William of Conches
William of Conches (Latin: Gulielmus de Conchis; French: Guillaume de Conches; c. 1090 – c. 1154), historically sometimes anglicized as William Shelley,[1] was a medieval Norman-French scholastic philosopher who sought to expand the bounds of Christian humanism by studying secular works of classical literature and fostering empirical science.
Less focused on Aristotle and medieval dialectic than Peter Abelard and his students at the University of Paris, the Chartrians primarily aimed to reconcile Christian morality and legend with Platonic philosophy, chiefly with reference to the Book of Genesis and Plato's Timaeus.
Students practiced writing prose and poetry on classical models and undertook frequent discussion on set subjects with the aim of developing fluency and cultivating elegant diction.
[10] William had not explicitly upheld with Bernard Sylvestris that Plato's "world soul" (Latin: anima mundi; Ancient Greek: ψυχὴ τοῦ κόσμου, psychḕ toû kósmou) was essentially identical with the Holy Spirit, but had discussed the idea as a possibly valid reading.
[11] With Abelard's writings successfully condemned by Bernard at the Council of Sens for a litany of heresies the same year, William withdrew from public teaching.
[23][24] Likewise, he wrote one edition of the related dialogue Dragmaticon,[18] whose neological name has been variously emended to Dramaticon ("A Dramatization")[16] and to Pragmaticon Philosophiae ("The Business of Philosophy")[4] although William himself understood his transliteration of dramatikón (δραματικόν) as meaning an interrogation (interrogatio) or question-and-answer format.
[25][26] The Dragmaticon continues to be largely considered a bowdlerized or revised edition of the Philosophia; however, from the 1980s, scholars have reconsidered this attitude, noting that only about 3–5% of the earlier work was removed against a rough doubling of content, with numerous additional Greek and Arabic sources.
[32] They display the humanism, Platonism, and affinity for the natural sciences of other members of the School of Chartres,[32] with whom William shared the tendency of analyzing his source texts through the lens of "covering" or "shieding" (integumentum) treating any apparent contradictions or heretical content within them as an allegory or metaphor for an underlying accurate and orthodox truth.
[33] In the passage of Plato's Timaeus stating that souls existed in the stars before birth, William opined that he really meant "nothing heretical, but the most profound philosophy sheltered in the covering of the words".
[4] The correct title and attribution were finally discovered in 1722 by Remi-Casimir Oudin[37] with additional points and considerations added by Charles Jourdain in 1838[38] and Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau in 1858.
[citation needed] By the level of the moon, it has been replaced by the ether;[53] with Plato, he considers this to be a form of fire rather than Aristotle's separate element.
[50] He identified the parts of the Trinity with their attributes: God the Father as Power, Jesus the Son as Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit as Will or Goodness.
[50] However, his understanding of the physical world did prompt him to reject various parts of scripture, including that there is water in or beyond the heavens[55] or that Eve was created from Adam's rib.
[citation needed] William's discussion of psychology was expressed in terms of the soul, which he considered to provide various powers when joined to the body.
