David of Dinant (Dinant)

DAVID OF DINANT (Dinant). - Medieval philosopher about whose life and activity we are poorly informed. Born at Dinant in the province of Liège, or according to others in Brittany; in a document of 1206 he is called by Innocent III "our master and chaplain" (PL 225, 901-902). In 1210 a provincial Council of Paris condemned his doctrine together with that of Amaury of Bène, and ordered that anyone in possession of his writings (quatermuli) should hand them over, under penalty of excommunication, so that they might be given to the fire (H. Denifle-A. Chatelain, Char. Univ. Paris, I, Paris 1889, p. 70). In 1215 Robert de Courçon, in a letter addressed to the University of Paris, repeated the condemnation: "Let not the books of Aristotle on metaphysics and natural philosophy be read, nor the compendia of the said works or of the doctrine of D. of D." (ibid., p. 79). And the sentences were so rigorously carried out that none of D.'s writings has come down to us. The decree of condemnation itself and various passages of thirteenth-century philosophers allow us to glimpse the main lines of his system. Albert the Great reports that he knew a collection of propositions of D. (Summa de creaturis, part 2, q. 5, a. 2), probably extracted from his works on the occasion of the synod.

Albert the Great devoted three discussions to the system of the master of Dinant: Summa de creaturis (part 2, q. 5, a. 2) and Summa theologica (part 2, tr. I, q. 4, quæst. incid. 2, m. 3; tr. XII, q. 72, m. 4, a. 2), and he quotes verbatim the work he has before his eyes and of which he also reports the title Liber de tomis, sive de divisionibus. Fr. G. Théry believes with every likelihood that this writing is to be identified with the quatermuli condemned by the Council of Paris, and, using the extracts handed down by Albert the Great and by St. Thomas, he gives us an attempt at reconstruction from which certain corollaries can easily be deduced, which shed sufficient light on the teaching of master D. He was certainly a materialist, and St. Thomas grasps with precision this character of his system.

"It was the error," says the Aquinate, "of certain ancient philosophers to believe that God entered as an essential element into all things. They held that all realities were one, and did not differ among themselves, as Parmenides said, except according to sense and opinion. These ancient doctrines were adopted by certain moderns, and, among these, by D. of Dinant." D. groups substances into three categories: that of bodies, that of souls, and that of separate and eternal substances; he denies any distinction among them and affirms that they form one single and identical reality, one single essence. Nevertheless D. is not a materialist in the modern sense of the word, because he places alongside matter also a second principle of existence.

In the world of bodies, according to his doctrine, the only indivisible reality is prime matter, in which the manifold beings of physical nature are identified, but in the sphere of human spirits and of separate substances the same role is held by the 1905 and by God. But one identical reality is to be posited between God, the intellect and matter, and, consequently, the existing substance is to be considered one, not only of all bodies, but also of all souls: and it is nothing other than God. And since the substance from which bodies come is called hyle, and that from which souls derive is called ratio or mens, one must deduce that God is the reason of all souls and of all bodies. This is the conclusion of Albert the Great's criticism of the teaching of D. of D. in the cited passages of the Summa de creaturis and of the Summa theologica.

Among the ancient philosophers who most influenced D. of Dinant, the Stagirite must be placed. The whole philosophy, in fact, of D. of Dinant is based on Aristotelianism. He argues on act and potency, on substance and accident, on the distinction of causes: his system appears to us devised for the purpose of saving Aristotle's double principle of matter and form. And he arrives at the theory of the uniqueness of being, the keystone of his doctrinal edifice, for having misunderstood certain cornerstones of the thought of the great master. At the end of the 15th century he was one of the representatives of the philosophical movement that introduced into the Christian West the Aristotelianism that had passed through Arab philosophy. This was the reason that drew upon him the attention and the condemnation of his contemporaries.

Ugo Mariani