Bonaventure, Aristotle, and the Being of Universal Forms

Abstract

The question of whether Bonaventure’s metaphysical thought is “Aristotelian” has long been answered with a plain “no.” Indeed, many scholars have interpreted Bonaventure as parting ways with Aristotle on a number of foundational metaphysical positions: Bonaventure adopts Augustinian seminal reasons, instead of the accounts of generation and causation found in Aristotle, and Bonaventure’s universal forms have ‘being’ independent of and prior to sensibles. While the characterization of Bonaventure as largely opposed to Aristotelianism has become standard in contemporary scholarship, this paper demonstrates quite the opposite: Bonaventure, in developing his notion of form, relies almost exclusively on his—indeed idiosyncratic—interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the author argues that Aristotle’s philosophy is at the foundation of Bonaventure’s two seemingly Augustinian positions concerning seminal reasons and the ontological status of forms—as well as his distinction between the universal form and the seminal reason, which is neither a real nor a conceptual distinction.