Philip the Chancellor (1160/85–1236)

Philip occupies a pivotal place in the development of medieval philosophy. He is among the very first in the Latin West to have a fairly complete picture of both the newly available natural philosophy and metaphysics of Aristotle and the work of the great Muslim thinkers, Avicenna and Averroes. His Summa de bono, composed sometime between 1225 and 1236, shows the broadening of philosophical interests and the growth of philosophical sophistication that accompanied reflection on these new materials. Philip’s Summa had a major impact on subsequent thirteenth-century thinkers, particularly Albert the Great, whose own Summa de bono is closely modelled on that of Philip.