A Revised Text of Robert Holcot’s Quodlibetal Dispute on Whether God is Able to Know More Than He Knows

One of the more important texts for the Nominalist theory of knowledge is the quodlibetal dispute of Robert Holcot, held at Oxford in 1332, on whether God can know more than he knows. In the course of tnat dispute, Holcot extensively treated the question of the object of the act of knowing or believing, attacking the position of Walter of Chatton, that the object was the res extra to which the proposition referred, äs well äs Ockham's failure to carry his theory to what Holcot saw äs the proper condusion, namely that the object of knowing or believing is the act of knowing or believing itself. The text of that dispute has been edited and commented on by E, A. Moody, who based his work on what he thought to be the only manuscript containing that Quodlibet, namely the British Museum manuscript Royal 10. C. VI, fols. 150TM—151. However, two additional manuscript copies exist, one of which, upon examination, proves to be a better text than the Royal manuscript upon which Moody relicd. These manuscripts are Oxford, Balliol College Ms. 246, fol. 198'"— 199», which omits most of the first half of the Quodlibet, and Cambridge, Pembroke College Ms. 236, fols. 2l8 —220~, which is the best text. The Royal manuscript is defective in a variety of ways. Certain passages, äs Moody noted, are garbled and practically unintelligible. Scntences frequently lack agreement in subject and verb or in number, gender, and case of nouns and adjectives. The manuscript often lacks the necessary words which complete the meaning of the sentence or passage. Several arguments are not balanced and sometimes change the example bcing used. Finally, there is a passage at the end of the Quodlibet which does not belong in the conclusion and probably dpes not belong in this particular Quodlibet at all. These crrors znay simply be the result of a carclcss seribe, although thcre are sufiicicnt corrections in the text in the same hand to indicate the consa'ous attcmpt of the scribe to reproduce his exemplar exactly. Since many of the errors are of the type that would have 1 E A. Moody. .. QöodUbctalQacstion of Robert Holkot. O. P. on tbc Problem of the Objcct) of Knowledge and of BclicJ." Spfcutum. XXXIX (1904), &S—74.