Classification Meets Mysticism:

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Classification Meets Mysticism

• Hugh of Saint Victor and Medieval
• Classification of Knowledge

Hope A. Olson School of Information
Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA)
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Hugh of St. Victor

• 12th century
• Theologian, philosopher, educator
• Monastery school of St. Victor, Paris
• Follower of Augustine
• Reader of Boethius
• Influence seen in Thomas Aquinas

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Hughs mystical pedagogy

• Wisdom is lifes purpose
• Three eyes
• Eye of the flesh sees the physical world
• Left intact after the Fall
• Eye of reason sees self
• Bleary after the Fall
• Perfect through practical arts
• Eye of contemplation sees God
• Blinded after the Fall
• Pursue through the theoretical arts

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Hughs perspective on education

• Restore the student to the divine Wisdom of God
• Philosophy is the love of that Wisdom which,
  wanting in nothing, is a living Mind and the sole
  primordial Idea or Pattern of things (Hugh,
  Didascalicon, quoting Boethius II,1)
• This, then, is what the arts are concerned with,
  this is what they intend, namely, to restore
  within us the divine likeness, a likeness which
  to us is a form but to God is his nature.
  (Didascalicon II,1)

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Didascalicon

• Written in 1120s
• Didascalic (didactic) tradition what Arts to
  study and why
• First part (books 1-3) how to read the Arts
• What to read
• In what order Hughs classification
• Second part (books 4-6) how to read Sacred
  Scripture

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Hughs classification of things
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Hughs classification of works
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Hughs classification of philosophy / wisdom
Logic
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Categories of the arts

• Theoretical arts
• Practical arts
• Mechanical arts
• Logical
• the other arts were invented first but that
  logic too should be invented was essential, for
  no man can fitly discuss things unless he first
  has learned the nature of correct and true
  discourse. (Didascalicon I, 11)

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What to study

• Liberal arts
• Trivium from Logic
• Grammar
• Rhetoric
• Dialectic
• Quadrivium from Mathematics
• Arithmetic
• Music
• Geometry
• Astronomy
• It is in the seven liberal arts that the
  foundation of all learning is to be found. (III,
  4, p.89)

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Logic
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The mathematical progression toward wisdom

• The Soul Four progressions of Three
• 3 9 27 81
• 243 729 2187 6561
• 19683 59049 177147 531441
• 3 the monad flows into threeness
• 9 music of the human body
• 27 soul dissipated in countless actions
• 1 soul freed from body returns to pure
  simplicity

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The mathematical progression toward wisdom

• The Body based on multiples of two
• 4 8 16 32
• 64 128 256 512
• 1024 2048 4096 8192
• souls degenerate from the purity of simple
  understanding clouded by no images of bodily
  things to the imagination of visible objects
  and ... recollecting themselves back toward the
  simple source of nature with the likeness of
  the most excellent numeral, come to rest.
  (Didascalicon II, 5)

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Hughs characteristic approach to Classification

• Purpose
• Pursuit of divine wisdom
• Education
• Order justification
• Mystical use of numbers
• Overlapping of things, works, philosophy

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Hugh in western classification

• Tradition of trivium quadrivium
• Western classificatory structure
• Mutual exclusivity
• Progression of disciplines
• Hierarchy

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Mutual exclusivity

• the theory of agriculture belongs to the
  philosopher, but the execution belongs to the
  farmer. (I, 5, p.51)
• wine in the grape is the business of
  agriculture in the barrel, of the cellarer and
  in its consumption, of the doctor. (II, 6, p.78)

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Hugh and Mutual exclusivity

• Mathematics has as its business the
  consideration of things which, though actually
  fused, are rationally separated by it. (II, 7,
  p.72)
• And by a wonderful ordering of the divine
  dispensation, it has been brought about that
  although the truth stands full and perfect in
  each of the books, yet none of them is
  superfluous. (IV, 2, p.104)

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Hugh and Linear progression

• Numeric progressions mirror the path to wisdom
  from naïve simplicity via sense and imagination
  to pure simplicity
• Order of the arts in study
• Logic Trivium
• Ethics
• Mathematics Quadrivium
• Physics
• Theology
• Mechanical arts

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Hugh and Hierarchy

• Evident in structure of philosophy and the arts
• Logic is concerned with genus and species.
  (II, 17, p.72)
• For every universal is more fully defined by its
  particulars we ought to begin with universals
  and then, by descending little by little from
  them , we ought to investigate the nature of
  the things those universals contain. (III, 9,
  p.92)

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Conclusions

• Hugh was squarely in the western classificatory
  tradition
• Hughs mysticism was not incompatible with
  logically based classification
• Hugh demonstrates the elasticity and ubiquity of
  traditional western classificatory structure

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Hope A. Olson School of Information
Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
(USA) holson_at_uwm.edu