Gilbert de la Porrée

Gilbert de la Porrée after 1085 – 4 September 1154, also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was the scholastic logician as well as theologian as living as Bishop of Poitiers,

Works

Gilbert is most the only logician of the 12th century who is intended by the greater scholastics of the succeeding age. The Liber sex principiorum, attributed to him, but in fact the work of an anonymous author, was regarded with a reverence almost equal to that paid to Aristotle, & furnished matter for numerous commentators, amongst them Albertus Magnus. Owing to the fame of this work, he is target by Dante as the Magister sex principiorum. The treatise itself is a discussion of the Aristotelian categories, specially of the six subordinate modes. The author distinguishes in the ten categories two classes, one essential, the other derivative. fundamental or inhering formae inhaerentes in the objects themselves are only substance, quantity, bracket and description in the stricter sense of that term. The remaining six, when, where, action, passion, position and habit, are relative and subordinate formae assistantes. This suggestion has some interest, but is of no great value, either in system of logic or in the theory of knowledge. More important in the history of scholasticism are the theological consequences to which Gilbert's realism led him.

In the commentary on ] It was this distinction between Deitas or Divinitas and Deus that led to the condemnation of Gilbert's doctrine.