Here we have an important chapter in the emergence of the modern notion of “the Subject” as a mental entity.
The doctoral dissertation of Jean-Baptiste Brenet — supervised by Alain de Libera, and published as Transferts du sujet: La noetique d’Averroes selon Jean de Jandun (2003), is on John of Jandun’s reading of the noetics of Averroes.
John of Jandun was declared a heretic and excommunicated, but this was due to his support for his friend Marsilius of Padua’s work Defensor Pacis. That work uses a combination of theological and Aristotelian arguments to contest the pope’s and the Church’s authority over civil government. Marsilius reportedly also made the radical early claim that democracy is the best form of government. Like John, he is typically labeled as an “Averroist”.
Nineteenth-century scholar Ernest Renan wrote that “Few authors have been more cited and afterward more forgotten than John of Jandun” (quoted on back cover of Brenet’s book, my translation). Brenet, however, finds Renan and the great 20th-century Thomist Etienne Gilson to be extremely prejudiced in their accounts of so-called Latin Averroism.
The mid-20th century Thomist scholar F. Van Steenberghen wrote that John of Jandun was the first true Latin Averroist. Thirteenth-century figures like Siger of Brabant only defended a few key theses of Averroes. Brenet agrees that there was no real Latin Averroism in the 13th century, but he sharply challenges Renan’s and Gilson’s characterization of the “Averroism” that did emerge in the 14th century. They declared it completely lacking in philosophical substance, and claimed it was held together only by sheer dogmatism. Brenet’s book provides abundant evidence to refute this.
By Brenet’s account, John of Jandun sees himself first and foremost as a serious commentator on Aristotle. His works are full of references to Averroes, but his actual positions on issues by no means simply follow Averroes. Like many of the scholastics, he writes as a thoughtful philosopher examining questions that others have discussed. His original arguments about active sense are but one example. Conversely Averroes, known to the Latins as “the” Commentator, substantially influenced many writers whom no one would call “Averroist”. At one point during the nominalist controversy of the 14th century, it is reported that the pope explicitly directed European universities to continue teaching Aristotle using the commentaries of Averroes.
John of Jandun endorses the originally anti-Averroist slogan “this human thinks”. He accepts a variant of the scholastic “intellectual soul”. On a key question like the so-called material intellect’s relation to the human, he follows Siger of Brabant’s original theory that intellect is an “intrinsic motor”, a concept that has no precedent in Averroes.
I plan to devote a few posts to some of the details in Brenet’s book. For more context, see Aristotelian Subjectivity Revisited; “This Human Understands”; “This Human”, Again; Averroes as Read by de Libera; Averroes to Eckhart?; Desire, Image, Intellect.
Next in this series: “Intellect” and the Body
The Postmodern Peripatetic 