Thought

Only by taking into account Llull’s decision to devote his life and works to the conversion of unbelievers can his philosophical thought be understood. The problem posed by the applicability of scholastic logic onto the argumentation and dispute of theological questions is patent from his earlier works, the Compendium logicae Algazalis, and the Llibre de contemplacio en Deu, both written before his creation of an Art to find truth. The Llibre de contemplacio shows in particular Llull’s effort to find methods (‘‘arts e maneres’’) to allow missionaries the efficient fulfilment of their aims. In the third volume this effort is combined with an intention to organize the conceptual matter by means of ‘‘figures,’’ basically trees and symbolic letters, and occasionally by using the algebraic method of replacing conceptual elements in the argument by letters. On the other hand, the last chapters touch upon the teaching of how to dispute and convert those in error, one of the self-proclaimed uses of the work, and they somewhat open the possibility of doing so by means of a single method, a single Art containing all the principles and rules.

These attempts to technify and systematize interreligious dispute in the Llibre de contemplacio are somehow incorporated into Llull’s Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (c. 1274). This Ars, the first among the four great Lullian arts, was conceived as a textbook. Its title reflects its subject matter, as is often the case in such books, but it deliberately invokes the name of another discipline: dialectics. This was a well-known discipline in the medieval arts faculties, where it was traditionally called ars inveniendi and was studied through Aristotle’s Topics (a book devoted to the art of disputation in general). The Aristotelian-scholastic ars inveniendi forms the matrix of Llull’s Art, as he fashioned it as an art to find truth, with the purpose of solving quaestiones (alternative or yes/no questions) by forming arguments based on topics or loci. Llull calls them ‘‘universals,’’ that is, general principles that would verify or refute the affirmative or negative statements (the “particulars”) that could answer those questions. On the other hand, Llull claimed that his art, despite having been fashioned specifically to dispute about faith, shared two other traits with dialectics: its capacity to argument about any subject and to examine the pertinence of the principles of all sciences. These had turned dialectics into a sort of art of arts.

After the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem, Llull wrote other versions of his Art. When read sequentially they make it clear he went to great pains to perfect its topics and to increase the productivity of its argument engine. One after the other, Ramon’s Arts propose new topics and remove or improve existing ones, sometimes by simplifying them, others by making them more sophisticate. In all versions, the topics par excellence are the figures, which can be: (1) basic circular figures, represented, like in algebra, by letters (each of these figures gathers a series of simple principles or terms relating to a given matter, which are also represented by letters), (2) complex or combinatory circular figures (shaped in concentring circles, the rotation of which forms several combinations between simple principles or basic figures), and (3) tabular or combinatory figures (which present, gathered in ‘‘chambers,’’ the binary or ternary relationships to be obtained from the combinatory mechanism that is represented in a complex circular figure). These three kinds of figures constitute the arsenal, the store of ‘‘uni-versals’’ offered by the consecutive versions of Llull’s Art. From them the user will be able to construct arguments that should allow him to solve questions. By establishing a limited number of primary elements easy to remember, thanks to the use of figures and letters, together with a combinatory mechanism to find all possible relationships, Llull achieves the ‘‘compendiousness’’ to which the title of his first Art refers. This combinatory mechanism allows the primary elements, the principles of the Art, to be at the same time ‘‘minimal in quantity’’ and ‘‘maximal in power’’ (using an Aristotelian phrase, very suitable for describing the great power of topical reasoning). In other words, the principles are few but very powerful at finding arguments.

Llull had conceived his Art as a method to dispute effectively about matters of faith, but he also presented it, from the beginning, as a science. He was convinced that nobody would adopt a new belief just because he was shown dialectically the old one to be false; he would only convert if the contents of the new faith were proven truthful by ‘‘necessary reasons’’ (that is, scientifically). The evolution of Llull’s Art partially springs from his desire to adapt its principles and mechanics in order to enhance its scientificity. While the first Art text-book referred to the scholastic notion of dialectics in its title, the title of second version (Art demostrativa, c. 1283) coincided, not by chance, with the part of scholastic logic that offered the rules of scientific knowledge: the ars demonstrandi.

Students learnt the principles and rules of this ars by reading Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora. In his introduction to the Art demostrativa, Llull accounts for the new name by justifying the demonstrative nature of his Art, which taught how to argue on the basis of three kinds of demonstrations. One of them was the propter quid demonstration, which proves the effect from the cause, another type, the quia demonstration, proves the cause from the effect: they were the two types of demonstrations that Aristotle discussed in the Analytica posteriora, and were considered by scholastics as adequate to science. Llull added a new demonstration to these ‘‘ancient’’ types: the demonstration per equiparantiam (by equivalence or by the establishment of equality). In his opinion, this third type, according to a certain interpretation of scholastic principles on the degree of necessity of proofs, could achieve a greater degree of certainty than the demonstration propter quid, which in its turn was considered to be more demonstrative than the quia demonstration, or even to be the only demonstration strictu sensu.

By putting forward an Art that was inventive or investigative as well as demonstrative, Llull was proposing a method that, at least in theory, overcame the typically scholastic divorce between demonstration and heuristics. This was not the only novelty that distinguished his Art from the system of arts and sciences of the time. As I mentioned above, Llull’s Art was presented (in the same fashion as Aristotelian dialectics) as able to deal with any subject matter and with the principles of all sciences, and he claimed this was achieved scientifically (for it was an ars demonstrandi). Therefore, his Art aimed at becoming a new science, which, according to the Aristotelian Analytica posteriora, were it to exist, would be the most desirable one: a universal science.

The evolution of Llull’s Art is not only accounted for by his desire to enhance its efficiency as a technique to find arguments and his interest in making these arguments match (more so as he went along) the characteristics of demonstration. Llull’s process of reflection on the conditions that made it possible for this new science to be universal and on the nature of the general character of its principles is also an important factor to understand how his Art evolved. Current scholarship often distinguishes two great phases in the evolution of Llull’s Art, named respectively ‘‘quaternary’’ and ‘‘ternary,’’ according to the number of principles involved in the main figures (16, that is, 4 X 4, in the earlier Arts; 9: 3 x 3, in the later). The two Arts mentioned above, Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (c. 1274) and Art demostrativa (c. 1283), belong to the first phase. In simple terms, it could be said that, according to Llull’s notions, the universality of the principles in his Art is linked to the fact that all affirmative or negative statements regarding any subject matter are related to an affirmative or negative statement about God or about the relationship of the Art’s user with God. The earliest Arts contain principles that rule affirmative and negative statements that are pertinent in regards to God or the way one must relate to him. These principles are universal in the sense that they make it possible to verify or refute any affirmative and negative statements, according to whether these agree or disagree with them. The second phase begins with the Ars inventiva veritatis (1290) and culminates with the Ars generalis ultima (1305-1308), as well as the Ars brevis (1308), a summary of the previous work. The universality of the principles contained in this phase is different in its nature. Taking into account the function attributed by Aristotle to causality in demonstrations, Llull began to conceive this universality on the grounds of a Neoplatonic conception of causal relations that was tacitly legitimized by Proclus’ philosophy and Pseudo-Dionysius’ theology. Such a conception allowed him to establish ontologically the generality of the simple principles of the Art through the affirmation of their presence in God as the most eminent causes and in their effects as the likenesses of these causes. In the last works of the quaternary phase, which were still dependent upon the Art demostrativa, Llull began to base his reflections about the way in which his Art was demonstrative and general on this causality theory, which allowed him to affirm that all created beings are constituted, in one degree or another, by divine likenesses. In the Ars inventiva veritatis, the earliest of the ternary Arts, he reduced the number of figures and of principles within these figures, but he also transformed the artistic mechanisms according to the results of his process of reflection. The Proclian-Dionysian theory of causality, by means of likeness, allowed him to conceive the principles of his Art as principles that could be predicated univocally (following the same definition) about all beings that are predicable, without erasing the differences that separate the subjects of which they are predicated. Likeness made it possible that different beings possessed the same quality but also that they possessed it in a different way, in different degrees. And the kind of generality allowed by this theory offered Llull the possibility to build an Art where the principles of knowledge and those of being coincided. In his Ars generalis ultima (where Llull legitimizes the possibility of the new Art on the grounds of the Aristotelian theory of science) all the virtualities of this coincidence are put to good use.

Llull could not help seeking legitimization for his universal science in the theory of Aristotelian science, since in the thirteenth-century the latter was considered ‘‘the’’ science. However, he maintained that his own Art overcame many defects that, to his mind, made Aristotle’s limited. Llull insisted in his works that Aristotelian science contained anomalies and did not satisfy what we could anachronistically call the “scientific community’’: for instance, because of the lack of solid foundation for certain sciences (such as medicine or theology). It is worth remembering, on the other hand, what the situation was at the University of Paris (that is, the main university at the time), when Llull was developing his method. At the time when he started to elaborate his Art (c. 1274), the bishop of Paris was issuing his condemnations (in 1270 and 1277) of a great number of thesis related to the introduction of some of Aristotle’s works in the curricula of the arts faculties (after some initial bans in 1210 and 1231). These books were newly available in the Latin-speaking Occident, where Aristotle was hitherto known only as the author of logical treatises. It was at this time, then, when the crisis of the ecclesiastical project to build a Christian wisdom in the universities on the basis of Aristotelian science became apparent. This situation, as Llull was perfectly aware of, was parallel to the crisis that, some decades earlier, had led the Almohad sultan Abu Yusuf to ban the teaching of Aristotelian logic and philosophy, and also to the situation behind the controversy regarding philosophical studies that was confronting Jew scholars in the Mediterranean Christian countries. In general terms, we are talking about the moment when it became patent that theology and philosophy were offering ‘‘dissonant truths.’’ Despite the fact that Llull’s Art had been conceived as an art of interreligious disputation, it was also intended to give an answer to this crisis. It was not only meant to win over the ‘‘unbelievers’’ but also those who practiced a philosophy independent from theology and who reached conclusions impossible to reconcile with faith, such as the ‘‘Averroistes,’’ fought by Llull in many books during his last stay in Paris (1309-1311).

From this point of view, Llull presented his Art as an alternative to Aristotelian science, which seemed to make the agreement between theology and philosophy impossible. Like the thinkers of the Neoaugustinian School, he opposed the process of secularization of thought that the Aristotelization of university curricula was enhancing. The absolute generality of his Art’s principles (which were thus general regarding both disciplines) allowed, according to Llull, not only the concordance between both disciplines but also, given the contents of the principles, the subordination of philosophy to theology. And it also made it possible, according to Ramon, to constitute theology as a science that was independent epistemologically from faith. While faith only offered hypotheses to be verified or Refuted, the principles upon which his Art was founded were self-evident. This was precisely the reason why he could present his Art as a neutral science, able to turn interreligious dispute into a scientific matter: because he considered his principles as self-evident rather than specifically Christian. However, in practice, the conclusions of his demonstrative arguments did always verify the hypotheses offered by the Catholic credo and would refute all others.

In conclusion, Llull’s Art was meant to make everything he considered necessary possible, his main concerns being the agreement between philosophy and theology, the subordination of the former to the latter, the constitution of theology as a true science, and, obviously, the conversion of the Muslims. He never gave up considering his Art a weapon of massive conversion, aimed at the elimination of Islam and at the Christianization of humanity. While the first version he wrote was conceived as a textbook for a missionary school located in an isolated, idyllic place, the Ars generalis ultima and its pocket version, the Ars brevis, were thought up as spiritual weapons, indispensable in the hands of crusaders intent on conquering the countries of unbelievers by means of material weapons, by land and sea, in the context of a grand war campaign. In any case, the reception of Llull’s Art within the history of thought is less influenced by all these intended uses than by the fact that this peculiar epistemological artifact presented the possibility to decompartmentalize ‘‘old science’’: to break free from the prejudice that the principles and areas of different sciences could not communicate and to establish bridges between scientific doctrine and the discoverY of new knowledge.

See also: > Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions > al-(GazalI, Abu Hamid Muljammad > Parisian Condemnation of 1277 > Posterior Analytics, Commentaries on Aristotle’s