Ramon Llull  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Current revision

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Ramon Llull (c. 1232 – c. 1315) was a philosopher, logician, Franciscan tertiary and Majorcan writer. He is credited with writing the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently surfaced manuscripts show his work to have predated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory. He is also considered a pioneer of computation theory, especially given his influence on Leibniz. He is best-known as the author of Ars Magna.

Works

Llull’s Art

Llull’s Art (in Latin Ars) is at the center of his thought and undergirds his entire corpus. It is a system of universal logic based on a set of general principles activated in a combinatorial process. It can be used to prove statements about God and Creation (e.g., God is a Trinity). Often the Art formulates these statements as questions and answers (e.g., Q: Is there a Trinity in God? A: Yes.). It works cumulatively through an iterative process; statements about God's nature must be proved for each of His essential attributes in order to prove the statement true for God (i.e., Goodness is threefold, Greatness is threefold, Eternity is threefold, Power is threefold, etc.).

What sets Llull's system apart is its unusual use of letters and diagrams, giving it an algebraic or algorithmic character. He developed the Art over the course of many decades, writing new books to explain each new version. The Art's trajectory can be divided into two main phases, although each phase contains numerous variations. The first is sometimes called the Quaternary Phase (1274 - 1290) and the second the Ternary Phase (1290 - 1308).

Quaternary Phase

The two main works of the Quaternary Phase are the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (ca. 1274) and the Ars demonstrativa (ca. 1283). The Ars demonstrativa has twelve main figures. A set of sixteen principles, or 'dignities' (divine attributes) comprise the general foundation for the system's operation. These are contained in the first figure (Figure A) and assigned letters (B through R). The rest of the figures enable the user to take these principles and elaborate to demonstrate the truth of statements. Figure T is important because it contains "relational principles"(i.e. minority, majority, equality), also assigned letters. The Art then lists combinations of letters as a sort of visual aid for the process of working through every possible combination of principles. Figure S displays the Augustinian powers of the soul (will, intellect, and memory) and their acts (willing, understanding, remembering). Figure S was eliminated from the Art after 1290. Even in subsequent versions of the Art Llull maintained that the powers of the soul needed to be in alignment for a proper operation of the Art. This differentiates Llull's system from Aristotelian logic. Because classical logic did not take the powers of the soul into account it was ill-equipped to handle theological issues, in Llull's view.

Ternary Phase

Llull inaugurated the Ternary Phase with two works written in 1290: the Ars inventiva veritatis and the Art amativa. The culmination of this phase came in 1308 with a finalized version of the Art called the Ars generalis ultima. In the same year Llull wrote an abbreviated version called the Ars brevis. In these works Llull revised the Art to have only four main figures. He reduced the number of divine principles in the first figure to nine (goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth, glory). Figure T also now has nine relational principles (difference, concordance, contrariety, beginning, middle, end, majority, equality, minority), reduced from fifteen. Llull kept the combinatorial aspect of the process.

Correlatives

Llull introduced an aspect of the system called the "correlatives" just before the final transition to the Ternary Phase. The correlatives first appear in a work called the Lectura super figuras Artis demonstrativae (c.1285-7) and came to undergird his formulation of the nature of being. The doctrine of correlatives stipulates that everything, at the level of being, has a threefold structure: agent, patient, act. For example, the divine principle "goodness" consists of "that which does good" (agent), "that which receives good" (patient), and "to do good" (act). Llull developed a system of Latin suffixes to express the correlatives, i.e. bonitas (goodness); bonificans, bonificatus, bonificare. This became the basis for proving that the divine principles are distinct yet equivalent in God (each principle has the same underlying threefold structure, yet retains its own unique correlatives). This supports the combinatorial operation of the Art (i.e., this means that in God goodness is greatness and greatness is goodness, goodness is eternity and eternity is goodness, etc.), the Lullian proof of the Trinity (each divine principle has the three correlatives and together the principles comprise the Godhead, therefore the Godhead is threefold) and the Incarnation (the active and passive correlatives are equivalent to matter and form, and the trinitarian unfolding of being occurs on all levels of reality).

Other works

Influence of Islam and early works

It has been pointed out that the Art's combinatorial mechanics bear a resemblance to zairja, a device used by medieval Arab astrologers. The Art's reliance on divine attributes also has a certain similarity to the contemplation of the ninety-nine Names of God in the Muslim tradition. Llull's familiarity with the Islamic intellectual tradition is evidenced by the fact that his first work (1271-2) was a compendium of Al-Ghazali's logic.

Dialogues

From early in his career Llull composed dialogues to enact the procedure of the Art. This is linked to the missionary aspect of the Art. Llull conceived it as an instrument to convert all peoples of the world to Christianity and experimented with more popular genres to make it easier to understand. His earliest and most well known dialogue is the Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, written in Catalan the 1270s and later translated into Latin. It is framed as a meeting of three wise men (a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian) and a Gentile in the woods. They learn about the Lullian method when they encounter a set of trees with leaves inscribed with Lullian principles. Lady Intelligence appears and informs them of the properties of the trees and the rules for implementing the leaves. The wise men use the trees to prove their respective Articles of Faith to the Gentile (although some of the Islamic tenets cannot be proved with the Lullian procedure) and in the end the Gentile is converted to Christianity. Llull also composed many other dialogues. Later in his career when he became concerned with heretical activity in the Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, he wrote "disputations" with philosophers as interlocutors. He also created a character for himself and he stars in many of these dialogues as the Christian wise man (for instance: Liber de quaestione valde alta et profunda, composed in 1311).

Trees

Llull structured many of his works around trees. In some, like the Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, the "leaves" of the trees stand for the combinatorial elements (principles) of the Art. In other works a series of trees shows how the Art generates all ("encyclopedic") knowledge. The Tree of Science (1295-6) comprises sixteen trees ranging from earthly and moral to divine and pedagogical. Each tree is divided into seven parts (roots, trunk, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruits). The roots always consist of the Lullian divine principles and from there the tree grows into the differentiated aspects of its respective category of reality.

Novels

Llull also wrote narrative prose drawing on the literary traditions of his time (epic, romance) to express the Art. These works were intended to communicate the potentially complex operations of the Art to a lay audience. Blanquerna (c.1276-83) is his most well known novel. Felix (1287-9) is also notable, although it was not widely circulated during his lifetime and was only available in Catalan. It is formulated as a sort of Bildungsroman in which Felix, the main character, begins on a journey at the instigation of his father who has written the "Book of Wonders". The book is divided into ten chapters (echoing the encyclopedic range of the Tree of Science) as Felix gains knowledge: God, angels, heavens, elements, plans, minerals, animals, man, Paradise, and Hell. It turns out to be a metafiction, as Felix's journey ends at a monastery where he relates the "Book of Wonders" now embellished and fused with the account of his own adventures.

See also

• Apologetics
• Catalan literature
• List of pioneers in computer science
• Volvelle
• Ars Magna (Ramon Llull)
• Ars combinatoria
• Alphabet of human thought
• Christian mysticism
• Spanish mystics
• Islamic studies by author (non-Muslim or academic)
• Chaos (cosmogony)
• The Library of Babel
• Fasciculus Chemicus
• The Engine
• Timeline of Western philosophers
• 1235
• De Arte Combinatoria
• Tree of Science (Ramon Llull)