1. See S. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (London and New
Anselm on modality
Partial possibilities are not genuine possibilities because they cannot be actualized as such. Anselm also seems to think that a full possibility is the sum of partial possibilities. He does not explain how to keep full potency or possibility and actuality separate. In De Casu
Diaboli Anselm writes that what is particularly needed for an act of will, in addition to the ability to will, is the act of using the ability.
This is not very helpful.63
Anselm's difficulties with partial and full potencies become clear in his discussion of sin and grace. He supposes that men have the ability to maintain uprightness of will for its own sake, although they cannot use this ability because of Adam's fall. When Anselm says that men are free not to sin, his assertion reflects a partial possibility founded on the presence of a power in a person, and when he says that they cannot be without sin, this impossibility is based on the absence of a further component power of an upright life. Anselm could consider the presence of a power in a subject as sufficient for calling an action possible for the subject and to claim, at the same time, that the absence of another partial potency is sufficient for calling the action impossible.64 Anselm's view of proper possibility as a direct power does not qualify the thought of the necessity of the present, since an efficient power as such is only a partial possibility.65
The temporal necessity of the present is qualified by the idea that all created things can be thought not to exist at any time.66 This is in accordance with Augustine's view of atemporal divine alternatives, but Anselm did not systematically apply this approach in his discussions of the meanings of modal terms. Anselm sticks to the idea of capability as the basic modal notion and the distinction between proper and improper modalities. This was too narrow a basis for modal semantics, as shown by the problems associated with the question about full and partial possibilities and also by some artificial constructions of the meaning of modal statements. notes 1.
See S. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); S. Knuuttila, "Duns Scotus and the Foundations of Logical Modalities," in L. Honnefelder, R. Wood, and M. Dreyer
(eds.), John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics (Leiden: Brill, 1996); H. Lagerlund, Modal Syllogistics in the Middle Ages (Leiden, Brill,
2000).
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simo knuuttila 2. See Commentarium in librum Aristotelis Perihermeneias i–ii (henceforth, In Periherm.), ed. C. Meiser (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877–80), 2, 453.8–
455.19.
3. In Periherm. 2, 236.5–18; cf. 243.13–15.
4. In Periherm. 2, 237.1–9; cf. 1, 120.7–121.16.
5. For Boethius's modal conceptions, see Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 45–62.
6. In Periherm. 1, 200.27–201.3; 2, 237.1–5; 239.3–6.
7. In Periherm. 1, 124.30–125.14.
8. In Periherm. 1, 121.20; 2, 241.7–243.27.
9. In Periherm. 2, 241.10–13. In Prior Analytics 1.13 (32a18–20) Aristotle defines possibility as that which, when assumed to be realized, results in nothing impossible. In De Caelo 1.12 he states that if something is always actual, its nonexistence is impossible, since assuming this would mean that the same thing is and is not. The notion of possibility is understood as referring to actualization without contradiction, but there is only one and real world which serves as the reference. This assumption excludes possible alternatives of past, present, and omnitemporal states of affairs.
10. See, e.g., In Periherm. 1, 106.11–14; 120.9–16; 2, 190.14–191.2; 203.2–11; 207.18–25.
11. For recent discussions, see Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 56–58, and R. Gaskin, The Sea Battle and the Master Argument
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 146–84. All translations are my own.
12. For future contingents in early medieval thought, see C. Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Aureol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 20–46.
13. See Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 60–61.
14. C. B. Mayer, "Creatio, creator, creatura," in C. P. Mayer (ed.), Augustinus-Lexicon, vol. ii (Basel: Schwabe, 1996), 56–116.
15. E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), 210–12.
16. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 103–104; Knuutttila, "Duns Scotus," 135–36.
17. S. Knuuttila, "Time and Creation in Augustine," in N. Kretzmann and E. Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 107–109.
18. "Potuit sed noluit"; Contra Faustum 29.4.
19. See O. Lewry, "Boethian Logic in the Medieval West," in M. Gibson (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence (Oxford: Blackwell,
1981), 90–134. For other sources of eleventh-century philosophical discussions, see J. Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School
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Anselm on modality
of Auxerre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).
20. See T. Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 44–118, and T. Holopainen, "Necessity in Early
Medieval Thought: Peter Damian and Anselm of Canterbury," in P. Gilbert, H. Kohlenberger, and E. Salmann (eds.), Cur Deus homo (Atti del Congresso Anselmiano, Rome, 1999), 221–34.
21. M. Gibson, "The Opuscula Sacra in the Middle Ages," in M. Gibson, Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981),
220.
22. If this is true, Damian did not quite understand Berengar's position; see Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology, 80–95.
23. Cf. J. Isaac, Le Peri Hermeneias en Occident de Bo`ece `a Saint Thomas (Biblioth`eque Thomiste 29, Paris: Vrin, 1953), 45–47.
24. For different interpretations, see I. M. Resnick, Divine Power and Possibility in St. Peter Damian's De divina omnipotentia (Leiden: Brill, 1992),
77–111; Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology, 6–43.
25. Boethius, Phil. Cons. 3.12.27–29; 4.2.44; Augustine, De Civ. Dei 12.6–8.
26. For philosophically more sophisticated discussions of divine possibilities in eleventh-century Arabic thought, see T. Kukkonen, "Possible
Worlds in the Tahˆafut al-falˆasifa. Al-Ghazˆalˆı on Creation and Contingency," Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000), 479–502.
27. S i: 253.4–254.9.
28. Fragments, 343.7–39 (see R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt [eds.], Memorials of St. Anselm (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 1) [London:
Oxford University Press, 1969]).
29. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 82–94.
30. The question of alternative divine possibilities is not central in Anselm, who is more eager to argue why theologically significant events of the actual history are as they should be. However, Adam or the Devil could have not sinned (De Lib. Arb. 2; S i: 210.3–4) and the Son of God could have been begotten from another mother, though it was fitting that he was a son of the Virgin (De Conc. Virg., 18; S ii: 159.13–16).
31. For impossible things as conceptually inconsistent, see Prosl. 2–3.
32. Cf. Prosl. 4. Serene suggests that when Anselm distinguished between various modes in which a subject can count as "something" in the Fragments, he attended to the improper uses of "something" without the requirement that the subject exist, because he wanted to find a way of speaking about the capacities of nonexistent objects. See E. F.
Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," in S. Knuuttila (ed.), Reforging the Great Chain of Being (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 125–27.
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simo knuuttila 33. See Cur Deus Homo 2.17 (S ii: 122.25–30), Meditatio Redemptionis
Humanae (S iii: 86.60–62). In Prosl. 7 (S i: 105.23–27) Anselm states in a traditional manner that many of the alleged counter-examples to omnipotence are signs of impotence rather than power.
34. A thing than which nothing greater can be thought is so truly that it cannot be thought not to exist and, furthermore, it cannot be thought not to be whatever it is better to be than not to be (Prosl. 3, 5); for inferential necessity, see for example De Gramm. 1–2 (S i: 145–46).
35. De Conc. Virg. 11 (S ii: 153.7–9, 154.4–15).
36. Cur Deus Homo 2.17 (S ii: 123.3–9); cf. Prosl. 7 (S i: 105.10–11).
37. Cur Deus Homo 2.17 (S ii: 125.8–11), De Conc. 1.3 (S ii: 248.5–249.9).
38. Cur Deus Homo, 2.17 (S ii: 125.18–126.2).
39. D. Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 179; Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy, 103; J.-F Genest,
Pr´ed´etermination et libert´e cr´e´ee `a Oxford au XIVe si`ecle (Paris: Vrin, 1992), 129–31.
40. S ii: 248.5–250.11.
41. S. ii: 249.17–19.
42. See the references in note 39.
43. In Cur Deus Homo, 2.17 (S ii: 125.11) Anselm writes: "Because you are speaking, you are necessarily speaking"; this is mistakenly translated
"If you speak . . ." in Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm, 175. In De Conc.
1.2 Anselm prefers the "if – then" form.
44. See Schabel, Theology at Paris.
45. See G. H. von Wright, Truth, Knowledge and Modality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 52–67 and the works mentioned in W. L. Craig, The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 110.
46. See, e.g., De Conc. 1.3 (S ii: 250.113–16; 251.20–28).
47. Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm, 243–46.
48. De Conc. 1.1 (S ii: 246.4–7, 23–24); for indirect proof in Anselm, see Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology, 145–55.
49. Fragments, 342.26–343.22.
50. Fragments, 338.35–339.2; 343.31–34; cf. the division of causes in Boethius's commentary on Cicero's Topica, trans. with notes and an introduction by E. Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1988), 237.
51. Fragments, 344.8–345.4; Serene, "Anselm's Modal Conceptions," 122– 23. I shall not deal with the question of how (ii) should be analyzed;
Anselm himself regarded it as problematic.
52. Fragments, 347.15–28.
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