ENRICO di GAND. — Philosopher and theologian, born in Ghent in the first decades of the 13th century, died on 29 June 1293.
E. was one of the greatest among the many outstanding Belgian thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the decades immediately following the death of St. Thomas, he was, together with his compatriot Goffredo di Fontaines, one of the most eminent professors at the University of Paris. His philosophy exerted a great and lasting influence, whereas his person soon fell into oblivion and became the subject of legends. Today we know that he was not a descendant of the noble Goethals family of Ghent, as was believed for centuries, and that he never belonged to the Order of the Servites. The only certain dates in his life are these: in 1267, canon of Tournai; in 1276, archdeacon of Bruges and, beginning in that year, teacher at the University of Paris; in 1277, doctor theologiae in Paris. Principal works: the Summa theologica (printed in Paris in 1520 under the title Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, and in Ferrara in 1646) and the Quodlibeta, which are of great importance in the history of medieval thought (printed in Paris in 1518, in Venice in 1608 and 1613). He is also credited with a Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Quaestiones on Metaphysics, and a treatise on logic (all unpublished).
The 15 Quodlibeta, which E. discussed in Paris between 1276 and 1292, give a vivid picture of the controversial questions that then stood at the center of scholarly interest. The principal adversaries against whom E. directed himself in these disputes were Goffredo di Fontaines and Egidio Romano. E. also repeatedly took a position in the struggle between the secular clergy and the Mendicant Orders during the course of his Quodlibeta, aligning himself against the privileges of the Orders.
Among the philosophical and theological subjects treated by E., the first to be mentioned is the much-discussed problem, which had become topical at that time because of Egidio Romano, of whether a real distinction should be admitted between essence and existence. It seems that E. was the first to find for this problem the famous formula et essentia et existentia, which in the following decades so often served as the title of the entire discussion. He denies the real distinction (in opposition to Egidio), but is not content even with a simple distinctio rationis; instead, he chooses a middle path: the distinctio intentionalis, which foreshadows the formal distinction of the Scotists.
Among the other important problems, mention must first be made of the then-burning question of whether there are one or several substantial forms in the compositum, particularly in man. In his first Quodlibet (1276), E. declared himself in favor of the Thomist doctrine of the unity of the form, but subsequently changed his opinion, since this thesis had become suspect as a result of the condemnations of 1277. From his second Quodlibet onward, he maintains the unity of the form only for inorganic and organic nature, but not for man. In the latter, he adds to the rational soul the forma corporeitatis as a second substantial form: a doctrine that would later be much discussed and opposed.
E.’s psychological and gnoseological theories are likewise original; in them, a fairly pronounced empiricism is combined with a particular form of the Augustinian theory of illumination. In the opposition between intellectualism and voluntarism, the point of divergence among the various psychological and moral systems of the 13th century, E. stands on the side of the voluntarists and repeatedly defends this position against Goffredo di Fontaines, the representative of an extreme intellectualism. For E., the will has absolute primacy over reason; unlike the intellect, which is passive before becoming active, the will is a potentia simpliciter activa, to which belongs the role of master, not servant, with regard to the intellect. Therefore, the essence of beatitude consists not in knowing God but in loving him: « Deus semper magis diligitur quam cognosciur et hoc quia voluntas per dilectionem magis unitur fini quam intellectus per cognitionem » (quodl. 13, q. 2).
There has been considerable discussion about the philosophical tendency to which E. should be assigned. An old tradition, which seems to go back to Suárez, attributed to him an extreme Platonism, at times opposed to Christian truth; later, scholars spoke of Christianized Platonism and finally of eclecticism (De Wulf). But recent studies (Paulus) have demonstrated that the spirit dominating E.’s philosophical synthesis is undoubtedly inspired by Platonism. This Platonism should more properly be characterized as an Augustinianism independent of the Franciscan Augustinianism of the 13th century and strongly influenced by the philosophy of Avicenna. But superimposed upon this Platonizing metaphysics, without merging with it, are a pronounced nominalism and empiricism. Corresponding to this dualism existing within the system, E.’s historical influence was twofold: he prepared the way both for the realism of Scotus and for the nominalism of William of Ockham.
BIBLI.: M. De Wulf, Etudes sur Henri de G., in Histoire de la phil. sédotique dans les Pays-Bas et dans la principauté de Liège (Mémoires neuronales de l’Acad. Royale de Belgique, 51), Bruxelles 1895; id., Histoire de la phil. en Belgique, Bruxelles-Parigi 1910, pp. 80-116; id., Hist de la phil. médiévale, II, 6e ed., Levania-Parigi 1936, pp. 297-303, 308-309 (trad. II. di V. Miano, Firenze 1942, pp. 373-78, 383-84); E. Hocedec, Gilles de Rome et Henri de G. sur la distinction réelle (1276-87), in Gregorianum, 8 (1927), pp. 358-84; id., Le premier Quodlibet d’Henri de G. (1276), ibid., 9 (1928), pp. 92-117; J. Paulus, Henri de G., essai sur les tendances de sa métaphysique (Etudes de phil. médiévale, 25), Paris 1938 (bibl.); M. Grabmann, Storia della teologia cattolica, vers. II, Milano 1939, pp. 138-201; T. V. Nys, De Werbing van het menselijk Verstand volgens Hendrik van Gent, Lovanio 1940. Anneliese Maier