What is the Advantage of Knowing the Future? Some Comments on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, I, 3 (2017)
Steel, Carlos G. (Author)
Medioevo, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale
Volume: 42
Pages: 31-55
In the Introduction of the Tetrabiblos (I.3) Ptolemy defends astrology against critics who claim that knowing the future is useless. Why should we want to know what will happen if we cannot change the outcome? Ptolemy first insists that most events predicted in astrology do not follow with absolute necessity from the celestial configurations, and, even if some happen with ineluctable fatality, it is not superfluous to know them in advance, as this knowledge prepares us to accept what happens with “peace of mind”. In this defence of the utility of astrology, Ptolemy seems to be influenced by the Stoic practise of the “premeditatio malorum”. In the second part I show how Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas use Ptolemy’s argument to reject all forms of astrological determinism. In the third part I turn to Albumasar who in his Introductorius I, ch. VI, offers a lengthy reply of people who reject astrology as a superfluous occupation. He is clearly inspired by Ptolemy’s arguments, yet adds at the end an argument destined to convince the “common crowd”: most people reject knowledge of the future because it might remove what makes our present life pleasurable (as the Epicureans argued). However, Albumasar shows that there are even hedonistic reasons to be interested in knowing the future events, even if they are not pleasurable.
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