Bonum divinius et formalius. Estensione metafisica del bene in Teodorico di Freiberg

Abstract

Theodoric of Freiberg’s Agathology has not attracted significant scholarly attention. The references on the subject available in the literature draw attention to the marginality of the ratio boni in the writings of the Dominican, identifying the reason for it in its metaphysical insignificance. However, this thesis appears to be difficult to place in the context of Aristotelian reception and incompatible with some of the fundamental motifs of the Dominican's thought, such as the convertibility of transcendentals, the Neoplatonic scheme exitus-reditus and the productive and teleologically ordered dynamism of reality. This thesis re-examines the texts of the Dominican to verify the presence of a metaphysical conception of ‘the good’in Theodoric's work, possibly delimited, in its field of application, with respect to ontologically ‘inferior’ forms of Goodness. This circumstance could in fact account for the ‘downgrading’of bonum in De origine rerum praedicamentalium without disregarding a metaphysical meaning of the good. The hypothesis of a ‘metaphysical’ use of the notion of bonum implies a preliminary work on Theodoric's position on the object of metaphysics, to which the first of the three chapters of the treatise is dedicated. The study continues with an inquiry into the meanings of the ‘good’ (perfectio-finis-operatio) in immovable substances, which, according to Theodoric, enjoy the status of ontological perfection and consequent metaphysical dignity: a possible ‘metaphysical’ use of the notion of good necessarily passes through the application to the ontologically and axiologically superior domain of reality. Finally, the third chapter attempts to highlight an analogous metaphysical reworking of the agathological categories also for the sublunar universe: the invitation to the metaphysical reconduction of entities to the Principle from a cosmological point of view enlivens the possibility of ‘extending’the metaphysical good also to the levels of reality characterized by ontological precariousness. [edited by Author]