«Ex utrisque eliquata una verissimae philosophiae disciplina» : La congiunzione necessaria di Platone e Aristotele in Enrico di Gand

The Necessary Conjunction of Plato and Aristotle in Henry of Ghent · The task that Boethius had set himself in his second commentary on the De interpretatione – that of demonstrating the full harmony of Plato and Aristotle – remained unachievable in the Latin Middle Ages, due to the absence of translations of almost all Platonic works. This did not prevent some Scholastic Masters from establishing comparisons between the two major Greek philosophers, with different results. A particular case, in the second half of the 13th century, seems to be represented by Henry of Ghent, who in the first question of his Summa elaborates a theory of knowledge based on a double exemplar : the Aristotelian one, obtained through abstraction from the sensible images, and the Platonic one, immutable and eternal, but internal (according to the Augustinian correction) to the Divine mind.