Michael Millerman / 42914093

Aristotle / Phil 311 A

Bonaventure’s Arguments Against Aristotle on the Eternity of The World

Aristotle’s arguments in Book VIII of the Physics aim to produce among their

conclusions the proposition that motion cannot have begun but must have been

eternally (252b5-7). His arguments also imply the eternity of the first moveable

thing (259b34). In short, they can be taken to show that the world and the motion

of the world have had no beginning259b25-28). In what follows, I shall examine two

arguments given by Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) against Aristotle’s proposition,

the proportionality of infinites argument and the simultaneous infinite argument. I

shall argue that both fail.

Bonaventure gives six arguments against the proposition that motion and the first

moveable matter have not been produced in time (289-290). The first is that the

infinite cannot be added to; so that if there has been an infinite duration before

now, and today has added a revolution to the previous duration, then there has

been an addition to the infinite, which there cannot be. Attached to this argument

is another as follows. There is no proportionality between infinites. But if the

motion of the world were eternal then there would have been an infinite number of

rotations of the sun in its orbit. However, the moon completes twelve rotations in

its orbit for every solar orbit. There would consequently be a 12:1 ratio of infinite to

infinite. But that cannot be.

This first argument rests on a notion of the infinite that has been replaced in our

time by another that countenances the proportionality of infinites. George Cantor

showed in 1874 that there are kinds of infinities that vary in size. For example,
Cantor demonstrated that the set of real numbers and the set of natural numbers

are not “equinumerous.” The former set contains more elements than the latter,

though both sets are infinite. Whatever the philosophical and mathematical

objections are and may have been to Cantor’s work, it is no longer possible, as it

was for Bonaventure and others before and after him, to argue against Aristotle

from a prime facie acceptance of the non-proportionality of infinites.

Another of Bonaventure’s arguments against an eternal world is: that if the world is

eternal, there must have been infinitely many men and hence infinitely many

rational souls; but rational souls are incorruptible forms; hence an infinite number of

souls exist now simultaneously. But “it is impossible that there be simultaneously

an infinite number of things” (290; emphasis in original). Bonaventure says that

this argument accords with Aristotle’s notion that “the soul, having been the

perfection of one, cannot be the perfection of another” (ibid).

What are we to make of this argument? Aristotle does say that “the actuality of any

given thing can only be realized in what is already potentially that thing, i.e. in a

matter of its own appropriate to it” (414a25-26). Bonaventure uses this to show

that Aristotle cannot have thought that there is one soul common to all men (290).

Aristotle also says, consistent with Bonaventure’s argument, that “thought or the

power of reflection...seems to be a different kind of soul...; it alone is capable of

being separated” (413b25-27). Indeed, speaking of the relation of thought to the

body, Aristotle writes that “thought is separable from it” (429b5). It looks, so far, as

though Bonaventure has represented Aristotle accurately; that has argument,

therefore, is not trivial.

For Aristotle, however, thought is not always thinking (430a5-6), and thought that is

not thinking is not a real thing (429a24) and is thus absolute potentiality (429b5-

10). This leaves open the question of whether there is ever an infinite number of

real things all at once; e.g. an infinite number of souls actually thinking. For if there

are a finite number of such souls and only an infinite number of un-actualized

potential thinkers which are not as such things, then the argument fails.

But there is another solution. Aristotle writes that thought, “as we have described

it, is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what

it is by virtue of making all things. [...] Thought in this sense of it is separable...since

it is in its essential nature activity” (430a14-20; emphasis mine). Aristotle thus

makes it clear that thought as separable, as essential active, and hence not as an

unreal thing, is “another,” which I take to mean, Aristotle’s God. For Aristotle says

of this thought that “[it] does not sometimes think and sometimes not think. When

separated it is alone just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal...and

without this nothing thinks” (430a20-26).

Now, when Aristotle writes of the divine thought, he says that it thinks itself [“it

must be itself that thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its

thinking is a thinking on thinking” 1074b30-35]. Also, this thinking of thought itself

by the divine, “the thinking [that is] one with the object of its thought,” must be the

thinking of something that has not matter (1075a1-5). I ask: does this characterize

human thought? If it does not, then, given the previous paragraph, human thought

and therefore the individual human rational soul is not separable and Bonaventure’s

argument fails.
In fact, Aristotle writes that “human thought, or rather the thought of composite

objects,” etc., thus linking human thought to thought of composite objects (1075a5-

10). The divine thought is eternal thought that never thinks composite objects

(ibid). Therefore, human thought cannot be the thought that was referred to as

“another,” the thought that makes all things and that as such is separable.

Therefore, there have not been an infinite number of separable rational souls and

consequently there are not now a simultaneously existing infinity of them – this

even though Bonaventure might be able to run his simultaneity of infinites

argument on some other subject.

I have considered two of Bonaventure’s arguments against Aristotle’s proposition

that the world has not come to be but has been from eternity; I have found both

arguments unsuccessful in overturning that proposition. Before I close, I should like

to say that there are arguments made against Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas (1225-

1274) that have more bite than Bonaventure’s. Their bite comes from the fact that

Aquinas held that there was no demonstration for or against the eternity of the

world, that it is an Article of Faith that the world began (336-338). Bonaventure, on

the other hand, presents his arguments as “based on per se known propositions of

reason and philosophy” (289), attempting thus to make demonstrative what even

Aristotle held to be dialectical (104b1-17).

**

All citations of Aristotle’s works are from the Complete Works of Aristotle edited by

Jonathan Barnes. All other citations are from Baird’s Philosophical Classics, Volume

II: Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, 6th edition. The Bonaventure arguments

are therein excerpted from his Commentary on the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard
(D.1, P.1, A.1, Q.2). The Cantor proof was learned in UBC’s Symbolic Logic II course

taught in 2010 by Dr. Bartha. Aquinas’ arguments are excerpted in Baird from the

second article of Question 46 of the Summa Theologica.