Highest poverty and freedom of the will in early Franciscan theology

Transcription

1 Highest poverty and freedom of the will in early Franciscan theology 1. Spiritual Franciscans (the account is mostly based on W. Short, Poverty and Joy, see relevant excerpt on the class website) During Bonaventure s time as Minister General of the Order he faced a popular movement within the Order called Spiritual Franciscans, who were especially active in southern France and central Italy. Spiritual Franciscans were against exceptions to the highest poverty rule and thus against the mainstream Franciscan establishment. They attempted to go back to Francis s and the early brothers practice, the original Rule, and early Franciscan spirituality, which included manual labor, begging, and life in remote places (hermitages). There is a passage in Later Rule 10.4: Wherever the brothers may be who know and feel they cannot observe the Rule spiritually (spiritualiter observare), they can and should have recourse to their ministers. While David Flood takes the word spiritualiter observare simply to mean mentally bear the hardships of Franciscan life, many Franciscans in the 1200 s understood the term as spiritually, i.e., as referring to a special kind of spirituality that follows from the practice of absolute poverty. Given the relaxations of the practices, some felt unable to observe highest poverty spiritually but did not receive help when they turned to their superiors who supported the establishment. Spiritual Franciscans also embraced the vision of a 13th-century mystic Joachim of Fiore who saw his times as the coming of the new Age of the Spirit that would be announced by the Angel of the Sixth Seal of the Apocalypse ( Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the Sun, with the seal of the living God, Revelation 7:2; this angel marks the elect with the sign of salvation and also kills a third of the humankind with plagues). Spiritual Franciscans saw Francis as the Angel of the Sixth Seal (picture shown in class). This idea is outlined by Ubertino da Casale (d. 1330) in the Tree of Life crucified of Jesus, for whom Francis is the sign of the living God who fights and kills the opponents of Spirituals and ultimately the anti-christ himself (picture shown in class). A conflict ensued between Spirituals (and often lay brothers) and the establishment, mainly represented by clerics and supported by the papacy. Ultimately, the Inquisition was turned against Spirituals, some were imprisoned and excommunicated, and some were even burned alive as heretics. Persecutions of Spirituals were seen by them as a dramatic stage preceding the coming of the new age of the Spirit. This idea was best expressed by Angelo Clareno ( ), a founder and leader of a group of Fraticelli (Italian Spirituals) who was imprisoned in the 1280 s for his extreme interpretation of the Rule. He outlines the struggle between Spirituals and the Franciscan establishment in The Chronicle of the Seven Tribulations of the Order of Friars Minor (pictures shown in class). Eventually Spirituals were suppressed, but they kept alive the spirit of Francis, studied the early Franciscan documents, and are responsible for later revivals of early Franciscan spirituality and practices. Notably the Friars Minor eventually split into three branches. In the 14-15th century the Observant movement aimed at seeking a regular observance of the Rule with an emphasis on poverty and lay brothers, as well as life in hermitages instead of convents. In 1517, the Friars Minor are divided into the Friars Minor Conventual (who practiced a moderate use of things, could own real estate and enjoy revenues from their properties) and the Friars Minor of

2 2 the Observance, the current OFM s (who practiced a poor or strict use of things). Eventually the contemplative practice of living in hermitages resulted in the formation in 1525 (became independent in 1619) of the Friars Minor Capuchin (the early title was of eremitical life ). 2. Early Franciscan theology and freedom of the will As we already know, one of the hallmarks of early Franciscan theology (Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure) is that it is an affective or emotional discipline and wisdom (or taste ) rather than a rational science. Certitude in theology is based on emotion and experience, for example on Francis s experience with the lepers. Peter of John Olivi puts an even greater emphasis on experience (meaning mental or spiritual experience) and makes it into the cornerstone of his theological approach. (The emphasis on experience will continue in John Duns Scotus and 14thcentury Franciscan theologians, with sensory experience becoming another emphasis.) Now even according to modern thought, such as that of Arthur Schopenhauer (19th century) in the work The World as Will und Representation, one of the main components of our experience is feeling like a free agent, of freedom of the will. We can only feel like a free agent or be one, but not know what it is, understand it, or be able to explain it to others. In contrast, we can know, understand, and explain concepts and ideas but we cannot feel them. (This is precisely why you can t explain certain things in order to make people believe them, but they have to experience them for themselves!) So the second hallmark of Franciscan theology that is greatly developed by Olivi is based on this experience of freedom of the will. It is called voluntarism, or giving primacy to the will, not to the intellect (as in rationalism ). The will is seen as the principal power of a personal agent such as a human being. It is only in expanding our will (and therefore our self) to its full capacity, or full freedom, that one experiences a God-like condition (according to Christians, the image of God in the human soul). We must remember that the idea of expansion of the self to its absolute or liberated state is not unique to Christians but is also present in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, for example, the experience of the universal self or divine self (Shiva, Brahman) in Hinduism, or experiencing the condition of no self (anatta) in Buddhism, which still stands for an infinitely expanded self. 2. Olivi s understanding of the purpose of highest poverty Spiritual Franciscans took Francis s legacy to heart. As we have learned, Francis put an emphasis not on learning or rational arguments, but on his experience and emotions, or the affective side. For example, he felt something, or had an experience when he encountered the lepers. He experienced or felt something when he perceived nature by his senses.

3 3 Peter of John Olivi, the most celebrated leader and theoretician of Spiritual Franciscans, built his understanding of highest poverty around Francis and the early friars experiences of the practice of absolute or highest poverty. One has certain experiences when they practice absolute poverty, and these experiences provide the utmost certitude about the value of the practice. It is a certain kind of spirituality, a spiritual experience as well as a practice. Thus the theologians of Spiritual Franciscans provided a spiritual interpretation of poverty that Francis and the early friars actually experienced. (As we will see from the next segment of this class, Franciscans also developed an economic model of action based on Francis and the early friars practices.) Specifically, the spiritual effect of highest poverty, according to Olivi, is that it mentally or spiritually expands your heart or mind to perceive all creatures as your equals. We will see later that the Franciscan economic program of poor use that follows from the spiritual experience of expanding your heart allows for a careful stewardship of the environment and helping the poor. It is clear that the experience of highest poverty in Olivi s view is tightly connected with the experience of freedom of the will, as he demonstrates in Question 8 on Evangelical Perfection. First of all, following the idea of theology as interpretation of scripture, Olivi shows that the idea of highest poverty is scripturally based. He provides a detailed exegesis of all scriptural passages that form a basis for the practice of highest poverty. After that, he provides a more philosophical explanation of the spiritual aspects of highest poverty. p. 1-2, Rich people sometimes prefer to be dead than poor. Why? Because poverty lacks everything that our materialistic will ( carnal affection ) usually desires. That is, poverty and wealth are intimately linked to the faculty of the will. However, if one considers the will in its highest and most noble state, the naturally righteous will, highest poverty is most agreeable to it. This is because our will is naturally free, and its highest state is highest freedom, i.e., not to be determined to choose one thing over another and not to be determined by the nature of things, but to have the freedom to choose anything. So whenever our will is attached to something, instead of experiencing the state of total detachment, it is in a state that is inferior to its natural state of freedom. The only state that corresponds to absolute freedom and therefore is most appropriate to our will is the state of detachment or absolute poverty. Olivi determines this from experience, and also determines from experience that this state is the most difficult one to attain. p. 4, The way highest poverty makes you relate to things is as if they were in the possession of someone else in a faraway land. If you relate to things differently than this, this is not spiritually speaking the state of highest poverty. You should not be more attached to things that you or your relatives use than to those in a faraway land in someone else s possession. This example shows clearly that poverty for Olivi is a spiritual state, or a state of mind, not simply the fact of having or not something in your possession from a legal point of view!

4 4 pp. 4-5, Indeed, affection for all and everybody [that is developed when we go beyond all attachments] enlarges one s heart. For just as the ownership of [specific] goods by a certain institution or person results, in a sense, in the ownership of the said institution or person by those goods, in the same way general indifference to and lack of ownership of anything results in a great expansion of affection in the heart of a person with such an attitude. Hence [such a person] has the same uniform attitude to all things and all persons, no matter what their nature is. p. 5, Also, [highest poverty] is of such depth that it reaches down to [the bottom] of things, [which is] nothingness. And for this reason it rejects and despises things as nothing. 3. A determinist model of the will (Schopenhauer and contemporary neuroscience and neuropsychology) As we mentioned before, Olivi bases his explanation of the value of highest poverty on the natural condition of freedom of the will. However, not all philosophers and certainly not most contemporary neuroscientists and neuropsychologists share his view. The view called determinism goes back to ancient thought and is most clearly expressed by the modern philosopher Schopenhauer (see text attached to the class website) who writes (p. 32): Therefore, only a very superficial view can regard that relative and comparative freedom as absolute, as a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. Indeed, the capacity for deliberation, arising from that comparative freedom, gives us nothing but a conflict of motives, one that is often very painful, over which irresolution presides, and whose scene of conflict is the whole mind and consciousness of the human being. For he allows the motives repeatedly to try their strength on his will, one against the other. His will is thus put in the same position as that of a body that is acted on by different forces in opposite directions until at last the decidedly strongest motive drives the others from the field and determines the will. This outcome is called decision and, as the result of the struggle, appears with complete necessity. This view is also shared by many contemporary neuroscientists and neuropsychologists (a view by David Eagleman shown in class). The determinist model basically says that although the human mechanism of the will is so complicated that it is often impossible to predict the decisions we make, the decisions are still not free but necessary and determined by the circumstances in which our brain finds itself. How would someone like Olivi answer the followers of the determinist view? 4. A critique of the determinist model from Olivi s point of view First of all, we need to explain the deeper philosophical point. Note that for someone like Olivi it is our mental experience of free will that is important (the technical term is phenomenology or phenomenological experience, from the Greek to appear ; it is what appears to our mind s eye). From this point of view, the arguments of determinists (either scientists or philosophers) do not really work. For example, Eagleman explains in his video that even if the decisions we make are subconscious or even forced by some machinery, i.e., technically not free, our interpreter

5 5 faculty tells us that we are free and we have made a free choice. However, since we feel that we have made a free choice, this is the only thing that matters. Obviously, there must be a reason for that, which is not physico-chemical, but a phenomenological (inner or mental). It must be important for our inner perception to feel like a free agent. And since we are basically phenomenal beings that are not reducible to our physico-chemical body, what matters to us is our experiences and how we feel, and not the physico-chemical mechanisms that operate in our bodies. Think about it: all that is really important to us, such as our self, our emotions, the meanings of things, ethical sentiments, God, etc., are part of the phenomenal realm and cannot be matched to anything in physical or external reality by using the truth of correspondence. None of these important things can be located in the external world. (Since scientists cannot locate them physically, they often deny their very existence! For example, they deny the existence of the self and of God.) However, all these things are part of our immediate experience, so how can they not be real? Now Franciscans really make an emphasis on our phenomenal experience in their theology, and this is how Olivi thinks of the issue of free will, both when he proves that our will is free and when he examines the implications of the position that it is not free. Olivi s Commentary on the Sentences, Book 2, Question 57 contains the strongest affirmation of freedom of the will. Freedom of the will is certain, and the opposite position is against reason and also eliminates all advantages of rational creatures. The proof can come from a phenomenological analysis of experiencing various emotional states and their opposites, such as anger, pride, friendship, gratitude, loyalty, trust, etc. Thus the proof is entirely based on our inner mental experience. We experience and like freedom of the will p. 4, Olivi s basic phenomenological observation (based on our mental experience) is that It is certain that every human being most naturally desires freedom... and everyone most strongly abhors his or her total subjugation and a total elimination of one s liberty. (Compare this strong statement with the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ) p. 8, In fact, to feel this power of being a free agent is so pleasing to humans that is moves us to love control and freedom beyond anything else. Proofs of freedom of the will A stark proof of freedom of the will is a radically different attitude we have to brute animals as opposed to other humans (one does not experience the same emotions in relation to something we don t believe possesses free will) and a different status of humans we do not believe are in possession of free will (young children, mentally disabled, humans acting under duress, etc.). Olivi makes more phenomenological observations on how the will acts. For example, we clearly perceive that the mental shifting of focus is voluntary.

6 6 p. 7, The most obvious phenomenological observation is the will s indeterminate disposition as regards acting or not acting (this view is developed later by Duns Scotus): the will lacks determination in the highest degree in respect to its objects, acts, and ways of acting. But it cannot be indeterminate without being free. This is also the link to Olivi s understanding of highest poverty: highest poverty means the expansion of the will to everything indeterminately, not being attached to anything in particular. Consequences of not having a free will pp. 9-10, The problem is that if one possesses no free will, one s actions cannot be considered good or evil, which undermines morality and the system of justice. One cannot be rebuked or praised on account of something one has no control over. Also this causes problems for personal relationships and business ties: how can you trust anybody? p. 10, Olivi makes a very strong statement against scientific determinism: [this error]... takes away from us that very thing that we essentially are, namely, our personhood, and gives nothing in return, except [for the belief] that we are some intelligent beasts...