It has been said, to be sure, that the heresy of one generation becomes the orthodoxy of another; but this is true only of tendencies like those of Abaelard, which represent the gradual expansion and clearing up of scholastic processes. For the time they may be condemned, perhaps because of the vain and contentious character of the suspected thinker; but in the end they are recognized as admissible.
The Averroists constitute an apparent exception. Yet they were a philosophic and academic sect, whose heresy consisted in an implicit following of Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes. Moreover, they sought to save their orthodoxy by their doctrine of the two kinds of truth, philosophic and theological or dogmatic. It is not clear that much fruitful thought came from their school. The positions of Siger de Brabant, a prominent Averroist and contemporary of Aquinas, are referred to post, Chapter XXXVII. The best account of Averroism is Mandonnet’s Siger de Brabant et l’averroisme latin au XIIIe siècle (a second edition, Louvain, is in preparation). See also De Wulf, Hist. of Medieval Philosophy (3rd. ed., Longmans, 1909) p. 379 sqq. with authorities cited.
[420] Called also his Summa philosophica, to distinguish it from his Summa theologiae.
[421] Summa theologiae, i. i., quaestio i. art. 1-8.
[422] Post, Chapter XXXVI., I.
[423] Even the Averroists were more mediaeval than Greek, inasmuch as they professed to follow Aristotle implicitly. Cf. post, Chapter XXXVII., at the end.
[424] A touch of “salvation,” or salvation’s need, is on Plato when his “philosophy” becomes a consideration of death (μελέτη θανάτου) and a process of growing as like to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ) as man can. Phaedo, 80 E, and Theaetetus, 176 A.
[425] Historia calamitatum, cap. 9 and 10. Cf. post, p. 303.
[426] Post, Chapter XLI.
[427] Ante, p. 298. I cannot avoid referring to Abaelard several times before considering the man and his work more specifically, and in the proper place; post, Chapter XXXVI. I.