Lieven Jonckheere
Indeed, who still remembers Hendrik De Scheppere? (2)(3) Maybe someone knows him under his latin name, the Gandavensis or Henricus de Gandavo - Henry of Ghent, in English, or Hendrik van Gent, in Dutch - named that way after his birthplace, in the beginning of the thirteenth century.
It's a crying shame that so few people Gent have heard of the man - because generally Hendrik van Gent is considered as one of the most important scholastic philosophers and theologians. In his own lifetime he was recognised as a real master, on the very same level as the "Doctor Angelicus", Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the Paris University, where he became one of the leading intellectual stars of his days, the man who was called there Henri de Gand, was even given the byname "Doctor Solemnis" - which means something like "Exalted Teacher" - "Verheven, Gevierde Meester" in Dutch.
Why is it then that this master finally fell into oblivion? Maybe this is due to the fact that his theory lacked unity, he did not end up with a great synthesis. Indeed, he cannot be identified with one particular doctrine. Not unlike Freud and Lacan he developped not one but several conflicting doctrines - a way of thinking that gave his work the reputation of being very difficult and even 'inaccessible'. His historical critics tend to consider him as an undecided, even opportunistic eclectic. But today's growing number of his admirers see in his internal contradictions the reflection of, on the one hand, his sustained dialogue with the most important thinkers of his time, and, on the other hand, his social and even psychological realism. Indeed, contrary to the idea we have of a scholastic philosopher, our Hendrik van Gent always had a keen and sometimes even clinical eye, and ear, for what Nietzsche calls "Menschliches, allzu Menschliches", "la condition humaine" or the human limitations.
However this may be, in his theories he gradually moved away from the Aristotelian ideal of his times. And, under the influence of Saint Augustinus, he returned to Plato. So, at the end of what could be called his work in progress, a bit to his own surprise, he turned out to be the great champion of the adversaries of Saint Thomas Aquinas. No doubt this is another, political reason why afterwards Hendrik van Gent was neglected in the official catholic history.
What could now possibly be the importance of our Hendrik van Gent for the psychoanalysis?
In this context we may recall one of his major arguments in his discussion with Aristoteles: that matter (materia) could be created by God to exist independent of form. On this basis he established a distinction between two kinds of people, between two psychologies or subjective structures we might say. On the one hand there are the metaphysical minds. Their thinking is free from all conditions of observation. They have, so to say, a direct access to the matter created by God, without having to pass through the observation of the form. On the other hand there are the mathematical minds. They can only think of something if they can assign it some place in space, even is this place is reduced to a point. So, for Hendrik van Gent, mathematics are based on a spatial representation, on some formalism.
The crucial point for us now is that, for Hendrik van Gent, this very limitation to spatial representation or form, this metaphysical incapacity of an immediate access to the matter, is responsible for the melancholic disposition of the mathematical mind. He who measures and calculates too much, will get depressed. We could also say, with another reference to Lacan, that mathematics constitute a kind of cowardice towards the matter.
The first, obscure roots of this relationship between mathematics and melancholia are to be found in what is generally considered an apocryphal text of Aristoteles; there for the first time a link between melancholia and genius is sugggested.
More interesting however is the influence of this conception of Hendrik van Gent. On Martin Luther for instance. In one of his rare moments of irony Luther maintained that mathematics make people melancholic, just like medicine makes them ill and theology makes them sinfull. It is also assumed that the mathematical references in Albrecht Dürers engraving entiteld 'Melencolia I' stem from his knowledge of the writings of our Hendrik on this particular point.
Coming now to our century, I will not go so far as to pretend that psychoanalysis has been directly influenced by Hendrik van Gent. Nevertheless we must assess that a psychoanalyst like Imre Hermann for instance, reasons along similar lines. As you know, for Imre Hermann the formalism of mathematics, especially in geometry, is but a reaction-formation against the matter - just like with our Hendrik van Gent. But contrary to Hendrik van Gent, from Imre Hermann's clinical point of view this matter is anything but metaphysical: the only matter that matters for him is the anal of faecal matter, the dung - which, by the way, is quite in the spirit of Luther. I don't know if Imre Hermann anywhere draws the same conclusion as Hendrik van Gent, but we could say that this formal, mathematical or geometrical reaction-formation against the anal matter or the anal object has depressive virtues.
I suppose that from a lacanian point of view one can be critical of this parallelism between clinical and mathematical structure - a parallelism which is, as I have tried to show, in some respect tributary to our Hendrik van Gent. In being critical of Hendrik van Gent one joins the famous John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham in their dialogue with one of our forgotten citymen.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY (thanks to Gita Deneckere)
NOTES
Fuente: http://www.users.skynet.be/polis/1/clijonckheere1fr.htm
