Fishacre’s metaphysics can be located comfortably within the Christian Neoplatonic tradition: being is essence. The divine being is completely what it is, simple and immutable; the metaphysical scandal is change, and to the extent that creatures change, they are shot through with nonbeing. Given his metaphysics, it is not surprising to find Fishacre an enthusiastic champion of Anselm’s Proslogion argument. His list of ten arguments for God’s existence, all but one the kind Aquinas would label a priori, includes three that are patently variations on the Anselmian argument (see Long 1988).
Of the divine attributes, it is God’s infinity that is the focus of Fishacre’s attention. It has been argued, in fact, that Fishacre is the first western thinker to attach such importance to the issue (Sweeney and Ermatinger 1958:191-192). He takes up the doctrine condemned at Paris in 1241, namely, that neither men nor angels will ever behold the divine essence. The problem, as he sees, is the infinite distance between the creature and the Creator. It is precisely this matter of distance (elongatio) that becomes Fishacre’s most telling argument for God’s infinite power: there is an infinite distance between nothingness and prime matter (in other words, between nothing and something); but the greater the distance to be spanned the greater the power required; therefore, creation ex nihilo requires infinite power.
Does infinite power, however, imply that there are no limits? Is God, for example, free to undo the past? The solution for Fishacre lies in a distinction: power over the past is of two kinds. There is first the power to reconstitute in being something that had ceased to be; the other is to cause that which in fact had been not to have been, to make it such, for example, that Caesar, having crossed the Rubicon, did not cross the Rubicon. The latter according to Fishacre is not within God’s power (see Long 2007).
With respect to his philosophy of knowledge we find ourselves in a world which Aristotle would not have recognized. The species of the thing, which Fishacre calls the ‘‘word by which the exterior thing speaks to me,’’ reaches as far as my innermost sentient power (the common sense) - but no farther. It is axiomatic that the inferior cannot act on the superior, and thus the word cannot beget itself in the mind. Rather, Fishacre invokes the authority of Augustine: the soul in marvelous fashion and with equally marvelous speed produces in itself a similitude of that species which is in the common sense - that is, it makes itself like and conforms itself to that received species, just as light conforms itself to the water with which it comes into contact (In 2 Sent. 1:228).
The soul, says Fishacre, is like a tabula, but not a tabula rasa. In fact, on the canvas which is the soul are to be found the likenesses of things, like pictures, which are illuminated by the divine Light. In this life, however, the soul focuses on the pictures, not on the canvas, much less the light itself: the soul knows neither itself nor God directly. It is, however, owing to the presence in the soul of all forms that Aristotle can say ‘‘the soul is in a way all existing things.’’
This noetic is rooted in a philosophy of human nature for which Fishacre is remotely indebted to Saint Augustine, but more proximately to Robert Grosseteste. Typically, soul and body are in his view separate substances; however, it is not the case that a human being is essentially a soul and the flesh merely a garment, notwithstanding the opinion of Avicenna and ‘‘certain theologians’’ - among whom he numbers Hugh of St. Victor.
In defining the soul, however, Fishacre resorts to a stratagem first attempted by Avicenna and in his own time by Albert the Great: namely, the soul is a forma coniuncta according to its being (esse) but a forma separata according to its essence; put thus, the human form occupies a middle position between the forma elementaris and the forma angelica. Although the doctrine is not developed systematically or in much detail, Fishacre’s talk of a rational and a sensible form in the human composite cashes out as at least tacit acceptance of a plurality of forms. He is careful to describe the three contemporary opinions on the subject, but then hesitates to embrace any of the three, possibly owing to one of the objections against pluralism, namely the authority of the De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, whose author he presumes to be Augustine. Reluctant openly to contradict the unambiguous testimony of the bishop of Hippo, Fishacre was nonetheless in practice a pluralist (see Long 1975).
As to the other half of the binarium famosissimum, namely universal hylomorphism or the doctrine of spiritual matter, Fishacre, like the majority of his contemporaries, was unquestionably a proponent. Composed of matter and form are the human soul and the angel. But it is in his teaching concerning the latter that Fishacre works out the full implications of spiritual matter - almost as if the angels constituted a kind of metaphysical testing ground.
His discussion of reason and will eventually yields to the issue of liberum arbitrium, the free choice of the wIll. Devoting more pages in his Commentary to this question than any other, Fishacre’s discussion constitutes a self-standing treatise on the subject, dependent on
Grosseteste’s treatment, yet displaying a remarkable subtlety and independence of thought. How is this power which is called liberum arbitrium related to reason and will? His conclusion is that act of free choice is the turning back on oneself in the act of willing or, better, on its own incomplete will and passing judgment on it. Since therefore liberum arbitrium is the medium between the apprehension and incomplete will on the one hand and the completed will or consent on the other, it is defined by each of the extremes (see Long 1995).
How does one summarize Fishacre’s philosophical position? He was not hostile to Aristotle, indeed he was convinced that Aristotle is in possession ofthe truth about the created realm; but aside from the logical and biological works, he had only a passing and for the most part indirect acquaintance with the corpus Aristotelicum. Could he fairly be labeled an Augustinian? In the sense in which Augustine is obviously his preeminent authority, and from whom he never explicitly parts company, the answer is a resounding ‘‘yes.’’ Yet Fishacre has positions that are decidedly non-Augustinian: his teaching on spiritual matter, for example, or on the plurality of forms, or on the direct knowledge of the soul (see Long 2006). The safest course finally is to avoid labels and to see Richard Fishacre as a venturesome thinker, deferential to the established authorities, but showing signs of an emerging independence of mind in the few works that can be dated toward the end of his career.
See also: > Albert the Great > Anselm of Canterbury
> Arabic Texts: Natural Philosophy, Latin Translations of
> Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions > Augustine > Being > Essence and Existence > Hugh of St. Victor > Ibn Sina, Abti ‘All (Avicenna) > Knowledge > Mental World/Concepts
> Metaphysics > Natural Philosophy > Peter Lombard
> Philosophical Psychology > Richard Rufus of Cornwall
> Robert Grosseteste > Robert Kilwardby > Voluntarism and Intellectualism > Will
World History
