicenian procedure that conducts directly from the limited perfection to its cause and that is based in the following principle: every essential perfection or property that is found in minority or a deficient state, i.e., not accomplishing the full amplitude of which it is capable, is necessarily caused ab extrinseco by another which is the perfection as such . Therefore, "some goodness will have to be by itself." Following this, Llull demonstrates the impossibility of the non-existence of this summa goodness: "if, however, this goodness in superlative degree does not exist, its opposite is ; and deprived from it, all other goodness are imperfect. Since this is impossible, the summa goodness is real." And, finally explains that "the reason for this is the same optimum ens who produces the optimum. Without him, goodness neither would be summa nor would remain in a superlative degree" . It is the optimum ens, whom is the Being by himself, who allows us to jump from the imperfect to the perfect goodness. In this argument, it becomes patent the theses of the goodness of the being that impregnates all lulian work. Listen to these other words by the mallorquin: "if God is, his being is good, great and eternal. If God is truth, he is in a greater reality of goodness, greatness and eternity... It is convenient that God's goodness be great, so great that no greater one can exist, since if it could, it would be great in potency but small in act" . It is important to notice the argumentation based on the convenience of the principles between themselves. In a similar way, he will demonstrate, based on God's goodness, his unity and his remaining in the simplicity of his perfection : " It is convenient that God's goodness be great, so great that no greater one can exist, since if it could, it would be great in potency but small in act, which smallness would be against the greatness and against the goodness and against the other forms, and this opposition is impossible. God's goodness is, therefore, so great that it cannot be surpassed and the greatest goodness that can exist is to be one which God is, in such way that another god does not posses a different goodness, and so the goodness be infinite in greatness, infinity that consists in being one and not several. If there were several gods, it would not be sufficient one of them to be end in itself of his forms. The goodness of a god, complete and finalized, would not rest in its greatness, since there would be another greatness: that of another god. The same would happen with the greatness, that would not rest in the goodness, since there would be another divine goodness; and thus any god would not have his end in himself or in any other god, since having his end in another god he would not be god. The forms, thus, of each of these gods would find themselves empty of any ending, emptiness that would be impossible. Therefore, there is one God, and not several, in whose God each one of his forms obtain rest, being each one in him, in an infinite mode and being he himself infinite and without defect. " It should be noticed that Llull differentiates forms in God, although he states constantly that God is pure act of being. This is due to the fact that the act, as mentioned previously , embraces differences, and theses differences are exactly those the Llull intends to render apparent. The extended citation we have just made, besides putting in evidence Lull's realism, demonstrate that lulian metaphysics is not a onto-theo-logy because it does not engulf God and the faith in human realities, as all the immanentisms do. Far from enclosing God in a concept - concept of a supreme ens, a priori established by the human thought -, the God reached by Llull is the transcendental Being. The onto-theo-logy does not surpass the ens ; Llull, besides putting the act of being as fundament of the ens, reaches the fundament of this act as he reaches the pure Act of Being. Therefore, nothing like immanence
in lulian Llull. Transcendence, yes. One captures the transcendence
because the Supreme Act of Being, being an act, can be reached by human
understanding. But not possessed. In any case, if we call immanence
that operation which effect or term is interior to the subject which
acts, lulian Llull teaches us that, since the being is the foundation
of knowing, the more the man is rooted in the Being and in the cause
of the Being, more immanents will be his acts; i.é., his acts
of knowing and loving will approximate more to the possession of their
ends. But in this case we are already talking about the authentic immanence
, that in which the I , putting himself in God - the always present
to be in God of the lulian moral -, becomes more and more aware of the
responsibility of his choices, becoming beginning, means and end of
his acts . ____________________________________
2 It consists of a reduced version of the Arts Course as delivered
at the Universities of Paris and Tolosa, around 1.300. For a complete
description of its contents, cf. J.N. HILLGART, Ramon Llull and Lullism
in Fourteenth-Century France (Oxford 1971), as well as the brief summary
of the same HILLGART in Lulian Studies XVI (1972), 113-23. For a brief
description of the manuscript, cf. ROL V, 216-30. 3 Cf. Breviculum, Plate XI, "Domine, moderni gaudent brevitate considerabilium; ideo iam praeceptum est mihi, prout est possibile bono modo, actuum librorum vestrorum abreviare sententias, intelectu tamen integras, atque alleviare studium et fatigationem oculorum, confusionem significatorum alphabeti demonstrativae Artis et sexdecim eiusdem Artis figuras, quae confundunt intellectum." p. 45 4 Cf. HILLGART, Lulian Studies XVI(1972), 116. Prof. Anthony BONNER, in his review of the Breviculum in SL XXXI(1991) p. 83-87 declares that the reading would become mandatory for those wishing to analyze and understand the mental structure constructed by LLULL. 5 F. VAN STEENBERGHEN declares that LLULL was the firs to utilize the term "averroísts" not only for those who maintained the unity of the acting intellect but also for all the defenders of the errors condemned , in 1277 by the bishop TEMPIER. Cf. Histoire de l'Église depuis les origines jusqu'a nos jours, Bloud & Gay 1951, p. 316. 6 LE MYÉSIER had the logic of OCKHAM, of John BURIDANO, of Gualterio de BRULEIGH, etc. In the Pars antecedens do Electorium he included the Treatise on the Soul's potencies, de Jean de la ROCHELLE, a summary of the Physics of ARISTOTLE made by the dominican Jean QUIDORT and the Comments of AVERRÓIS to the same work, the Abbreviation of the Metaphysics of ARISTOTLE made by the franciscan Gonzalo HISPANUS and, finally, the Errores philosophorum of Egídio ROMANO. Cf. HILLGART, Lullian Studies XVI(1972), 115 and note 12. 7 Cf. Fernando Domínguez REBOIRAS, Introduccion, ROL vol. 19, Brepols, 1993, p. 40. 8 The bibliography on the lulian is already very extended. Among other papers it is possible to benefit from consulting Robert PRING-MILL, The Lullian 'Art of Findig Truth': A Medieval System of Enquiry, Catalan Review, IV (1990) 55-74; Armand LLINARÈS, Sens et portée de l'Ars Generalis ultima de Lulle, in "Studia Historica et Philologica in honorem M. Batllori", Rome 1984, 851-866. 9 Cf. Breviculum, Pars Dispositiva, p. 53-54. 10 Cf. id, id., p. 56, lines 257-260. 11 That knowledge is expressive is confirmed by the fact that it is lecturing or writing that we learn the most. Concerning the doctrine of knowledge as an expressive and locutive act the work of exceptional value and significance of Francesc CANALS Vidal, Sobre la esencia del conocimiento, Promociones Publicaciones Universitarias, Barcelona 1987, may be consulted. 12 Cf. Breviculum, Pars Dispositiva , p. 56, lines 274-275. 13 Cf. id, id., p. 57, lines 417-428 e p. 60, line 626. 14 Cf. id, id., p. 60, line614-616. 15 With this statement of the difference between the principle and its act, LLULL separates himself definitely, from the beginning, from all philosophies that identify being and act. These attitudes - in which we include all the philosophies of action, german idealism and MOUNIER personalism - confer a primacy to the dynamic as opposed to the entity, in such a way that the being would accomplish himself in some way through its own activity.. Some of them even conceive the absolute as resulting from the to-be . Nothing farther than the lulian although At the beginning, defining the universal principles, LLULL starts by declaring that valuable in itself is the self perfection of each principle, and it is precisely this perfection that explains the dynamism of its communication. LLULL distinguishes, therefore, the principle and its acts, and basis the latter on the former. 16 LE MYÉSIER clarifies that ARISTOTLE already stated that everything is triple and is divided in three dimensions, Cf. De Caelo et Mundo, I i, (268a 7-15) and that the pitagorians alleged that everything insinuated a triple composition: the end, the means and the beginning. Cf. Breviculum, Pars Dispositiva, p. 60, lines 654-665. 17 Cf. id, id., p. 65, lines 1070-1074. 18 Cf. id, id., p. 66, lines 1086-1137. 19 Cf. id, id., p. 66-67, lines 1153-1161. 20 The aristotelian categories, that classify the ens in different groups and genders, were established from the predicative structure of the language. For this part of the aristotelian categories and their unification the excellent book by Jesus de GARAY, Los sentidos de la forma en Aristóteles, Eunsa 1987, p.101, can be seen. 21 In the judgment "the apple is green" the actuality of "apple" is greater than that of "green", although we unify them in the judgment. The truth of the proposition depends, however, on the truth of the real ens, which rests over its act of being. This real truth is what Llull intends to reveal with the mechanisms of the Art. 22 Cf. Met., VI-4, 1028a 1-2: "Causa enim huius quidem indefinita, illius vero mentis aliqua passio, et utraque circa reliquum genus entis, et non extra ostendunt entem aliquam naturam entis." 23 Cf. Met., XI-8, 1065a 23-24: "Quod autem ut vere ens, et secundum accidens, hoc quidem est in complexione mentis et passio in hac: propter quo§+circa sic quidem ens, non quaeruntur principia."; Id., VI-4, 1028a 3-4: "Perscrutanda vero sunt ipsius entis causae et principia, inquantum ens"; 24 To examine the compatibility aristotelian logic and lulian Ars
is a different matter. In fact, they do not seem compatible, since the
former looks for the differences between forms which, being participated
by several ens, are unified by the understanding in the concept; while
the latter tries to reach the differences and determinations of acts,
which are distinct from differences that happen between ideas. The ideas
are the forms thought, and they present themselves always equal. The
differences in the reality are differences between movements and activities.
Therefore, they do not coincide. 25 Cf. MOG III, ii, 1 (55), cited by J. M. Ruiz SIMON, "Quomodo est haec ars inventiva"(L'art de Llull i la dialèctica escolàstica), Studia Luliana 33 (1993), 77-98 26 "Metaphysica enim considerat res, quae sunt extra animam, prout conveniunt in ratione entis: Logica autem considerat res secundum esse, quod habet in anima, quia tractat de quibusdam intentionibus, quae consequuntur esse rerum intelligibilium, scilicet de genere, specie & talibus, & de iis, quae consistunt in actu rationes, scilicet de syllogismo, consequentia & talibus; sed haec Ars tanquam suprema omnium humanarum Scientiarum indifferenter respicit ens secundum istum modum & scundum illum." Introductio Artis demonstrative, MOG III, ii, 1 (55), cited by SIMON, op. cit. p. 95. 27 The act is not the form, it is better to say the form is form by
the act. The forms found in the ens constitute the determinations present
in them. They are intelligible but the act that constitute them is intelligible
too: "El ser es lo innombrable, lo inconceptualizable; pero no
porque sea irracional, sino porque el nombre o la idea no son lo único
inteligible. La lógica de las palabras o la lógica de
ideas no son las únicas lógicas. La lógica de los
actos humanos, p. ej., no es lógica de nombres ni de ideas, pero
es lógica. 28 ARISTOTLE presents his demonstrative logic in his Analitics, in the Firts and Seconds Analitics. 29 With the Art the artist can treat themes related to faith, if so he wishes; but when contemplated, these themes will go into the Art always as contents, never as arguments.. One of the greatest originality of lulian work consists in the almost total absence of authoritative arguments, including the Holly Scriptures. About this matter, cf. Anthony BONNER, A "arte" luliana como autoridade alternativa, VERITAS v. 41, 163 (1996) 457-472. 30 "Igitur per hanc Artem possumus invenire infinitas habitudinies, & secundum eas formare diversas propositiones", Introductio Artis demonstrative, MOG III, ii, 33 (87), cited by SIMON, op. cit. p. 85. 31 The critical edition of them all was puclished in the vol. XX of the ROL, in the collection Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol CXIII, Brepols. 1995. 32 It is LLULL in his last phase, Nikolaus von KUES was enthusiastic about, to the point of having in his private library more than eighty woks of the mallorquin. Below, articles are cited dealing with the relationship between Nikolaus von KUES and Raymond LLULL cf. HAUBST , Zu dem Aufsatz von Rudolf Haubst "Der Junge Cusanus war im Jahre 1428 zu Handschriften-Sudien in Paris": Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 15 (1980) 198-193; Eusebi COLOMER, id: Mitteilungen und Forscungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gessellschaft 15 (1982) 57-70; Id., Nikolaus von Kues und Raimund Llull. Aus Handschriften der Kueser Bibliothek, Berlin 1961: Id., Noves dades entorn del 'Lul-lisme' de Nicolau de Cusa, Estudio Lulianos 25 (1981-3), 67-81; Ramon Llull i Nicolau de Cusa (A la llum dels manuscrits lul-lians de la Biblioteca cusana), Estudios Lulianos 4 (1960), 129-150; PINDL-BÜCHEL, THEODOR, Nicolas of Cusa's "Extractum ex libris meditacionum Raymundi" ik the Manuscript Transmission of Ramon Llull's latin Liber contemplationis: Preliminaries to a Critical Edition, Catalan Review 4 (1990), 299-322; F. Erhard-Wolfram PLATZECK, Observaciones del P. Antonio Raimundo Pascual, O. Cist., sobre lulistas alemanes, Revista Española de Teologia, I (1940-41), 731 -765 e id., II (1942), 257-324; Fernando Domíngues REBOIRAS, Nicolás de Cusa y las colecciones lulianas de París. Notas al códice 83 de la biblioteca del St. Nikolaus-Hospital en Bernakastel-Kues, Revista Catalana de Teologia, XIX (1994) 129-139. 33 Liber de intellectu, II, i , p. 200 lines 44- 50. 34 In the aristotelian-tomist logic the mere apprehension takes us to the levels of the being. In the abstraction we obtain an essence which we see realized by the ens we know. After that, through many judgments, we attribute to the same ens different formalities. Llull maintains the same mechanism - abstraction of the intelligible species, activity of the acting understanding, etc. - but, at the same time, tries to capture directly the act of being of the known ens through a meticulous exam of the agreement of the principles of the act.. 35 "Las diferencias del logos son indisolubles del ser como acto. No cabe pensar - aunque sí imaginar - un ser enteramente indiferenciado. El ser de lo real en cuanto real no es el género máximamente indeterminado carente de formalidad. De acuerdo: el ser no es una determinación más, sino algo que trasciende las determinaciones; pero tal determinación no comporta ausencia de diferencias. Si ser no es "algo" , ser no es nada. Hay que ser sin embargo prudente con la interpretación del "algo": "algo" aquí no es sólo una palabra o idea, sino también, y ante todo movimiento y actividad: por eso, las diferencias de la realidad no son tampoco primariamente diferencias de palabras o de ideas, sino en primer lugar de movimientos y actividades." Jesus de GARAY, op.cit, p.151 and read again note 24 of this paper. 36 "Lo que vale en las criaturas o fuera de ellas no tiene nada que ver con la psicología. Porque valor no es valorar. El juicio o la inteligencia valoran; pero esta palabra es analógica, porque lo que realmente hace el juicio es estimar. Pero el valor en sí mismo es una perfección divina en sentido luliano. De aquí que una cosa vale, prescindiendo de que se le reconozca o no este valor, porque en cada ser urgen las ordenaciones eternas, que no pueden dejar de estar en concordancia con las perfecciones divinas. De aquí que cuando el bienaventurado maestro aprecia el valor esencial de las Emperatrices divinas en el seno de la Divinidad y en sus semejanzas, no trata de motivos psicológicos, sino que designa, con un sentido realista, unas formas determinadas e inconfundibles de realidad. Así, dice: "Divina Bondad y creada bondad participan en semejanza", "Cuanto vale, vale en Dios". Y "los valores valen más en sí mismos que fuera"; "toda belleza vale más dentro que fuera.", em Francisco SUREDA Blanes, La simbología en el pensamiento filosófico luliano, Revista de Teologia, III (1944) ns. 10-11, p. 499. LLULL was the first to utilize the word value in the sense it has nowadays.. For this matter, cf. P. Erhardus W. PLATZECK, De valore ad mentem Beati Raimundi Lulli, Antonianum, XXX (1955) Fasc. 2, p. 151-184. 37 LLULL had in mind to defend the agreement between philosophy and theology, cf. Principia Philosophiae, ROL XIX, opus 86, Introducción by Fernando Dominguez REBOIRAS, Brepols 1993, p. 5. 38 "Utrum aliquod non ens possit esse per aliquem modum ens reale? Resp. Si non ens est in anima similitudo entis realis, omne ens, quod est extra animam, est ens reale. - Supposito, quod non esset intellectus: utrum non ens foret possibile? Resp. Si extra intellectum nullum non ens est ens, solus intellectus facit non ens", Principia Philosophiae, p. 161-2 e 241. The primacy of the real ens over the ideal ens - the non-ens, or the no-thing, constructed by the mind - which is revealed in these citations put LLULL in direct opposition to HEGEL, for whom the being as idea, or the being in its state of reflection as the non-being, had absolute priority.. 39 Thus E. COLOMER affirms that "pocos sistemas medievales se han acercado tanto como el de Llull al ideal platónico y hegeliano de una lógica que sea a la vez ontología." cf. Miscellanea Mediaevalia, t. 2, Berlin 1963, 582-588, p. 582. cited by Fernando Domínguez REBOIRAS, ROL XIX, BrepoÜ, 1993, Introducción in addition to this procedure a Principia Philosophiae, p. 14 note 25. 40 Tomás de AQUINO, in addition to this procedure, utilized the platonic (multiplicity is caused by unity) and the aristotelian (it is said that a perfection is realized in different degrees in reference to a maximum), to demonstrate God's existence in the fourth route. Cf. Francisco P. MUÑIZ, La <<quarta via>> de Santo Tomás para demostrar la existencia de Dios, Revista de Filosofia, 10-11(1944), p.417-422. 41 Cf. Esteve JAULENT, A demonstração por equiparação de Raimundo Lúlio (Ramon Llull), em "Lógica e Linguagem na Idade Média", org. Luis A. De BONI, Edipucrs 1995, p. 157-158 42 Cf. "Bonitas est. Et quaedam bonitas est propter se ipsam. Et talis bonitas est in superlativo gradu, eo quod non habet aliquid, quod sit de suo genere, supra se, et quia etiam perficit omnes alias bonitates, quarum nulla propter se ipsam est. Et si talis bonitas non est, suum oppositum est; et ipsa privata, omnes aliae bonitates sunt imperfectae. Et quia hoc est impossibile, idcirco ipsa summa bonitas est. Quae est ratio ipsi enti optimo, quod producat optimum.Aliter ipsa bonitas non esset summa et in superlativo gradu permanens." Metaphysica nova et compendiosa, III dist., in ROL VI, op. 156, p.11. 43 De les flors del Arbre apostolical, 1 e 2, ORL, XII, p. 42s. re 47, cited by Francesc CANALS Vidal, La demonstración de la Trinidad en Ramon Llull, Estudios Lulianos, 25 (1980) p.8 44 Cf. Francesc CANALS Vidal, id. p.12-13 45 Arbre de Ciència, De les flors del Arbre Apostolical, 2. De la unitat de Déu, XII ORL, p. 46 e 47-8, cited by Francesc CANALS Vidal, id. p.13. 46 See note nm. 35. 47 As very well says Eudald FORMENT, the onto-theo-logia installs itself in the ens and forgets the being, cf. E. FORMENT, El problema de Dios en la metafísica, Promociones Publicaciones Universitarias, Barcelona 1986, p. 195. 48 Cf. Andrea DALLEDONNE, Cenni sul pensiero e sull'opera del padre Cornelio Fabro, in "Cornelio Fabro pensatore universale", Andrea DALLEDONNE i Rosa GOGLIA, Frosinone, 1996, p. 48. "All'immanentismo progressistico si deve, allora, opporre l'<autentica immanenza> la quale 'é ... nel possesso inalienabile della liberta dell'io che opera il movimento doppio quello dell'immanenza nella fondazione sull'assoluto e quello dell'immanenza nella crescente consapevolezza che l'io ha nella responsabilità delle proprie scelte. Una immanenza in cui l'io é principio, medio e fine, perché collocato nell'infinito'".
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