Albertus Magnus also called Albert the Great (c.1200–80), German Dominican philosophertheologian. As a Parisian master of theology, he served on a commission that condemned the Talmud. He left Paris to found the first Dominican studium generale in Germany at Cologne in 1248. From 1252 until old age, Albert was repeatedly asked to be an arbiter and peacemaker. After serving briefly as bishop of Regensburg in 1260, he was ordered to preach the crusade of 1263– 64 in Germany. He spent his last years writing in Cologne. Albert contributed to philosophy chiefly as a commentator on Aristotle, although he occasionally reached different conclusions from Aristotle. Primarily, Albert was a theologian, as is evident from his extensive commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and his commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. As a theologian, he customarily developed his thought by commenting on traditional texts. For Albert, Aristotle offered knowledge ascertainable using reason, just as Scripture, based on God’s word, tells of the supernatural. Albert saw Aristotle’s works, many newly available, as an encyclopedic compendium of information on the natural universe; included here is the study of social and political conditions and ethical obligations, for Aristotelian ‘natural knowledge’ deals with human nature as well as natural history. Aristotle is the Philosopher; however, unlike Holy Scripture, he must be corrected in places. Like Holy Scripture, though, Aristotle is occasionally obscure. To rectify these shortcomings one must rely on other authorities: in the case of Holy Scripture, reference is to the church fathers and established interpreters; in the case of Aristotle, to the Peripatetics. The term ‘Peripatetics’ extends to modern as well as ancient authors – al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn-Sina), and Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), as well as Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias; even Seneca, Maimonides, and ‘our’ Boethius are included. For the most part, Albert saw Plato through the eyes of Aristotle and Averroes, since apart from the Timaeus very little of Plato’s work was available in Latin. Albert considered the Liber de causis a work of Aristotle, supplemented by al- Farabi, Avicenna, and al-Ghazali and translated into Latin. When he commented on the Liber de causis, Albert was not aware that this Neoplatonic work – which speaks of the world emanating from the One as from a first cause – was based on Proclus and ultimately on Plotinus. But Albert’s student, Aquinas, who had better translations of Aristotle, recognized that the Liber de causis was not an Aristotelian work. Albert’s metaphysics, which is expounded in his commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and on the Liber de causis, contains profoundly contradictory elements. His inclination to synthesis led him to attempt to reconcile these elements – as on social and ecclesiastical questions he often sought peace through compromise. In his Metaphysics and Physics and in his On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle presented the world as ever-changing and taught that an unmoved mover (‘thought thinking itself’) maintained everything in movement and animation by allowing its spiritual nature to be seen in all its cold, unapproachable beauty. The Liber de causis, on the other hand, develops the theory that the world emanates from the One, causing everything in the world in its pantheistic creativity, so that the caused world returns in mystic harmony to the One. Thus Albert’s Aristotelian commentaries, begun in 1251–52, culminated in 1265 with his commentary on a work whose pseudo-Aristotelian character he was unable to recognize. Nevertheless, the Christian Neoplatonism that Albert placed on an Aristotelian basis was to exert an influence for centuries.
In natural philosophy, Albert often arrived at views independent of Aristotle. According to Aristotle’s Physics, motion belongs to no single category; it is incomplete being. Following Avicenna and Averroes, Albert asks whether ‘becoming black,’ e.g. – which ceases when change ceases and blackness is finally achieved – differs from blackness essentially (essentia) or only in its being (esse). Albert establishes, contrary to Avicenna, that the distinction is only one of being.
In his discussions of place and space, stimulated by Avicenna, Albert also makes an original contribution. Only two dimensions – width and breadth – are essential to place, so that a fluid in a bottle is framed by the inner surface of the bottle. According to Albert, the significance of the third dimension, depth, is more modest, but nonetheless important. Consider a bucket of water: its base is the essential part, but its round walls maintain the cohesion of the water.
For Aristotle, time’s material foundation is distinct from its formal definition. Materially, the movement of the fixed stars is basic, although time itself is neither movement nor change. Rather, just as before and after are continuous in space and there are earlier and later moments in movement as it proceeds through space, so time – being the number of motion – has earlier and later moments or ‘nows.’ The material of time consists of the uninterrupted flow of the indivisible nows, while time’s form and essential expression is number. Following al-Farabi and Avicenna, Albert’s interpretation of these doctrines emphasizes not only the uninterrupted continuity of the flow of ‘nows,’ but also the quantity of time, i.e., the series of discrete, separate, and clearly distinct numbers. Albert’s treatment of time did not lend itself well to later consideration of time as a dimension; his concept of time is therefore not well suited to accommodate our unified concept of space-time. The use of the pseudo-Aristotelian De proprietatibus elementorum in De causis proprietatum elementorum gave Albert’s worldview a strong astrological flavor. At issue here is how the planets influence the earth and mankind. Particularly important is the influence of Jupiter and Saturn on fire and the seas; when increased, it could produce fiery conflagrations, and when circumscribed, floods. Albert was encyclopedic: a scientist and scholar as well as a philosopher and theologian. In addition to the works mentioned, he produced commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius, a Summa de creaturis, a Summa Theologica, and many other treatises. Unlike other commentators, his exposition was continuous, an extensive paraphrase; he provided a complete Latin and Christian philosophy. Even in his lifetime, he was a named authority; according to Roger Bacon, his views were often given as much weight as those of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. His students or followers include Aquinas, Ulrich of Strassburg (d.1278?), Theodoric of Freiberg (d.1310?), Giles of Lessines (d.1304?), Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler (d.1361), Henry Suso (d.1366), and Jan van Ruysbroeck (d.1381). See also ARISTOTLE , NEOPLATONISM, PETER LOMBAR. P.Hoß.