William of Champeaux

William of Champeaux (also Guillaume de Champeaux, Guglielmus de Camp Ellis; * around 1070 in Champeaux, France, † 1121 in Chalons- en- Champagne) was a French bishop and philosopher. William was a student Manegold of Lautenbach, Roscelins Compiègne, Anselm of Laon, and a friend of Ivo of Chartres and Bernard of Clairvaux.

Life

William was born in a small village called Champeaux, 12 km east of Melun. Of his early years nothing is known.

Around 1100 he began an ecclesiastical career, first as a canon at Notre -Dame Cathedral in Paris and taught at the cathedral school. Three years later, in 1103, he earned one of the three Archidiakonate am Dom (namely, the Archdeacon of Brie ) and rose to the highest in position. As Archdeacon William operational success with a dialectic - Chair at the gates of the cathedral and thus acquired a national reputation, until he was attacked by the young Peter Abelard in this position and put the following in place increasingly in question.

In 1111 William gave to his chair and went to Easter in a cell of Saint Victorinus on the left bank of the Seine, just outside Paris, the one just below Bishop Girbert to a great goal for Regularkanonikerstift ( inauguration by King Louis VI. In 1113 ). In Saint -Victor Wilhelm temporarily took his lessons in the Trivium Sciences again, but was attacked again by his disciple Peter Abelard. Nevertheless, the school of Saint -Victor continued to boom and subsequently took a mystically oriented direction.

In 1113 William of Champeaux gave up teaching in Paris and was appointed to the bishopric of Chalons-en -Champagne. As Bishop of Châlons Wilhelm sat vehemently for celibacy, as an ardent defender of ecclesiastical investiture he was sent by Pope Calixtus II in 1119 as a legacy to the negotiations of Mouzon.

Wilhelm was a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux and should take eight days before his death on January 18, 1122 as Monachus ad succurrendum, ie as foster child, have entered the Cistercian Order.

Works

For a long time were the philosophical works of William lost, only recently some of his writings and doctrines could be extracted from individual manuscripts, mostly in anonymous form. It is the dialecticae Introductiones, Comments on Cicero's De inventione and his Rhetorica ad Herrennium to grammaticae comments of Master G. grammar, inspired by the Glosulae to Priscians Institutiones. Also in Liber Pancrisis individual theorems William of Champeaux be attributed. Most of what we know about William's philosophy, however, one takes the certainly not very objective information Peter Abelard in his Historia calamitatum. The theological works have survived only incomplete: De origine animae, a Liberal Sentences and Dialogus seu Altercatio cujusdam Christiani et Iudaei.

Universals

The so-called universals between William of Champeaux, Peter Abelard and went to the Historia calamitatum in favor of the latter. William was influenced by the writings of Boethius and represented in contrast to his teacher Roscelin, an extreme nominalist, a moderate realism:

The Universal was a single substance identical for Wilhelm. Since then assigned to each substance accidents, individuality had to emerge from the various accidents. This thesis attacked Abelard in Saint -Victor: The texts of Aristotle, Porphyry and Boethius quoting, he showed that it was obviously impossible, for example, that the human species is identical in Plato and Socrates, and that a rational loose living things are not the same could be as a rational. Why must admit that contradictions in one and the same substance exist. For William the Universal existed entirely in each individual, and on top of that before the stuff: universals ante rem. Then, Abelard argued, could the individual that was composed by its accidents, not its subject, since the subject yes existed before the accidents. And maintain the indifference to assert, namely, that relating to the human condition there is no difference between Socrates and another man, that can not be. On the other hand, when Socrates and Plato did not differ in humans, then they differed not from the stone. These arguments led Abelard William of Champeaux absurdity. Elsewhere, in his Dialektica, Abelard also criticized other conversations Wilhelms, such as its strong reference to the then newly discovered grammar of Priscian.

The conceptual model who opposed Abelard the realism of William of Champeaux, was a compromise between extremely realistic and nominalistic positions and was also known as conceptualism.

Although William dropped his theory of indifference as far back as she looked away in places to the 13th or 14th century.

Quote

" At the time I returned to him to hear rhetoric with him, apart from various other common Disputationsversuchen I took him by irrefutable evidence as meaning that it by amending its old doctrine of universals, yes totally rejected His doctrine of the community of universals. was that he claimed that one and the same nature nature is in all particulars quite yet, so this certainly is no difference in the nature zukomme, but only a manifold by the amount of accidents. Well he changed his doctrine insofar as it no longer the identity of the essence texture claimed only their indistinguishability. This question was considered by the dialecticians always been considered one of the most important in the theory of universals, so that even Porphyry in his Isagogen when he wrote about the universals, not to decide dared, but only said: '. This is a very extensive business ' Since William of Champeaux had changed its teaching on this point, or rather given up involuntarily, came his lectures so discredited that one hardly allowed him to read the rest of the doctrines of dialectic, as if this whole science its core point in this doctrine of the universals would have ... "

Peter Abelard, Historia calamitatum

Swell

• Karin M. Fred Borg: The commentaries in Cicero's " De inventione " and " Rhetorica ad Herennium " by William of Champeaux. In: Cahiers de l' Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin, Vol 17 (1976 ), pp. 1 ff. ISSN 0591-0358
• Yukio Iwakuma: Introductiones dialecticae secundum Wiligelmum et secundum G. Paganellum. In: Cahiers de l' Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin, Vol 63 (1993 ), pp. 45ff. ISSN 0591-0358
• Yukio Iwakuma: Pierre Abélard et Guillaume de Champeaux dans les premières années du XIIe siècle. In: Joël Biard (ed.): Langage, sciences, philosophy au XIIe siècle. Vrin, Paris 1999, pp. 93-124, ISBN 2-7116-1417-4.
• Yukio Iwakuma: William of Champeaux on Aristotle's Categories. In: Joëlrs Biard (ed. ): La tradition médiévale of Catégories. Actes du Symposium Européen de XIIe logique et de sémantique médiévales, Avignon 2000. Peeters, Louvain 2004, pp. 313-328, ISBN 90-429-1335-5.
• Constant J. Mews: Philosophy, Communities of Learning and Theological Dissent in the Twelfth Century. In: Giulio D' Onofrio (ed.): The medieval paradigm. Religious, thought and philosophy. Papers of the International Congress, Rome, October 29 - November 1, 2005 Brepols, Turnhout 2011, ISBN 978-2-503-52549-5. .
• Paulin Paris: Guillaume de Champeaux, evesque de Chalons sur Marne. In: Antoine Rivet de La Grange ( Lim. ): Histoire Literaire de France, Vol 10: Qui comprend la suite du siècle de l' église douzième jusqu'à l'an 1124 Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1973, p 307ff. . ( D Nachdr Ed Paris 1868).
• Werner Robl: William of Champeaux and Saint -Victor. In: ders. Peter Abelard in Paris. Studies on Topopgraphie of Paris and everyday history of early scholastic 1100-1140. Of Verlag, New Town 2003, pp. 38-40.

• Eric Hicks: La vie et les épistres. Pierre Abelard et Heloys et sa femme, Volume 1: Introduction, text. Champion, Paris, 1991, ISBN 2-05-101173-7.
• Odo Lottin: Psychology et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Vol 5: L' école d' Anselme de Laon et de Guillaume de Champeaux. Duculot, Gembloux 1959.
• Eugène Michaud: Guillaume de Champeaux et les écoles de Paris. Didier, Paris, 1867.
• Heinrich Weis Weiler: The writings of the school of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux in German libraries. A contribution to the history of the dissemination of the oldest scholastic school in German lands ( Contributions to the History of Medieval Philosophy, Vol 33/1-2 ). Aschendorff, Münster 1936.