Questions Concerning Aristotle's on Animals

Description

After the Latin translation of Aristotelian works outside the logica vetus began in earnest in twelfth-century Spain, it remained to Scholastic philosophers to assimilate the new materials. Although many individuals commented on the logica nova and on some of Aristotle's books on natural philosophy, Albert the Great is one of only a very few Scholastics to comment on the entire collection of Aristotle's biological works. This text, the Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals [Quaestiones super de animalibus [p. 6, PDF p. 41 n. 10: "Alberti Magni … Opera omnia , vol. 12: Quaestiones super de animalibus , ed. Ephrem Filthaut (Münster: Aschendorff, 1955)]], recovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century [1922, in the Milanese Bibliotheca Ambrosiana; published in 1955 by Aschendorff, 💰-walled ☹] and never before translated in its entirety, represents Conrad of Austria's report on a series of disputed questions that Albert the Great addressed in Cologne ca. 1258. The Questions, in nineteen books, mixes two distinct genres: the scholastic quaestio, with arguments pro et contra, a determination, and answers to the objections; and the straightforward question-and-response found, for example, in The Prose Salernitan Questions.

Here, even more clearly perhaps than in his slightly later and much larger paraphrastic commentary On Animals [De animalibus], Albert adduces his own views―often criticizing other medieval physicians and natural philosophers―on comparative anatomy, human physiology, sexuality, procreation, and embryology. This translation, based on the critical edition that appeared in the Cologne edition of Albert's work, helps to explain the title "patron saint of scientists" bestowed upon Albert by Pope Pius XII.

This work should find its audience among medievalists and historians of science and culture. More so than the massive On Animals, it should prove useful in the classroom as an encyclopedia or handbook of medieval life.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS:Irven M. Resnick is professor of philosophy and religion, and Chair of Excellence in Judaic Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. is professor of classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.**

cf. esp. "Question 11: Whether the male is better suited for proper behavior [mores] than the female." (PDF pp. 488-90)

wise men almost never disclose their plans and their doings to their wives. For a woman is a flawed male and, in comparison to the male, has the nature of defect and privation, and this is why naturally she mistrusts herself. And this is why whatever she cannot acquire on her own she strives to acquire through mendacity and diabolical deceptions. Therefore, to speak briefly, one must be as mistrustful of every woman as of a venomous serpent and a horned devil, and if it were allowed to say what I know about women, it would stupefy the entire world.

Some other interesting quotes:

1. "the female has a longer life span per accidens , because she does not work as hard and thus does not consume so much, and she is cleansed more by the menstrual flow and is less debilitated by sexual intercourse."
2. "more obstacles [to generation] are owing to the mother than the father"
3. q. 18 a. 4: "Why wise men and philosophers very often generate foolish children." pp. 537-8 (PDF pp. 572-3)
   "one who is good at study is bad at business and at generation, that is, at making love." (qui bonus est in studio, pravus est in foro et in generatione vel venereo actu); cf. "scholasticus bonus, malus politicus"; cf "Why Philosophers Father Foolish Children: Peter of Spain, Albert the Great, and James of Viterbo on the Transmission of Intellectual Qualities" in The Embodied Soul: Aristotelian Psychology and Physiology in Medieval Europe between 1200 and 1420.
   cf. SCG III q. 122 [6]: "it must also be contrary to the good for man if the semen be emitted under conditions such that generation could result but the proper upbringing would be prevented".
   cf. the eugenicists' idea that one can breed better humans (cf. The Eugenics Crusade 2018 🧲 link )
4. "dogs take more pleasure in a strong odor and follow after dead bodies. Further, the body of a person who has a great deal of intercourse closely approaches in its disposition the nature of a dead body owing to an abundance of corrupt semen. This is why dogs, which have a very good sense of smell, follow them."
5. "those who enjoy sexual intercourse too frequently go bald quickly, since coition dries out and cools the body"
6. "sperm is derived […] especially from the brain, because the brain is white and soft and moist, and in this respect it agrees with the substance of the sperm […] intercourse particularly evacuates the brain". (Sperm is full of lecithin, which is a neuro-nutrient.)

"a certain master, Clement of Bohemia, told me there was a certain hoary old monk who approached a certain beautiful mistress and just like a starving man he demanded her sixty-six times before the striking of matins; the next day he fell down and, on the very same day, was dead. And because he was a noble, his body was opened up and his brain was found to be entirely evacuated, so much so that nothing more of it remained than the size of a pomegranate, and similarly his eyes were destroyed. Nature marvels at this, although it seems to be consonant with reason. This, then, is an indication that intercourse particularly evacuates the brain"

1. "every imperfect thing naturally desires to be perfected, and a woman is an imperfect human [homo imperfectus] in comparison to the man, and this is why every woman desires to exist under [the category of] manhood [virilitas]. For there is no woman who would not wish to put off the basis of her femininity [femineitas] and naturally to put on manhood. And in this same way matter desires to put on form"
2. "love [amor?] is greater in women than in men"

Bk. 11 has epistemological questions; cf. Aristotle's De Partibus Animalium lib. 1 cap. 5 (Questions Concerning Aristotle's on Animals q. 8: "Whether there is more pleasure in the knowledge [cognitio] of superior or inferior things."):

The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions.

St. Thomas Aquinas paraphrases this in Summa Theologica I q. 1 a. 5 ad 1:

minimum quod potest haberi de cognitione rerum altissimarum, desiderabilius est quam certissima cognitio quae habetur de minimis rebus

the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things

and in De veritate q. 10 a. 7 ad 3:

quamvis cognitio quam de rebus materialibus habemus, sit prior tempore illa notitia quam habemus de Deo, tamen haec est prior dignitate. Nec obstat quod materialia a nobis perfectius cognoscuntur quam Deus; quia minima cognitio quae de Deo haberi potest, superat omnem cognitionem quae de creatura habetur. Nobilitas enim scientiae ex nobilitate sciti dependet, ut patet in principio I De anima; unde et in XI De animalibus philosophus praeponit modicam scientiam quam habemus de rebus caelestibus omni scientiae quam de rebus inferioribus habemus.

Although the knowledge which we have of physical things is prior in time to that which we have of God, the latter is prior in dignity. And the fact that we know physical reality better than we know God offers no difficulty, because the least knowledge which can be had about God surpasses all knowledge about creatures. The nobility of knowledge depends on the nobility of the thing known, as is clear from The Soul. For this reason, the Philosopher puts the little knowledge which we have of heavenly things before all the knowledge which we have about things here below.