VAN STEENBERGHEN, FERNAND

Philosopher, canon, member of the Royal Belgian Academy; b. Saint-Josse-ten-Noode (Brussels), Feb. 13, 1904. After completing his studies for the doctorate in philosophy at Louvain in 1923, Van Steenberghen studied theology there and was ordained in 1926. After spending some time working at the Vatican library, at Munich and at Oxford, he completed his magisterial study on the life and works of siger of brabant: Siger de Brabant d'après ses ouvres inédites : v. I, Les oeuvres inédites (Louvain 1931). This work won for him at Louvain the still higher degree: Maître-Agrégé de l'École Saint-Thomas d'Aquin in 1931. Volume 2 was published at Louvain in 1942. Between the appearance of these two volumes he had completed his Les oeuvres et la doctrine de Siger de Brabant (Brussels 1938). This work was incorporated almost in whole into v. 2 of the above study.

Academic Career. His teaching career at Louvain began in 1931. The following year he was named chargé de cours, and became a professor in 1935. In 1939 he succeeded Maurice De Wulf in the chair of the history of medieval philosophy at Louvain. Since the early 1930s he had been collaborating with De Wulf, for instance on the sixth ed. of the latter's Histoire de la philosophie médiévale (3 v. 1934, 1936, 1947) and in directing the series Les Philosophes Belges.

In 1948 Van Steenberghen established the series Philosophes médiévaux, in which some 25 important contributions to the history of medieval philosophy have appeared. In 1956 he was involved in founding the De Wulf-Mansion Centre at Louvain, which has exercised considerable influence on the study of ancient and medieval philosophy. He also participated in the formation of the Centre national de recherches d'histoire de la pensée médiévale in 1959, and has served as its president. In 1966, together with his former student, Robert Bultot, he founded l'Institut d'études médiévales at Louvain.

His influence has extended far beyond the borders of Belgium, both through his writings and his lectures. Thus in 1950 he was a visiting professor at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. After that he served as an exchange professor and lecturer in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and France. In 1978 he received an honorary doctorate from The Catholic University of America in Wash., D.C., and on that occasion delivered three lectures, which were subsequently published under the title Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism (Wash., D.C. 1980). On April 1, 1978, he received from the American Catholic Philosophical Association its highest award, the Aquinas Medal.

He retired from active teaching at Louvain in 1974, but his literary activity has continued without interruption. On that occasion his colleagues at Louvain presented him with a volume of choice selections drawn from some of his earlier articles: Introduction à l'étude de la philosophie médiévale, G. Van Riet, ed. (Louvain-Paris 1974). Included in that volume is a listing of his publications until that time—241 in number. A few of his many publications to appear since then will be mentioned below. Cited in that volume also are 78 licentiate and doctoral dissertations written under his direction.

Scholarly Focus. Van Steenberghen's scholarly publications fall into two broad fields: the history of medieval philosophy and speculative metaphysics. Already in the 1930s he proposed new and different ways of understanding the development of philosophical thought during the medieval period, especially during the 13th century. He has long been interested in the efforts of various medieval thinkers to work out the proper relationship between faith and reason, and since the 1930s has also participated in the debate concerning the appropriateness of referring to the philosophies developed by the medieval schoolmen as "Christian philosophies." He acknowledges that this title may be applied when and only when the term philosophy is given a very broad interpretation (so as to be more or less equivalent to a general "world-view" [Weltanschauung ]). But he has always denied that there was or is any such thing as Christian philosophy when the term philosophy is taken in the strict

sense. So understood, philosophy is a purely rational discipline, not one based on data accepted on the strength of religious belief. At the same time, Van Steenberghen concurs with Thomas Aquinas in defending the fundamental harmony between faith rightly interpreted and reason rightly exercised.

In his study of bonaventure, he has always refused to identify the philosophy of that Franciscan thinker as Augustinian rather than as Aristotelian. His views concerning this continue to be taken into account by the most recent discussions of that issue. In exposing the thought of thomas aquinas, Van Steenberghen has long recognized the importance of various Neoplatonic elements therein, along with the more generally acknowledged Aristotelian influences.

His name is associated especially with research concerning Siger of Brabant and the radical philosophical movement associated with the latter in the Arts Faculty at Paris in the 1260s and 1270s. Here Van Steenberghen's interpretation has been highly original. Thus in opposition to prevailing opinion at the time he first began to publish on Siger, Van Steenberghen has held that the 13th century Master of Arts underwent significant development in his views concerning the nature of the intellect and its relationship with individual human beings. If Siger had begun by accepting the Averroistic doctrine of one separate possible intellect (and one separate agent intellect) for the entire human race, he eventually moved much closer to the position defended by Thomas Aquinas—each individual human being possesses his own agent and his own possible intellect. The authenticity of some of the alleged Sigerian writings on which Van Steenberghen originally built his case has been seriously challenged. But more recently he has enjoyed the good fortune of having his interpretation confirmed in striking fashion by the discovery and publication of one of Siger's previously unknown works, his Questions on the Liber de causis, A. Marlasca, ed. (Louvain-Paris 1972).

English-language readers have profited from Van Steenberghen's widely circulated Aristotle in the West. In this work, as in many of his original publications in French, Van Steenberghen combines his knowledge of the philosophical texts of the time with helpful information concerning the broader history of the medieval period, e.g., the rise of medieval universities, the transmission of Greek or Latin originals into medieval Latin, the role of the mendicant (Franciscan and Dominican) orders, etc. More recently he has drawn upon these two approaches—interpretation of philosophical texts and consultation of pertinent broader historical data—to produce a classical interpretation of 13th century philosophical thought—La philosophie au XIIIe siècle (Louvain 1966; rev. Ger. tr. 1977). And still more recently his decades of research on Siger of Brabant have been given definitive expression in his Maître Siger de Brabant (Louvain-Paris 1977).

Van Steenberghen has also long been interested in the pursuit of speculative metaphysics for its own sake. This is evident from the original interpretations he has offered of the metaphysical thought of various medieval thinkers. And it has been given special expression in his independent writings on epistemology, metaphysics, and natural theology, and in many articles dealing with such themes. While his treatment of metaphysics is usually ultimately inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, he has often criticized what he regards as weaknesses or as lacunae in the latter's views. For instance, regarding Aquinas' argumentation for God's existence, Van Steen-berghen has offered a number of critical and controverted analyses. More recently he has produced an important study of all of Thomas' arguments for God's existence: Le problème de l'existence de Dieu dans les écrits de s. Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain-la-Neuve 1980). In this book he combines precise historical presentation and interpretation of all the relevant texts with critical evaluations. Other independent presentations of his general views may be found in English translation in his Ontology, Epistemology, and The Hidden God.

In a number of recent publications he has challenged Aquinas's claim that purely natural reason cannot prove that the world began to be (see, for instance, Lecture 1 in his Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism ). On this point he prefers the position defended by St. Bonaventure—human reason can demonstrate that the world began to be. He also differs with Aquinas's explanation of divine knowledge of future contingents.

Bibliography: f. van steenberghen, Aristote en Occident. Les origines de l'aristotélisme parisien (Louvain 1946); Eng. tr. Aristotle in the West. The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism (Louvain 1955, 1970); Directives pour la confection d'une monographie scientifique (3d ed. Louvain 1961); Épistémologie (Louvain 1945; rev. eds. 1947, 1956; rev. ed. 1965); Eng. tr. of 2d ed: Epistomology (New York 1949), tr. 4th ed. (New York 1970); Ontologie (Louvain 1946; 2d ed., Louvain 1952: 3d ed., Louvain 1961; 4th ed., Louvain 1966); Eng. tr. of 2d ed.: Ontology (New York 1952); Eng. tr. of 4th ed. (Louvain-New York 1970); Philosophie des Mittelalters (Bern 1950); Le XIIIe siècle, a. forest, et al., eds., Le mouvement doctrinal de IXe au XIVe siècle (Paris 1951, 1956); The Philosophical Movement in the Thirteenth Century (Belfast 1955); Dieu caché. Comment savons-nous que Dieu existe? (Louvain 1961); Eng. tr.: Hidden God. How Do We Know that God Exists? (St. Louis 1966); Histoire de la philosophie. Période chrétienne (2d rev. ed. Louvain-Paris 1973); La bibliothèque du philosophe mediévisté (Louvain-Paris 1974), containing many of his book reviews; Le thomisme (Paris 1983); Études philosophiques (Longueil, Quebec 1985). Articles about Van Steenberghen. m. hoehn, Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches (St. Mary's Abbey 1952) 607–609; c. a. graff, Enciclopedia filosofica (2d ed. Florence 1967), v. 6, col. 841; j. f. wippel, "Presentation of the Aquinas Medal to Fernand Van Steenberghen," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 52 (1978) 213–215.

[j. f. wippel]