“The problem of universals” in general is a historicallyvariable bundle of several closely related, yet in differentconceptual frameworks rather differently articulated metaphysical,logical, and epistemological questions, ultimately all connected tothe issue of how universal cognition of singular things is possible.How do we know, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem holdsuniversally, forall possible right triangles?Indeed, how can we have any awareness of a potential infinity of allpossible right triangles, given that we could only see a finite numberof actual ones? How can we universally indicate all possible righttriangles with the phrase ‘right triangle’? Is theresomething common to them all signified by this phrase? If so, what isit, and how is it related to the particular right triangles? Themedieval problem of universals is a logical, and historical,continuation of theancient problem generated byPlato’s (428–348 B.C.E.) theory answering such a bundle ofquestions, namely, his theory of Ideas or Forms.

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Emergence of the Problem
• 3. The Origin of the Specifically Medieval Problem of Universals
• 4. Boethius’ Aristotelian Solution
• 5. Platonic Forms as Divine Ideas
  • Divine Ideas and Divine Simplicity
  • Illuminationism vs. Abstractionism
• 6. Universals According to Abelard’s Aristotelian Conception
• 7. Universal Natures in Singular Beings and in Singular Minds
• 8. Universals in theVia Antiqua
• 9. Universals in theVia Moderna
• 10. The Separation of theViae, and the Breakdown of Scholastic Discourse in Late-Medieval Philosophy
• Bibliography
  • Primary Literature
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Introduction

The inherent problems with Plato’s original theory wererecognized already by Plato himself. In hisParmenides Platofamously raised several difficulties, for which he apparently did notprovide satisfactory answers. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), with alldue reverence to his teacher, consistently rejected Plato’stheory, and heavily criticized it throughout his own work. (Hence thefamous saying,amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas).^[1] Nevertheless, despite this explicit doctrinal conflict, Neo-Platonicphilosophers, pagans (such as Plotinus ca. 204–270, andPorphyry, ca. 234–305) and Christians (such as Augustine,354–430, and Boethius, ca. 480–524) alike, observed abasic concordance between Plato’s and Aristotle’sapproach, crediting Aristotle with an explanation of how the humanmind acquires its universal concepts of particular things fromexperience, and Plato with providing an explanation of how theuniversal features of particular things are established by beingmodeled after their universal archetypes.^[2] In any case, it was this general attitude toward the problem in lateantiquity that set the stage for the ever more sophisticated medieval discussions.^[3] In these discussions, the concepts of the human mind, therefore, wereregarded as posterior to the particular things represented by theseconcepts, and hence they were referred to asuniversalia postrem (‘universals after the thing’). The universalfeatures of singular things, inherent in these things themselves, werereferred to asuniversalia in re (‘universals in thething’), answering the universal exemplars in the divine mind,theuniversalia ante rem (‘universals before the thing’).^[4] All these, universal concepts, universal features of singular things,and their exemplars, are expressed and signified by means of someobviously universal signs, the universal (or common) terms of humanlanguages. For example, the term ‘man’, in English is auniversal term, because it is truly predicable of all men in one andthe same sense, as opposed to the singular term‘Socrates’, which in the same sense, i.e., when not usedequivocally, is only predicable of one man (hence the need to add anordinal number to the names of kings and popes of the same name).

Depending on which of these items (universal features of singularthings, their universal concepts, or their universal names) theyregarded as the primary, really existing universals, it is customaryto classify medieval authors as beingrealists,conceptualists, ornominalists, respectively. Therealists are supposed to be those who assert the existence ofreal universalsin and/orbefore particular things,theconceptualists those who allow universals only, orprimarily, as concepts of the mind, whereasnominalists wouldbe those who would acknowledge only, or primarily, universal words.But this rather crude classification does not adequately reflect thegenuine, much more subtle differences of opinion between medievalthinkers. (No wonder one often finds in the secondary literaturedistinctions between, “moderate” and “extreme”versions of these crudely defined positions.) In the first place,nearlyall medieval thinkers agreed on the existence ofuniversalsbefore things in the form of divine ideas existingin the divine mind,^[5] but all of them denied their existence in the form ofmind-independent, real, eternal entities originally posited by Plato.Furthermore, medieval thinkers also agreed that particular things havecertain features which the human mind is able to comprehend in auniversal fashion, and signify by means of universal terms. As weshall see, their disagreements rather concerned the types of therelationships that hold between the particular things, theirindividual, yet universally comprehensible features, the universalconcepts of the mind, and the universal terms of our languages, aswell as the ontological status of, and distinctions between, theindividualized features of the things and the universal concepts ofthe mind. Nevertheless, the distinction between “realism”and “nominalism”, especially, when it is used to refer tothe distinction between the radically different ways of doingphilosophy and theology in late-medieval times, is quite justifiable,provided we clarify whatreally separated these ways, as Ihope to do in the later sections of this article.

In this brief summary account, I will survey the problem both from asystematic and from a historical point of view. In the next section Iwill first motivate the problem by showing how naturally the questionsconcerning universals emerge if we consider how we come to know auniversal claim, i.e., one that concerns a potentially infinite numberof particulars of a given kind, in a simple geometrical demonstration.I will also briefly indicate why a naïve Platonic answer to thesequestions in terms of the theory of perfect Forms, however plausibleit may seem at first, is inadequate. In the third section, I willbriefly discuss how the specific medieval questions concerninguniversals emerged, especially in the context of answeringPorphyry’s famous questions in his introduction toAristotle’sCategories, which will naturally lead us toa discussion of Boethius’ Aristotelian answers to thesequestions in his second commentary on Porphyry in the fourth section.However, Boethius’ Aristotelian answers anticipated only oneside of the medieval discussions: the mundane, philosophical theory ofuniversals, in terms of Aristotelian abstractionism. But the otherimportant, Neo-Platonic, theological side of the issue provided byBoethius, and, most importantly, by St. Augustine, was for medievalthinkers the theory of ontologically primary universals as thecreative archetypes of the divine mind, the Divine Ideas. Therefore,the fifth section is going to deal with the main ontological andepistemological problems generated by this theory, namely, theapparent conflict between divine simplicity and the multiplicity ofdivine ideas, on the one hand, and the tension between the Augustiniantheory of divine illumination and Aristotelian abstractionism, on theother. Some details of the early medieval Boethian-Aristotelianapproach to the problem and its combination with the Neo-PlatonicAugustinian traditionbefore the influx of the newlyrecovered logical, metaphysical, and physical writings of Aristotleand their Arabic commentaries in the second half of the12^th century will be taken up in the sixth section, inconnection with Abelard’s (1079–1142) discussion ofPorphyry’s questions. The seventh section will discuss somedetails of the characteristic metaphysical approach to the problem inthe 13^th century, especially as it was shaped by theinfluence of Avicenna’s (980–1037) doctrine of commonnature. The eighth section outlines the most general features of thelogical conceptual framework that served as the common background forthe metaphysical disagreements among the authors of this period. Iwill argue that it is precisely this common logical-semanticalframework that allows the grouping together of authors who endorsesometimes radically different metaphysics and epistemologies (not onlyin this period, but also much later, well into the early modernperiod) as belonging to what in later medieval philosophy came to beknown as the “realist”via antiqua, the“old way” of doing philosophy and theology. By contrast,it was precisely the radically different logical-semantical approachinitiated by William Ockham (ca. 1280–1350), and articulated andsystematized most powerfully by Jean Buridan (ca. 1300–1358),that distinguished the “nominalist”via moderna,the “modern way” of doing philosophy and theology from thesecond half of the 14^th century. The general, distinctivecharacteristics of this “modern way” will be the discussedin the ninth section. Finally, the concluding tenth section willbriefly indicate how the separation of the twoviae, inaddition to a number of extrinsic social factors, contributed to thedisintegration of scholastic discourse, and thereby to thedisappearance of the characteristically medieval problem ofuniversals, as well as to the re-mergence of recognizably the sameproblem in different guises in early modern philosophy.

2. The Emergence of the Problem

It is easy to see how the problem of universals emerges, if weconsider a geometrical demonstration, for example, the demonstrationof Thales’ theorem. According to the theorem, any triangleinscribed in a semicircle is a right triangle, as is shown in thefollowing diagram:

Figure 1. Thales’ theorem

Looking at this diagram, we can see that all we need to prove is thatthe angle at vertex D of triangle ABD is a right angle. The proof iseasy once we realize that since lines AC, DC, and BC are the radii ofa circle, the triangles ACD and DCB are isosceles triangles, whencetheir base angles are equal. For then, if we denote the angles of ABDby the names of their vertices, this fact entails that D=A + B; andso, since A + B + D=180^o, it follows that 2A +2B=180^o; therefore, A + B=90^o, that is,D=90^o,q. e. d.

Of course, from our point of view, the important thing about thisdemonstration is not so much thetruth of its conclusion asthe way it proves this conclusion. For the conclusion is auniversal theorem, which has to concern all possible trianglesinscribed in any possible semicircle whatsoever, not just the oneinscribed in the semicircle in the figure above. Yet, apparently, inthe demonstration above we were talking only about that triangle. So,how can we claim that whatever we managed to prove concerning thatparticular triangle will hold for all possible triangles?

If we take a closer look at the diagram, we can easily see the appealof the Platonic answer to this question. For upon a closer look, it isclear that, despite appearances to the contrary, this demonstrationcannot be about the triangle in this diagram. Indeed, in thedemonstration we assumed that the lines AC, DC, and BC were allperfectly equal, straight lines. However, if we zoom in on the figure,we can clearly see that these lines are far from being equal; in fact,they are not even straight lines:

Figure 2. The result of zooming in onFigure 1.

The demonstration was certainly not about the collection of jaggedblack surfaces that we can see here. Rather, the demonstrationconcerned something we did not see with our bodily eyes, but what wehad in mind all along, understanding it to be a triangle, withperfectly straight edges, touching a perfect circle in threeunextended points, which are all perfectly equidistant from the centerof the circle. The figure we could see was only a convenient“reminder” of what we are supposed to have in mind when wewant to prove that a certain property, namely, that it is a righttriangle, has to belong to the object in our mind in virtue of what itis, namely, a triangle inscribed in a semicircle. Obviously, theconclusion applies perfectly only to the perfect triangle we had inmind, whereas it holds for the visible figure only insofar as, and tothe extent that, this figure resembles the object we had in mind. Butthis figure fails to have this property precisely insofar as, and tothe extent that, it falls short of the object in our mind.

However, on the basis of this point it should also be clear that theconclusiondoes apply to this figure, and every other visibletriangle inscribed in a semicircle as well, insofar as, and to theextent that, it manages to imitate the properties of the perfectobject in our mind. Therefore, the Platonic answer to the question ofwhat this demonstration was about, namely, that it was about aperfect, ideal triangle, which is invisible to the eyes, but isgraspable by our understanding, at once provides us with anexplanation of the possibility of universal, necessary knowledge. Byknowing the properties of the Form or Idea, we know all itsparticulars, i.e., all the things that imitate it, insofar as theyimitate or participate in it. So, the Form itself is a universalentity, a universal model of all its particulars; and since it is theknowledge of this universal entity that can enable us to know at onceall its particulars, it is absolutely vital for us to knowwhat it is,what it islike, and exactlyhow it isrelated to its particulars. However,obviously, all these questions presuppose thatitisat all, namely, that such a universal entityexists.

But the existence of such an entity seems to be rather precarious.Consider, for instance, the perfect triangle we were supposed to havein mind during the demonstration of Thales’ theorem. If it is aperfect triangle, it obviously has to have three sides, since aperfect triangle has to be a triangle, and nothing can be a triangleunless it has three sides. But of those three sides either at leasttwo are equal or none, that is to say, the triangle in question has tobe either isosceles or scalene (taking ‘isosceles’broadly, including even equilateral triangles, for the sake ofsimplicity). However, since it is supposed to be the universal modelofall triangles, and not only of isosceles triangles, thisperfect triangle cannot be an isosceles, and for the same reason itcannot be a scalene triangle either. Therefore, such a universaltriangle would have to have inconsistent properties, namely,both that it is either isosceles or scaleneand thatit is neither isosceles nor scalene. However, obviously nothing canhave these properties at the same time, so nothing can be a universaltriangle any more than a round square. So, apparently, no universaltriangle can exist. But then, what was our demonstration about? Just alittle while ago, we concluded that it could not be directly about anyparticular triangle (for it was not about the triangle in the figure,and it was even less about any other particular triangle not in thefigure), and now we had to conclude that it could not be about auniversal triangle either. But are there any further alternatives? Itseems obvious that through this demonstration we do gain universalknowledge concerning all particulars. Yet it is also clear that we donot, indeed, we cannot gain this knowledge by examining allparticulars, both because they are potentially infinite and becausenone of them perfectly satisfies the conditions stated in thedemonstration. So, there must have been something wrong in ourcharacterization of the universal, which compelled us to concludethat, in accordance with that characterization, universals could notexist. Therefore, we are left with a whole bundle of questionsconcerning the nature and characteristics of universals, questionsthat cannot be left unanswered if we want to know how universal,necessary knowledge is possible, if at all.

3. The Origin of the Specifically Medieval Problem of Universals

What we may justifiably call the first formulation of “themedieval problem of universals” (distinguishing it fromthe both logically and historically related ancient problems ofPlato’s Theory of Forms) was precisely such a bundle ofquestions famously raised by Porphyry in hisIsagoge, thatis, hisIntroduction to Aristotle’s Categories. As hewrote:

(1) Since, Chrysaorius, to teach about Aristotle’sCategories it is necessary to know what genus and differenceare, as well as species, property, and accident, and since reflectionon these things is useful for giving definitions, and in general formatters pertaining to division and demonstration, therefore I shallgive you a brief account and shall try in a few words, as in themanner of an introduction, to go over what our elders said about thesethings. I shall abstain from deeper enquiries and aim, as appropriate,at the simpler ones.

(2) For example, I shall beg off saying anything about (a) whethergenera and species are real or are situated in bare thoughts alone,(b) whether as real they are bodies or incorporeals, and (c) whetherthey are separated or in sensibles and have their reality inconnection with them. Such business is profound, and requires another,greater investigation. Instead I shall now try to show how theancients, the Peripatetics among them most of all, interpreted genusand species and the other matters before us in a more logical fashion.[Porphyry,Isagoge, in Spade 1994 (henceforth,FiveTexts), p. 1.]

Even though in this way, by relegating them to a “greaterinvestigation”, Porphyry left these questions unanswered, theycertainly proved to be irresistible for his medieval Latincommentators, beginning with Boethius, who produced not just one, buttwo commentaries on Porphyry’s text; the first based on MariusVictorinus’s (fl. 4^th c.) translation, andthe second on his own.^[6]

In the course of his argument, Boethius makes it quite clear what sortof entity a universal would have to be.

A universal must be common to several particulars

1. in its entirety, and not only in part
2. simultaneously, and not in a temporal succession, and
3. it should constitute the substance of its particulars.^[7]

However, as Boethius argues, nothing in real existence can satisfythese conditions. The main points of his argument can be reconstructedas follows.

Anything that is common to many things in the required manner has tobe simultaneously, and as a whole, in the substance of these manythings. But these many things are several beings precisely becausethey are distinct from one another in their being, that is to say, theact of being of one is distinct from the act of being of the other.However, if the universal constitutes the substance of a particular,then it has to have the same act of being as the particular, becauseconstituting the substance of something means precisely this, namely,sharing the act of being of the thing in question, as thething’s substantial part. But the universal is supposed toconstitute the substance of all of its distinct particulars, as awhole, at the same time. Therefore, the one act of being of theuniversal entity would have to be identical with all the distinct actsof being of its several particulars at the same time, which is impossible.^[8]

This argument, therefore, establishes that no one thing can be auniversal in its being, that is to say, nothing can be both one beingand common to many beings in such a manner that it shares its act ofbeing with those many beings, constituting their substance.

This can easily be visualized in the following diagram, where the tinylightning bolts indicate the acts of being of the entities involved,namely, a woman, a man, and their universal humanity (the largerdotted figure).

Figure 3. Illustration of the first partof Boethius’ argument

But then, Boethius goes on, we should perhaps say that the universalis not one being, but rather many beings, that is, [the collection of]^[9] those constituents of the individual essences of its particulars onaccount of which they all fall under the same universal predicable.For example, on this conception, the genus ‘animal’ wouldnot be some one entity, a universal animality over and above theindividual animals, yet somehow sharing its being with them all(since, as we have just seen, that is impossible), but rather [thecollection of] the individual animalities of all animals.

Boethius rejects this suggestion on the ground that whenever there areseveral generically similar entities, they have to have a genus;therefore, just as the individual animals had to have a genus, so too,their individual animalities would have to have another one. However,since the genus of animalities cannot be one entity, some‘super-animality’ (for the same reason that the genus ofanimals could not be one entity, on the basis of the previousargument), it seems that the genus of animalities would have to be anumber of further ‘super-animalities’. But then again, thesame line of reasoning should apply to these‘super-animalities’, giving rise to a number of‘super-super-animalities’, and so on to infinity, which isabsurd. Therefore, we cannot regard the genus as some real being evenin the form of [a collection of] several distinct entities. Sincesimilar reasonings would apply to the other Porphyrian predicables aswell, no universal can exist in this way.

Now, a universal either exists in reality independently of a mindconceiving of it, or it only exists in the mind. If it exists inreality, then it either has to be one being or several beings. Butsince it cannot exist in reality in either of these two ways, Boethiusconcludes that it can only exist in the mind.^[10]

However, to complicate matters, it appears that a universal cannotexist in the mind either. For, as Boethius says, the universalexisting in the mind is some universal understanding of some thingoutside the mind. But then this universal understanding is eitherdisposed in the same way as the thing is, or differently. If it isdisposed in the same way, then the thing also must be universal, andthen we end up with the previous problem of a really existinguniversal. On the other hand, if it is disposed differently, then itis false, for “what is understood otherwise than the thing is isfalse” (Five Texts, Spade 1994, p. 23 (21)). But then,all universals in the understanding would have to be falserepresentations of their objects; therefore, no universal knowledgewould be possible, whereas our considerations started out preciselyfrom the existence of such knowledge, as seems to be clear, e.g., inthe case of geometrical knowledge.

4. Boethius’ Aristotelian Solution

Boethius’ solution of the problem stated in this form consistsin the rejection of this last argument, by pointing out the ambiguityof the principle that “what is understood otherwise than thething is is false”. For in one sense this principle states theobvious, namely, that an act of understanding that represents a thingtobe otherwise than the thing is is false. This isprecisely the reading of this principle that renders it plausible.However, in another sense this principle would state that an act ofunderstanding which represents the thing in a manner which isdifferent from the manner in which the thing exists is false. In thissense, then, the principle would state that if the mode ofrepresentation of the act of understanding is different from the modeof being of the thing, then the act of understanding is false. Butthis is far from plausible. In general, it is simply not true that arepresentation can be true or faithful only if the mode ofrepresentation matches the mode of being of the thing represented. Forexample, a written sentence is a true and faithful representation of aspoken sentence, although the written sentence is a visible, spatialsequence of characters, whereas the spoken sentence is an audible,temporal pattern of articulated sounds. So, what exists as an audiblepattern of sounds is represented visually, that is, the mode ofexistence of the thing represented is radically different from themode of its representation. In the same way, when particular thingsare represented by a universal act of thought, the things exist in aparticular manner, while they are represented in a universal manner,still, this need not imply that the representation is false. But thisis precisely the sense of the principle that the objection exploited.Therefore, since in this sense the principle can be rejected, theobjection is not conclusive.^[11]

However, it still needs to be shown that in the particular case ofuniversal representation the mismatch between the mode of itsrepresentation and the mode of being of the thing represented does infact not entail the falsity of the representation. This can easily beseen if we consider the fact that the falsity of an act ofunderstanding consists in representing somethingto be in away it is not. That is to say, properly speaking, it is only an act ofjudgment that can be false, by which we think somethingto be somehow. But asimple act of understanding, bywhich we simply understand something without thinking ittobe somehow, that is, without attributing anything to it, cannotbe false. For example, I can be mistaken if I form in my mind thejudgment that a manis running, whereby I conceive a manto be somehow, but if I simply think of a man withoutattributing either running or not running to him, I certainly cannotmake a mistake as to how heis.^[12] In the same way, I would be mistaken if I were to think that atriangle is neither isosceles nor scalene, but I am certainly not inerror if I simply think of a triangle without thinking either that itis isosceles or that it is scalene. Indeed, it is precisely thispossibility that allows me to form the universal mentalrepresentation, that is, the universal concept of all particulartriangles, regardless of whether they are isosceles or scalene. Forwhen I think of a triangle in general, then I certainly do not thinkof something that is a triangle and is neither isosceles nor scalene,for that is impossible, but I simply think of a triangle, not thinkingthat it is an isosceles and not thinking that it is a scalenetriangle. This is how the mind is able to separate in thought what areinseparable in real existence. Being either isosceles or scalene isinseparable from a triangle in real existence. For it is impossiblefor somethingto be a triangle, and yetnot to be anisosceles andnotto be a scalene triangle either.Still, it is not impossible for something to bethought to bea triangle andnot to bethought to be an isoscelesandnot to bethought to be a scalene triangleeither (although of course, it still has to be thought to beeither-isosceles-or-scalene). This separation in thought of thosethings that cannot be separated in reality is the process ofabstraction.^[13] In general, by means of the process of abstraction, our mind (inparticular, the faculty of our mind Aristotle callsactiveintellect (nous poietikos, in Greek,intellectusagens, in Latin) is able to form universal representations ofparticular objects by disregarding what distinguishes them, andconceiving of them only in terms of those of their features in respectof which they do not differ from one another.

In this way, therefore, if universals are regarded as universal mentalrepresentations existing in the mind, then the contradictions emergingfrom the Platonic conception no longer pose a threat. On thisAristotelian conception, universals need not be thought of as somehowsharing their being with all their distinct particulars, for theirbeing simply consists in their being thought of, or rather, theparticulars’ being thought of in a universal manner. This iswhat Boethius expresses by saying in his final replies toPorphyry’s questions the following:

… genera and species subsist in one way, but are understood inan another. They are incorporeal, but subsist in sensibles, joined tosensibles. They are understood, however, as subsisting by themselves,and as not having their being in others. [Five Texts, Spade1994, p. 25]

But then, if in this way, by positing universals in the mind, the mostobvious inconsistencies of Plato’s doctrine can be avoided, nowonder that Plato’s “original” universals, theuniversal models which particulars try to imitate by their features,found their place, in accordance with the long-standing Neo-Platonictradition, in the divine mind.^[14] It is this tradition that explains Boethius’ cautiousformulation of his conclusion concerning Aristotelianism pure andsimple, as not providing us with the whole story. As he writes:

… Plato thinks that genera and species and the rest are notonly understood as universals, but also exist and subsist apart frombodies. Aristotle, however, thinks that they are understood asincorporeal and universal, but subsist in sensibles.

I did not regard it as appropriate to decide between their views. Forthat belongs to a higher philosophy. But we have carefully followedout Aristotle’s view here, not because we would recommend it themost, but because this book, [theIsagoge], is written abouttheCategories, of which Aristotle is the author. [FiveTexts, Spade 1994, p. 25]

5. Platonic Forms as Divine Ideas

Besides Boethius, the most important mediator between the Neo-Platonicphilosophical tradition and the Christianity of the Medieval LatinWest, pointing out also its theological implications, was St.Augustine. In a passage often quoted by medieval authors in theirdiscussions of divine ideas, he writes as follows:

… in Latin we can call the Ideas “forms” or“species”, in order to appear to translate word for word.But if we call them “reasons”, we depart to be sure from aproper translation — for reasons are called “logoi”in Greek, not Ideas — but nevertheless, whoever wants to usethis word will not be in conflict with the fact. For Ideas are certainprincipal, stable and immutable forms or reasons of things. They arenot themselves formed, and hence they are eternal and always stand inthe same relations, and they are contained in the divineunderstanding. [Spade 1985, Other Internet Resources, p. 383]^[15]

As we could see from Boethius’ solution, in this way, ifPlatonic Forms are not universal beings existing in a universalmanner, but their universality is due to a universal manner ofunderstanding, we can avoid the contradictions arising from the“naïve” Platonic conception. Nevertheless, placinguniversal ideas in the divine mind as the archetypes of creation, thisconception can still do justice to the Platonic intuition that whataccounts for the necessary, universal features of the ephemeralparticulars of the visible world is the presence of some universalexemplars in the source of their being. It is precisely in virtue ofhaving some insight into these exemplars themselves that we can havethe basis of universal knowledge Plato was looking for. As St.Augustine continues:

And although they neither arise nor perish, nevertheless everythingthat is able to arise and perish, and everything that does arise andperish, is said to be formed in accordance with them. Now it is deniedthat the soul can look upon them, unless it is a rational one, [andeven then it can do so] only by that part of itself by which itsurpasses [other things] — that is, by its mind and reason, asif by a certain “face”, or by an inner and intelligible“eye”. To be sure, not each and every rational soul initself, but [only] the one that is holy and pure, that [is the onethat] is claimed to be fit for such a vision, that is, the one thatkeeps that very eye, by which these things are seen, healthy and pureand fair and like the things it means to see. What devout man imbuedwith true religion, even though he is not yet able to see thesethings, nevertheless dares to deny, or for that matter fails toprofess, that all things that exist, that is, whatever things arecontained in their own genus with a certain nature of their own, sothat that they might exist, are begotten by God their author, and thatby that same author everything that lives is alive, and that theentire safe preservation and the very order of things, by whichchanging things repeat their temporal courses according to a fixedregimen, are held together and governed by the laws of a supreme God?If this is established and granted, who dares to say that God has setup all things in an irrational manner? Now if it is not correct to sayor believe this, it remains that all things are set up by reason, anda man not by the same reason as a horse — for that is absurd tosuppose. Therefore, single things are created with their own reasons.But where are we to think these reasons exist, if not in the mind ofthe creator? For he did not look outside himself, to anything placed[there], in order to set up what he set up. To think that issacrilege. But if these reasons of all things to be created and[already] created are contained in the divine mind, and [if] therecannot be anything in the divine mind that is not eternal andunchangeable, and [if] Plato calls these principal reasons of things“Ideas”, [then] not only are there Ideas but they aretrue, because they are eternal and [always] stay the same way, and[are] unchangeable. And whatever exists comes to exist, however itexists, by participation in them. But among the things set up by God,the rational soul surpasses all [others], and is closest to God whenit is pure. And to the extent that it clings to God in charity, tothat extent, drenched in a certain way and lit up by that intelligiblelight, it discerns these reasons, not by bodily eyes but by thatprincipal [part] of it by which it surpasses [everything else], thatis, by its intelligence. By this vision it becomes most blessed. Thesereasons, as was said, whether it is right to call them Ideas or formsor species or reasons, many are permitted to call [them] whatever theywant, but [only] to a very few [is it permitted] to see what is true.[Spade 1985, Other Internet Resources, pp. 383–384]

Augustine’s conception, then, saves Plato’s originalintuitions, yet without their inconsistencies, while it also combineshis philosophical insights with Christianity. But, as a rule, a reallyintriguing solution of a philosophical problem usually gives rise to anumber of further problems. This solution of the original problem withPlato’s Forms is no exception.

5.1 Divine Ideas and Divine Simplicity

First of all, it generates a particular ontological/theologicalproblem concerning the relationship between God and His Ideas. Foraccording to the traditional philosophical conception of divineperfection, God’s perfection demands that He is absolutelysimple, without any composition of any sort of parts.^[16] So, God and the divine mind are not related to one another as a manand his mind, namely as a substance to one of its several powers, butwhatever powers Godhas Heis. Furthermore, theDivine Ideas themselves cannot be regarded as being somehow theeternal products of the divine mind distinct from the divine mind, andthus from God Himself, for the only eternal being is God, andeverything else is His creature. Now, since the Ideas are notcreatures, but the archetypes of creatures in God’s mind, theycannot be distinct from God. However, as is clear from the passageabove, there are several Ideas, and there is only one God. So how canthese several Ideas possibly be one and the same God?

Augustine never explicitly raised the problem, but for exampleAquinas, who (among others) did, provided the following ratherintuitive solution for it (ST1, q. 15, a. 2). The Divine Ideas are inthe Divine Mind as its objects, i.e., as the things understood. Butthe diversity of the objects of an act of understanding need notdiversify the act itself (as when understanding the Pythagoreantheorem, we understand both squares and triangles). Therefore, it ispossible for the self-thinking divine essence to understand itself ina single act of understanding so perfectly that this act ofunderstanding not only understands the divine essence as it is initself, but also in respect of all possible ways in which it can beimperfectly participated by any finite creature. The cognition of thediversity of these diverse ways of participation accounts for theplurality of divine ideas. But since all these diverse ways areunderstood in a single eternal act of understanding, which is nothingbut the act of divine being, and which in turn is again the divineessence itself, the multiplicity of ideas does not entail anycorresponding multiplicity of the divine essence. To be sure, thissolution may still give rise to the further questions as to what thesediverse ways are, exactly how they are related to the divine essence,and how their diversity is compatible with the unity and simplicity ofthe ultimate object of divine thought, namely, divine essence itself.In fact, these are questions that were raised and discussed in detailby authors such as Henry of Ghent (c. 1217–1293), Thomas ofSutton (ca. 1250–1315), Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) and others.^[17]

5.2 Illuminationism vs. Abstractionism

Another major issue connected to the doctrine of divine ideas, asshould also be clear from the previously quoted passage, was thebundle of epistemological questions involved in Augustine’sdoctrine of divine illumination. The doctrine — according towhich the human soul, especially “one that is holy andpure”, obtains a specific supernatural aid in its acts ofunderstanding, by gaining a direct insight into the Divine Ideasthemselves — received philosophical support in terms of atypically Platonic argument in Augustine’sDe Libero Arbitrio.^[18] The argument can be reconstructed as follows.

The Augustinian Argument for Illumination.

1. I can come to know from experience only something that can befound in experience [self-evident]
2. Absolute unity cannot be found in experience [assumed]
3. Therefore, I cannot come to know absolute unity from experience.[1,2]
4. Whatever I know, but I cannot come to know from experience, I cameto know from a source that is not in this world of experiences.[self-evident]
5. I know absolute unity. [assumed]
6. Therefore, I came to know absolute unity from a source that is notin this world of experiences. [3,4,5]

Proof of 2. Whatever can be found in experience is somematerial being, extended in space, and so it has to have a multitudeof spatially distinct parts. Therefore, it is many in respect of thoseparts. But what is many in some respect is not one in that respect,and what is not one in some respect is not absolutely one. Therefore,nothing can be found in experience that is absolutely one, that is,nothing in experience is an absolute unity.

Proof of 5. I know that whatever is given in experience hasmany parts (even if I may not be able to discern those parts by mysenses), and so I know that it is not an absolute unity. But I canhave this knowledge only if I know absolute unity, namely, somethingthat is not many in any respect, not even in respect of its parts,for, in general, I can know that something is F in a certain respect,and not an F in some other respect, only if I know what it is forsomething to be an F without any qualification. (For example, I knowthat the two halves of a body, taken together, are not absolutely two,for taken one by one, they are not absolutely one, since they are alsodivisible into two halves, etc. But I can know this only because Iknow that for obtaining absolutely two things [and not just twomultitudes of further things], I would have to have two things that inthemselves are absolutely one.) Therefore, I know absolute unity.

It is important to notice here that this argument (crucially) assumesthat the intellect is passive in acquiring its concepts. According tothis assumption, the intellect merely receives the cognition of itsobjects as it finds them. By contrast, on the Aristotelian conception,the human mind actively processes the information it receives fromexperience through the senses. So by means of its facultyappropriately called the active or agent intellect, it is able toproduce from a limited number of experiences a universal conceptequally representing all possible particulars falling under thatconcept. In his commentary on Aristotle’sDe AnimaAquinas insightfully remarks:

The reason why Aristotle came to postulate an active intellect was hisrejection of Plato’s theory that the essences of sensible thingsexisted apart from matter, in a state of actual intelligibility. ForPlato there was clearly no need to posit an active intellect. ButAristotle, who regarded the essences of sensible things as existing inmatter with only a potential intelligibility, had to invoke someabstractive principle in the mind itself to render these essencesactually intelligible. [In De Anima, bk. 3, lc. 10]

On the basis of these and similar considerations, therefore, one mayconstruct a rather plausible Aristotelian counterargument, which isdesigned to show that we need not necessarily gain our concept ofabsolute unity from a supernatural source, for it is possible for usto obtain it from experience by means of the active intellect. Ofcourse, similar considerations should apply to other concepts aswell.

An Aristotelian-Thomistic counterargument fromabstraction.

1. I know from experience everything whose concept my activeintellect is able to abstract from experience. [self-evident]
2. But my active intellect is able to abstract from experience theconcept of unity, since we all experience each singular thing as beingone, distinct from another. [self-evident, common experience]^[19]
3. Therefore, I know unity from experience by abstraction. [1,2]
4. Whenever I know something from experience by abstraction, I knowboth the thing whose concept is abstracted and its limiting conditionsfrom which its concept is abstracted. [self-evident]
5. Therefore, I know both unity and its limiting conditions fromwhich its concept is abstracted. [3,4]
6. But whenever I know something and its limiting conditions, and Ican conceive of it without its limiting conditions (and this isprecisely what happens in abstraction), I can conceive of itsabsolute, unlimited realization. [self-evident]
7. Therefore, I can conceive of the absolute, unlimited realizationof unity, based on the concept of unity I acquired from experience byabstraction. [5,6]
8. Therefore, it is not necessary for me to have a preliminaryknowledge of absolute unity before all experience, from a source otherthan this world of experiences. [7]

To be sure, we should notice here that this argumentdoesnotfalsifythe doctrine of illumination.Provided it works, it onlyinvalidates theAugustinian-Platonicargument for illumination. Furthermore,this is obviously not a sweeping, knock-down refutation of the ideathat at least some of our concepts perhaps could not so simply bederived from experience by abstraction; in fact, in the particularcase of unity, and in general, in connection with our transcendentalnotions (i.e., notions that apply in each Aristotelian category, sotheytranscend the limits of each one of them, such as thenotions ofbeing,unity,goodness,truth, etc.), even the otherwise consistently AristotelianAquinas would have a more complicated story to tell (see Klima 2000b).Nevertheless, although Aquinas would still leave some room forillumination in his epistemology, he would provide for illumination anentirely naturalistic interpretation, as far as the acquisition of ourintellectual concepts of material things is concerned, by simplyidentifying it with the “intellectual light in us”, thatis, the active intellect, which enables us to acquire these conceptsfrom experience by abstraction.^[20] Duns Scotus, who opposed Aquinas on so many other points, takesbasically the same stance on this issue. Other medieval theologians,especially such prominent “Augustinians” as Bonaventure,Matthew of Aquasparta, or Henry of Ghent, would provide greater roomfor illumination in the form of a direct, specific, supernaturalinfluence needed for human intellectual cognition in this life besidesthe general divine cooperation needed for the workings of our naturalpowers, in particular, the abstractive function of the active intellect.^[21] But they would not regard illumination as supplanting, but rather assupplementing intellectual abstraction.

As we could see, Augustine makes recognition of truth dependent ondivine illumination, a sort of irradiation of the intelligible lightof divine ideas, which is accessible only to the few who are“holy and pure”.

But this seems to go against at least

1. the experience that there are knowledgeable non-believers orpagans

2. the Aristotelian insight that we can have infallible comprehensionof the first principles of scientific demonstrations for which we onlyneed the intellectual concepts that we can acquire naturally, fromexperience by abstraction,^[22]

and

3. the philosophical-theological consideration that if human reason,man’s natural faculty for acquiring truth were not sufficientfor performing its natural function, then human nature would benaturally defective in its noblest part, precisely in which it wascreated after the image of God.

In fact, these are only some of the problems explicitly raised andconsidered by medieval Augustinians, which prompted their ever morerefined accounts of the role of illumination in human cognition.

For example, Matthew of Aquasparta, recapitulating St. Bonaventure,writes as follows:

Plato and his followers stated that the entire essence of cognitioncomes forth from the archetypal or intelligible world, and from theideal reasons; and they stated that the eternal light contributes tocertain cognition in its evidentness as the entire and sole reason forcognition, as Augustine in many places recites, in particular in bk.viii. c. 7 ofThe City of God: ‘The light of minds forthe cognition of everything is God himself, who createdeverything’.

But this position is entirely mistaken. For although it appears tosecure the way of wisdom, it destroys the way of knowledge.Furthermore, if that light were the entire and sole reason forcognition, then the cognition of things in the Word would not differfrom their cognition in their proper kind, neither would the cognitionof reason differ from the cognition of revelation, nor philosophicalcognition from prophetic cognition, nor cognition by nature fromcognition by grace.

The other position was apparently that of Aristotle, who claimed thatthe entire essence of cognition is caused and comes from below,through the senses, memory, and experience, [working together] withthe natural light of our active intellect, which abstracts the speciesfrom phantasms and makes them actually understood. And for this reasonhe did not claim that the eternal is light necessary for cognition,indeed, he never spoke about it. And this opinion of his is obvious inbk. 2 of thePosterior Analytics. […]

But this position seems to be very deficient. For although it buildsthe way of knowledge, it totally destroys the way of wisdom.[…]

Therefore, I take it that one should maintain an intermediate positionwithout prejudice, by stating that our cognition is caused both frombelow and from above, from external things as well as the idealreasons.

[…] God has provided our mind with some intellectual light, bymeans of which it would abstract the species of objects from thesensibles, by purifying them and extracting their quiddities, whichare the per se objects of the intellect. […] But this light isnot sufficient, for it is defective, and is mixed with obscurity,unless it is joined and connected to the eternal light, which is theperfect and sufficient reason for cognition, and the intellect attainsand somehow touches it by its upper part.

However the intellect attains that light or those eternal reasons asthe reason for cognition not as sole reason, for then, as has beensaid, cognition in the Word would not differ from cognition in properkind, nor the cognition of wisdom would differ from the cognition ofknowledge. Nor does it attain them as the entire reason, for then itwould not need the species and similitudes of things; but this isfalse, for the Philosopher says, and experience teaches, that ifsomeone loses a sense, then he loses that knowledge of things whichcomes from that sense. [DHCR, pp. 94–96]

In this way, taking the intermediate position between Platonism andAristotelianism pure and simple, Matthew interprets Augustine’sPlatonism as being compatible with the Aristotelian view, creditingthe Aristotelian position with accounting for the specific empiricalcontent of our intellectual concepts, while crediting the Platonicview with accounting for their certainty in grasping the natures ofthings. Still, it may not appear quite clear exactly what thecontribution of the eternal light is, indeed, whether it is necessaryat all. After all, if by abstraction we manage to gain thoseintellectual concepts that represent the natures of things, what elseis needed to have a grasp of those natures?

Henry of Ghent, in his detailed account of the issue, provides aninteresting answer to this question. Henry first distinguishescognition of a true thing from the cognition of the truth of thething. Since any really existing thing is truly what it is (even if itmay on occasion appear something else), any cognition of any reallyexisting thing is the cognition of a true thing. But cognition of atrue thing may occur without the cognition of its truth, since thelatter is the cognition that the thing adequately corresponds to itsexemplar in the human or divine mind. For example, if I draw a circle,when a cat sees it, then it sees the real true thing as it ispresented to it. Yet the cat is simply unable to judge whether it is atrue circle in the sense that it really is what it is supposed to be,namely, a locus of points equidistant from a given point. By contrast,a human being is able to judge the truth of this thing, insofar as heor she would be able to tell that my drawing is not really and truly acircle, but is at best a good approximation of what a true circlewould be.

Now, in intellectual cognition, just as in the sensory cognition ofthings, when the intellect simply apprehends a true thing, then itstill does not have to judge the truth of the thing, even though itmay have a true apprehension, adequately representing the thing. Butthe cognition of the truth of the thing only occurs in a judgment,when the intellect judges the adequacy of the thing to itsexemplar.

But since a thing can be compared to two sorts of exemplar, namely, tothe exemplar in the human mind, and to the exemplar in the divinemind, the cognition of the truth of a thing is twofold, relative tothese two exemplars. The exemplar of the human mind, according toHenry, is nothing but the Aristotelian abstract concept of the thing,whereby the thing is simply apprehended in a universal manner, andhence its truth is judged relative to this concept, when the intellectjudges that the thing in question falls under this concept or not. AsHenry writes:

[…] attending to the exemplar gained from the thing as thereason for its cognition in the cognizer, the truth of the thing canindeed be recognized, by forming a concept of the thing that conformsto that exemplar; and it is in this way that Aristotle asserted thatman gains knowledge and cognition of the truth from purely naturalsources about changeable natural things, and that this exemplar isacquired from things by means of the senses, as from the firstprinciple of art and science. […] So, by means of the universalnotion in us that we have acquired from the several species of animalswe are able to realize concerning any thing that comes our way whetherit is an animal or not, and by means of the specific notion of donkeywe realize concerning any thing that comes our way whether it is adonkey or not. [HQO, a. 1, q. 2, fol. 5 E-F]

But this sort of cognition of the truth of a thing, although it isintellectual, universal cognition, is far from being the infallibleknowledge we are seeking. As Henry argues further:

But by this sort of acquired exemplar in us we do not have theentirely certain and infallible cognition of truth. Indeed, this isentirely impossible for three reasons, the first of which is takenfrom the thing from which this exemplar is abstracted, the second fromthe soul, in which this exemplar is received, and the third from theexemplar itself that is received in the soul about the thing.

The first reason is that this exemplar, since it is abstracted fromchangeable things, has to share in the nature of changeability.Therefore, since physical things are more changeable than mathematicalobjects, this is why the Philosopher claimed that we have a greatercertainty of knowledge about mathematical objects than about physicalthings by means of their universal species. And this is why Augustine,discussing this cause of the uncertainty of the knowledge of naturalthings in q. 9 of hisEighty-Three Different Questions, saysthat from the bodily senses one should not expect the pure truth[syncera veritas]

… The second reason is that the human soul, since it ischangeable and susceptible to error, cannot be rectified to save itfrom swerving into error by anything that is just as changeable asitself, or even more; therefore, any exemplar that it receives fromnatural things is necessarily just as changeable as itself, or evenmore, since it is of an inferior nature, whence it cannot rectify thesoul so that it would persist in the infallible truth.

… The third reason is that this sort of exemplar, since it isthe intention and species of the sensible thing abstracted from thephantasm, is similar to the false as well as to the true [thing], sothat on its account these cannot be distinguished. For it is by meansof the same images of sensible things that in dreams and madness wejudge these images to be the things, and in sane awareness we judgethe things themselves. But the pure truth can only be perceived bydiscerning it from falsehood. Therefore, by means of such an exemplarit is impossible to have certain knowledge, and certain cognition ofthe truth. And so if we are to have certain knowledge of the truth,then we have to turn our mind away from the senses and sensiblethings, and from every intention, no matter how universal andabstracted from sensible things, to the unchangeable truth existingabove the mind […]. [ibid., fol. 5. F]

So, Henry first distinguished between the cognition of a true thingand the intellectual cognition of the truth of a thing, and then,concerning the cognition of the truth of the thing, he distinguishedbetween the cognition of truth by means of a concept abstracted fromthe thing and “the pure truth” [veritas syncera velliquida], which he says cannot be obtained by means of suchabstracted concepts.

But then the question naturally arises: what is this “puretruth”, and how can it be obtained, if at all? Since cognitionof the pure truth involves comparison of objects not to their acquiredexemplar in the human mind, but to their eternal exemplar in thedivine mind, in the ideal case it would consist in some sort of directinsight into the divine ideas, enabling the person who has this accessto see everything in its true form, as “God meant it tobe”, and also see how it fails to live up to its idea due to itsdefects. So, it would be like the direct intuition of two objects, onesensible, another intelligible, on the basis of which one could alsoimmediately judge how closely the former approaches the latter. Butthis sort of direct intuition of the divine ideas is only the share ofangels and the souls of the blessed in beatific vision; it isgenerally not granted in this life, except in rare, miraculous cases,in rapture, or prophetic vision.

Therefore, if there is to be any non-miraculous recognition of thispure truth in this life, then it has to occur differently. Henryargues that even if we do not have a direct intuition of divine ideasas the objects cognized (whereby their particulars are recognized asmore or less approximating them), we do have the cognition of thequiddities of things as the objects cognized by reason of someindirect cognition of their ideas. The reason for this, Henry says, isthe following:

…for our concept to be true by the pure truth, the soul,insofar as it is informed by it, has to be similar to the truth of thething outside, since truth is a certain adequacy of the thing and theintellect. And so, as Augustine says in bk. 2 ofOn Free Choice ofthe Will, since the soul by itself is liable to slip from truthinto falsity, whence by itself it is not informed by the truth of anything, although it can be informed by it, but nothing can informitself, for nothing can give what it does not have; therefore, it isnecessary that it be informed of the pure truth of a thing bysomething else. But this cannot be done by the exemplar received fromthe thing itself, as has been shown earlier [in the previously quotedpassage — GK]. It is necessary, therefore, that it be informedby the exemplar of the unchangeable truth, as Augustine intends in thesame place. And this is why he says inOn True Religion thatjust as by its truth are true those that are true, so too by itssimilitude are similar those that are similar. It is necessary,therefore, that the unchangeable truth impress itself into ourconcept, and that it transform our concept to its own character, andthat in this way it inform our mind with the expressed truth of thething by the same similitude that the thing itself has in the firsttruth. [HQO a. 1, q. 2, fol. 7, I]

So, when we have the cognition of the pure truth of a thing, then wecannot have it in terms of the concept acquired from the thing, yet,since we cannot have it from a direct intuition of the divine exemplareither, the way we can have it is that the acquired concept primarilyimpressed on our mind will be further clarified, but no longer by asimilarity of the thing, but by the similarity of the divine exemplaritself. Henry’s point seems to be that given that the externalthing itself is already just a (more or less defective) copy of theexemplar, the (more or less defective) copy of this copy can only beimproved by means of the original exemplar, just as a copy of a poorrepro of some original picture can only be improved by retouching thecopy not on the basis of the poor repro, but on the basis of theoriginal. But since the external thing is fashioned after its divineidea, the “retouching” of the concept in terms of theoriginal idea does yield a better representation of the thing; indeed,so much better that on the basis of this “retouched”concept we are even able to judge just how well the thing realizes itskind.

For example, when I simply have the initial simple concept of circleabstracted from circular objects I have seen, that concept is goodenough for me to tell circular objects apart from non-circular ones.But with this simple, unanalyzed concept in mind, I may still not beable to say what a true circle is supposed to be, and accordingly,exactly how and to what extent the more or less circular objects I seefail or meet this standard. However, when I come to understand that acircle is a locus of points equidistant from a given point, I willrealize by means of a clear and distinct concept what it was that Ioriginally conceived in a vague and confused manner in my originalconcept of circle.^[23]

To be sure, I do not come to this definition of circle by looking upto the heaven of Ideas; in fact, I may just be instructed about it bymy geometry teacher. But what is not given to me by my geometryteacher is the understanding of the fact that what is expressed by thedefinition is indeed what I originally rather vaguely conceived by myconcept abstracted from visible circles. This “flash” ofunderstanding, when I realize that it is necessary for anything thattruly matches the concept of a circle to be such as described in thedefinition, would be an instance of receiving illumination without anyparticular, miraculous revelation.^[24]

However, even if in this light Henry’s distinctions between thetwo kinds of truths and the corresponding differences of concepts makegood sense, and even if we accept that the concepts primarily acceptedfrom sensible objects need to be further worked on in order to provideus with true, clear understanding of the natures of things, it is notclear that this further work cannot be done by the natural facultiesof our mind, assuming only the general influence of God in sustainingits natural operations, but without performing any direct and specific“retouching” of our concepts “from above”.Using our previous analogy of the acquired concept as the copy of apoor repro of an original, we may say that if we have a number ofdifferent poor, fuzzy repros that are defective in a number ofdifferent ways, then in a long and complex process of collating them,we might still be able discern the underlying pattern of the original,and thus produce a copy that is actually closer to the original thanany of the direct repros, without ever being allowed a glimpse of theoriginal.

In fact, this was precisely the way Aristotelian theologians, such asAquinas, interpreted Augustine’ conception of illumination,reducing God’s role to providing us with the intelligible lightnot by directly operating on any of our concepts in particular, butproviding the mind with “a certain likeness of the uncreatedlight, obtained through participation” (ST1, q. 84, a. 5c),namely, the agent intellect.

Matthew of Aquasparta quite faithfully describes this view,associating it with the Aristotelian position he rejects:

Some people engaged in “philosophizing” [quidamphilosophantes] follow this position, although not entirely, whenthey assert that that light is the general cause of certain cognition,but is not attained, and its special influence is not necessary innatural cognition; but the light of the agent intellect is sufficienttogether with the species and similitudes of things abstracted andreceived from the things; for otherwise the operation of [our] naturewould be rendered vacuous, our intellect would understand only bycoincidence, and our cognition would not be natural, but supernatural.And what Augustine says, namely, that everything is seen in andthrough that light, is not to be understood as if the intellect wouldsomehow attain that light, nor as if that light would have somespecific influence on it, but in such a way that the eternal Godnaturally endowed us with intellectual light, in which we naturallycognize and see all cognizable things that are within the scope ofreason. [DHCR, p. 95]

Although Matthew vehemently rejects this position as going againstAugustine’s original intention (“which is unacceptable,since he is a prominent teacher, whom catholic teachers and especiallytheologians ought to follow” — as Matthew says), thisview, in ever more refined versions, gained more and more groundtoward the end of the 13th century, adopted not only by Aquinas andhis followers, but also by his major opponents, namely, Scotus and his followers.^[25]

Still, illuminationism and abstractionism were never treated bymedieval thinkers as mutually exclusive alternatives. They ratherserved as the two poles of a balancing act in judging the respectiveroles of nature and direct divine intervention in human intellectual cognition.^[26]

Although Platonism definitely survived throughout the Middle Ages (andbeyond), in the guise of the interconnected doctrines of divine ideas,participation, and illumination, there was a quite generalAristotelian consensus,^[27] especially after Abelard’s time, that the mundane universals ofthe species and genera of material beings exist as suchin thehuman mind, as a result of the mind’s abstracting fromtheir individuating conditions. But consensus concerning this much byno means entailed a unanimous agreement on exactly what the universalsthus abstracted are, what it is for them to exist in the mind, howthey are related to their particulars, what their real foundation inthose particulars is, what their role is in the constitution of ouruniversal knowledge, and how they contribute to the encoding andcommunication of this knowledge in the various human languages. Foralthough the general Aristotelian stance towards universalssuccessfully handles the inconsistencies quite obviously generated bya naïve Platonist ontology, it gives rise precisely to thesefurther problems of its own.

6. Universals According to Abelard’s Aristotelian Conception

It was Abelard who first dealt with the problem of universalsexplicitly in this form. Having relatively easily disposed of putativeuniversal forms as real entities corresponding to Boethius’definition, in hisLogica Ingredientibus he concludes thatgiven Aristotle’s definition of universals in hisOnInterpretation as those things that can be predicated of severalthings, it is only universalwords that can be regarded asreally existing universals. However, since according toAristotle’s account in the same work, words are meaningful invirtue of signifying concepts in the mind, Abelard soon arrives at thefollowing questions:

1. What is thecommon cause in accordance with which acommon name is imposed?
2. What is the understanding’scommon conception ofthe likeness of things?
3. Is a word called “common” on account of the commoncause things agree in, or on account of the common conception, or onaccount of both together? [Five Texts, Spade 1994, p. 41(88)]

These questions open up a new chapter in the history of the problem ofuniversals. For these questions add a new aspect to the bundle of theoriginally primarily ontological, epistemological, and theologicalquestions constituting the problem, namely, they add asemantic aspect. On the Aristotelian conception of universalsas universalpredicables, there obviouslyareuniversals, namely, our universal words. But the universality of ourwords is clearly not dependent on the physical qualities of ourarticulate sounds, or of the various written marks indicating them,but on their representative function. So, to give an account of theuniversality of our universal words, we have to be able to tell invirtue of what they have this universal representative function, thatis to say, we have to be able to assign acommon cause by therecognition of which in terms of acommon concept we can giveacommon name to apotential infinity of individualsbelonging to the same kind.

But this common cause certainly cannot be acommon thing inthe way Boethius described universal things, for, as we have seen, theassumption of the existence of such a common thing leads tocontradictions. To be sure, Abelard also provides a number of furtherarguments, dealing with several refinements of Boethius’characterization of universals proposed by his contemporaries, such asWilliam of Champeaux, Bernard of Chartres, Clarembald of Arras,Jocelin of Soissons, and Walter of Mortagne – but I cannot gointo those details here.^[28] The point is that he refutes and rejects all these suggestions tosave real universals either as common things, having their own realunity, or as collections of several things, having a merely collectiveunity. The gist of his arguments against the former view is that theuniversal thing on that view would have to have its own numericalunity, and therefore, since it constitutes the substance of all itssingulars, all these singulars would have to be substantially one andthe same thing which would have to have all their contrary propertiesat the same time, which is impossible. The main thrust of hisarguments against the collection-theory is that collections arearbitrary integral wholes of the individuals that make them up, sothey simply do not fill the bill of the Porphyrian characterizationsof the essential predicables such as genera and species.^[29]

So, the common cause of the imposition of universal words cannot beany one thing, or a multitude of things; yet, being a commoncause, it cannot be nothing. Therefore, this common cause,which Abelard calls thestatus^[30] of those things to which it is common, is a cause, but it is a causewhich is a non-thing. However strange this may sound, Abelard observesthat sometimes we do assigncauses which are notthings. For example, when we say “The ship was wreckedbecause the pilot was absent”, the cause that we assign, namely,that the pilot was absent is not something, it is ratherhow things were, i.e., theway things were, which inthis case we signify by the whole proposition “The pilot was absent”.^[31] From the point of view of understanding what Abelard’sstatus are, it is significant that he assimilates the causalrole ofstatus as the common cause of imposition to causesthat are signified by whole propositions. Thesesignificataof whole propositions, which in English we may refer to by using thecorresponding “that-clauses” (as I did above, referring tothe cause of the ship’s wreck by the phrase “that thepilot was absent”), and in Latin by anaccusative-with-infinitive construction, are what Abelard calls thedicta of propositions. Thesedicta, not beingidentifiable with any single thing, yet, not being nothing, constitutean ontological realm that is completely different from that ofordinary things. But it is also in this realm that Abelard’scommon causes of imposition may find their place.

Abelard says that the common cause of imposition of a universal namehas to be something in which things falling under that name agree. Forexample, the name ‘man’ (in the sense of ‘humanbeing’, and not in the sense of ‘male human being’)is imposed on all humans on account of something in which all humans,as such, agree. But that in which all humans as such agree is thateach one of them is a man, that is, each one agrees with all others intheirbeing a man. So, it is their being human [essehominem] that is the common cause Abelard was looking for, andthis is what he calls thestatus of man. Thestatusof man is not a thing; it is not any singular man, for obviously nosingular man is common to all men, and it is not a universal man, forthere is no such a thing. Butbeing a man is common in therequired manner (i.e., it is something in which all humans agree), yetit is clearly not a thing. For let us consider the singularpropositions ‘Socrates is a man’ [Socrates esthomo], ‘Plato is a man’ [Plato est homo],etc. These signify theirdicta, namely, Socrates’sbeing a man [Socratem esse hominem], and Plato’s beinga man [Platonem esse hominem], etc. But then it is clear thatif we abstract from the singular subjects and retain what is common tothem all, we can get precisely thestatus in which all thesesubjects agree, namely, being a man [esse hominem]. So, thestatus, just like thedicta from which they can beobtained, constitute an ontological realm that is entirely differentfrom that of ordinary things.

Still, despite the fact that it clearly has to do something withabstraction, an activity of the mind, Abelard insists that astatus is not a concept of our mind. The reason for hisinsistence is that thestatus, being thecommoncause of imposition of a common name, must be something real, theexistence of which is not dependent on the activity of our minds. Astatus is there in the nature of things, regardless ofwhether we form a mental act whereby we recognize it or not. In fact,for Abelard, astatus is an object of the divine mind,whereby God preconceives the state of his creation from eternity.^[32] A concept, or mental imageof our mind, however, exists asthe object of our mind only insofar as our mind performs the mentalact whereby it forms this object. But this object, again, is not athing, indeed, not any more than any other fictitious object of ourminds. However, what distinguishes theuniversal concept froma merelyfictitious object of our mind is that the formercorresponds to astatus of really existing singular things,whereas the latter does not have anything corresponding to it.

To be sure, there are a number of points left in obscurity byAbelard’s discussion concerning the relationships of the itemsdistinguished here. For example, Abelard says that we cannot conceiveof thestatus. However, it seems that we can only signify byour words whatever we can conceive. Yet, Abelard insists that besidesour concepts, our wordsmust signify thestatus themselves.^[33] A solution to the problem is only hinted at in Abelard’s remarkthat the names can signifystatus, because “theirinventormeant to impose them in accordance with certainnatures or characteristics of things, even if he did not know how tothink out the nature or characteristic of the thing” (FiveTexts, Spade 1994, p. 46 (116)). So, we may assume that althoughthe inventor of the name does not know thestatus, his vague,“senses-bound” conception,from which he takeshis word’s signification, is directed at thestatus, astothat which heintends to signify.^[34] However, Abelard does not work out this suggestion in any furtherdetail. Again, it is unclear how thestatus is related to theindividualized natures of the things that agree in thestatus. If thestatus is what the divine mindconceives of the singulars in abstraction from them, whycouldn’t the nature itself be conceived in the same way? –after all, the abstract nature would not have to be a thing any morethan astatus is, for its existence would not berealbeing, but merely itsbeing conceived.Furthermore, it seems quite plausible that Abelard’sstatus could be derived by abstraction from singulardicta with the same predicate, as suggested above. Butdicta are the quite ordinarysignificata ofour propositions, which Abelard never treats asepistemologically problematic, so why would thestatus, whichwe could apparently abstract from them, be accessible only to thedivine mind?

I’m not suggesting that Abelard could not provide acceptable andcoherent answers to these and similar questions and problems.^[35] But perhaps these problems also contributed to the fact that by the13^th century his doctrine ofstatus was no longerin currency. Another historical factor that may have contributed tothe waning of Abelard’s theory was probably the influence of thenewly translated Aristotelian writings along with the Arabiccommentaries that flooded the Latin West in the second half of the12^th century.

7. Universal Natures in Singular Beings and in Singular Minds

The most important influence in this period from our point of viewcame from Avicenna’s doctrine distinguishing the absoluteconsideration of a universal nature from what applies to the samenature in the subject in which it exists. The distinction is neatlysummarized in the following passage.

Horsehood, to be sure, has a definition that does not demanduniversality. Rather it is that to which universality happens. Hencehorsehood itself is nothing but horsehood only. For in itself it isneither many nor one, neither is it existent in these sensibles nor inthe soul, neither is it any of these things potentially or actually insuch a way that this is contained under the definition of horsehood.Rather [in itself it consists] of what is horsehood only.^[36]

In his little treatiseOn Being and Essence, Aquinas explainsthe distinction in greater detail in the following words:

A nature, however, or essence …can be considered in two ways.First, we can consider it according to its proper notion, and this isits absolute consideration; and in this way nothing is true of itexcept what pertains to it as such; whence if anything else isattributed to it, that will yield a false attribution. …In theother way [an essence] is considered as it exists in this or that[individual]; and in this way something is predicated of itperaccidens [non-essentially or coincidentally], on account of thatin which it exists, as when we say that a man is white becauseSocrates is white, although this does not pertain to man as such.

A nature considered in this way, however, has two sorts of existence.It exists in singulars on the one hand, and in the soul on the other,and from each of these [sorts of existence] it acquires accidents. Inthe singulars, furthermore, the essence has several [acts of]existence according to the multiplicity of singulars. Nevertheless, ifwe consider the essence in the first, or absolute, sense, none ofthese pertain to it. For it is false to say that the essence of man,considered absolutely, has existence in this singular, because ifexistence in this singular pertained to man insofar as he is man, manwould never exist, except as this singular. Similarly, if it pertainedto man insofar as he is man not to exist in this singular, then theessence would never exist in the singular. But it is true to say thatman, but not insofar as he is man, may be in this singular or in thatone, or else in the soul. Therefore, the nature of man consideredabsolutely abstracts from every existence, though it does not excludeany. And the nature thus considered is what is predicated of each individual.^[37]

So, a common nature or essence according to its absolute considerationabstracts from all existence, both in the singulars and in the mind.Yet, and this is the important point, it isthe same naturethat informs both the singulars that have this nature and the mindsconceiving of them in terms of this nature. To be sure, this samenessis not numerical sameness, and thus it does not yield numerically onenature. On the contrary, it is the sameness of several, numericallydistinct realizations of the same information-content, just like thesameness of a book in its several copies. Just as there is no such athing as a universal book over and above the singular copies of thesame book, so there is no such a thing as a universal nature existingover and above the singular things of the same nature; still, just asit is true to say that the singular copies are the copies ofthesame book, so it is true to say that these singulars are ofthe same nature.

Indeed, this analogy also shows why this conception should be soappealing from the point of view of the original epistemologicalproblem of the possibility of universal knowledge, without entailingthe ontological problems of naïve Platonism. For just as we donot need to read all copies of the same book in order to know what wecan find on the same page in the next copy (provided it is not acorrupt copy),^[38] so we can know what may apply to all singulars of the same naturewithout having to experience them all. Still, we need not assume thatwe can have this knowledge only if we can get somehow in a mysteriouscontact with the universal nature over and above the singulars; all weneed is to learn how “to read” the singulars in ourexperience to discern the “common message”, the universalnature, informing them all, uniformly, yet in their distinctsingularity. (Note that “reading the singulars” is not amere metaphor: this is precisely what geneticists are quite literallydoing in the process of gene sequencing, for instance, in the humangenome project.) Therefore, thesame nature is notthesame in the same way as thesame individual having thisnature is the same as long as it exists. For thatsamenature, insofar as it is regarded asthe same, does noteven exist at all; it is said to be the same only insofar as it isrecognizableas the same, if we disregard everythingthat distinguishes its instances in several singulars. (Note here thatwhoever would want to deny such arecognizable sameness inand across several singulars would have to deny that he is able torecognize the same words or the same letters in various sentences; sosuch a person would not be able to read, write, or even to speak, orunderstand human speech. But then we shouldn’t really worryabout such a person in a philosophical debate.)

However, at this point some further questions emerge. If this commonnature isrecognizably the same on account of disregardingits individuating conditions in the singulars, then isn’t it theresult of abstraction; and if so, isn’t it in the abstractivemind as its object? But if it is, then how can Aquinas say that itabstractsboth from being in the singularsand frombeing in the mind?

Here we should carefully distinguish between what we can say aboutthe same natureas such, and what we can say aboutthe same natureon account of its conditions as itexists in this or that subject. Again, using our analogy, we cancertainly consistently say that the same book in its first edition was200 pages, whereas in the second only 100, because it was printed onlarger pages, but the book itself, as such, is neither 200 nor 100pages, although it can be either. In the same way, we can consistentlysay thatthe same nature as such is neither in the singularsnor in the mind, but of course it is only insofar as it is in the mindthat it can berecognizably the same, on account of themind’s abstraction. Therefore, that it is abstract and isactually recognized as the same in its many instances is somethingthat belongs to the same nature only on account of being conceived bythe abstractive mind. This is the reason why the nature is called auniversal concept, insofar as it is in the mind. Indeed, itis only under this aspect that it is properly called a universal. So,althoughthat whichis predicable of severalsingulars is nothing but the common nature as such, consideredabsolutely, still,that it is predicable pertains to the samenature only on account of being conceived by the abstractiveintellect, insofar as it is a concept of the mind.

At any rate, this is how Aquinas solves the paralogism that seems toarise from this account, according to which the true claims thatSocrates is a man and man is a species would seem to entail thefalsity that Socrates is a species. For if we say that in theproposition ‘Socrates is a man’ the predicate signifieshuman nature absolutely, but the same nature, on account of itsabstract character, is a species, the false conclusion seemsinevitable (Klima 1993a).

However, since the common nature is not a species in its absoluteconsideration, but only insofar as it is in the mind, the conclusiondoes not follow. Indeed, this reasoning would be just as invalid asthe one trying to prove that this book, pointing to the second editionwhich is actually 100 pages, is 200 pages, because the same book was200 hundred pages in its first edition. For just as its being 200pages belongs to the same book only in its first edition, so its beinga species belongs to human nature only as it exists in the mind.

So, to sum up, we have to distinguish here between the nature existingin this singular (such as the individualized human nature of Socrates,which is numerically one item, mind-independently existing inSocrates), the universal (such as the species of human nature existingonly in the mind as its object considered in abstraction from theindividuating conditions it has in the singular humans), and thenature according to its absolute consideration (such as human natureconsidered in abstraction both from its existence in the singulars asits subjects and in the mind as its object). What establishes thedistinction of these items is the difference of what can be truly saidof them on account of the different conditions they have in this orthat. What establishes the unity of these items, however, is that theyare somehow the same nature existing and considered under differentconditions. For the human nature in Socrates is numerically one, it isnumerically distinct from the human nature in Plato, and it has real,mind-independent existence, which is in fact nothing but the existenceof Socrates, i.e., Socrates’ life. However, although the humannature in Socrates is a numerically distinct item from the humannature in Plato, insofar as it is human nature, it is formally, infact, specifically the same nature, for it is human nature, and notanother, specifically different, say, feline or canine nature. It isprecisely this formal, specific, mind-independent sameness of theseitems (for, of course, say, this cat and that cat do not differinsofar as they are feline, regardless of whether there is anyone torecognize this) that allows the abstractive human mind to recognizethis sameness by abstracting from those individuating conditions onaccount of which this individualized nature in this individualnumerically differs from that individualized nature in thatindividual. Thus, insofar as the formally same nature is actuallyconsidered by a human mind in abstraction from these individualizingconditions, it is a universal, a species, an abstract object of amental act whereby a human mind conceives of any individualized humannature without its individuating conditions. But, as we could seeearlier, nothing can be a human nature existing without itsindividuating conditions, although any individualized human nature canbe thought of without thinking of its necessarily conjoinedindividuating conditions (just as triangular shape can be thought ofwithout thinking its necessarily conjoined conditions of beingisosceles or being scalene). So for this universal concept to be isnothing but to be thought of, to be an object of the abstractive humanmind. Finally, human nature in its absolute consideration is the samenature abstracted even from this being, i.e., even from being anobject of the mind. Thus, as opposed to both in its existence inindividuals and in the mind, neither existence, nor non-existence, norunity, nor disunity or multiplicity belongs to it, as it is consideredwithout any of these; indeed, it is considered without considering itsbeing considered, for it is considered only in terms of what belongsto it on account of itself, not considering anything that has tobelong to it on account of something else in which it can only be(i.e., whether in the mind or in reality). So, the nature according toits absolute consideration does not have numerical unity ormultiplicity, which it has as it exists in individuals, nor does ithave the formal unity that it has in the consideration of the mind(insofar as it is one species among many), but it has that formalunity which precedes even the recognition of this unity by theabstractive mind.^[39]

Nevertheless, even if with these distinctions Aquinas’ solutionof the paralogism works and what he says about the existence and unityvs. multiplicity of a common nature can be given a consistentinterpretation, the emergence of the paralogism itself and thecomplexities involved in explaining it away, as well as the problemsinvolved in providing this consistent interpretation show the inherentdifficulties of this account. The main difficulty is the trouble ofkeeping track of what we are talking about when it becomes crucial toknow what pertains to what on account of what; in general, when theconditions of identity and distinction of the items we are talkingabout become variable and occasionally rather unclear.

Indeed, we can appreciate just how acute these difficulties may becomeif we survey the items that needed to be distinguished in what may bedescribed as the common conceptual framework of the“realist”via antiqua, the “old way”of doing philosophy and theology, before the emergence of the“modern way”, the “nominalist”viamoderna challenging some fundamental principles of the olderframework, resulting mostly from the semantic innovations introducedby William Ockham. The survey of these items and the problems theygenerate will then allow us to see in greater detail the mainmotivation for Ockham’s innovations.

8. Universals in theVia Antiqua

In this framework, we have first of all the universal or common termsof spoken and written languages, which are common on account of beingimposed upon universal concepts of the human mind. The conceptsthemselves are universal on account of being obtained by the activityof the abstractive human mind from experiences of singulars. But theprocess of concept formation also involves various stages.

In the first place, the sensory information collected by the singlesenses is distinguished, synthesized, and collated by the highersensory faculties of the common sense [sensus communis] andthe so-called cogitative power [vis cogitativa], to be storedin sensory memory asphantasms, the sensory representationsof singulars in their singularity. The active intellect[intellectus agens] uses this sensory information to extractits intelligible content and produce the intelligible species[species intelligibiles], the universal representations ofseveral individuals in their various degrees of formal unity,disregarding their distinctive features and individuating conditionsin the process of abstraction.

The intelligible species are stored in the intellectual memory of thepotential intellect [intellectus possibilis], which can thenuse them to form the corresponding concept in an act of thought, forexample, in forming a judgment. The intelligible species and theconcepts themselves, being formed by individual human minds, areindividual in their being, insofar as they pertain to this or thathuman mind. However, since they are the result of abstraction, intheir information content they are universal.

Now insofar as this universal information content is common to allminds that form these concepts at all, and therefore it is a commonintelligible content gained by these minds from their objects insofaras they are conceived by these minds in a universal manner, laterscholastic thinkers refer to it as the objective concept[conceptus obiectivus], distinguishing it from the formal orsubjective concepts [conceptus formales seu subiectivi],which are the individual acts of individual minds carrying thisinformation (just as the individual copies of a book carry theinformation content of the book).^[40] It is this objective concept that is identified as the universal ofthe human mind (distinguished from the universals of the divine mind),namely, a species, a genus, a difference, a property, or an accident.(Note that these are only the simple concepts. Complex concepts, suchas those corresponding to complex terms and propositions are theproducts of the potential intellect using these concepts in itsfurther operations.)

These universals, then, as the objective concepts of the mind, wouldbe classified as beings of reason [entia rationis], the beingof which consists in their being conceived (cf. Klima 1993b andSchmidt 1966). To be sure, they are not merely fictitious objects, forthey are grounded in the nature of things insofar as they carry theuniversal information content abstracted from the singulars. But thenagain, the universal information content of the objective conceptitself, considered not insofar as it is in the mind as its object, butin itself, disregarding whatever may carry it, is distinguished fromits carriers both in the mind and in the ultimate objects of the mind,the singular things, as the nature of these things in its absoluteconsideration.

However, the common nature as such cannot exist on its own any morethan a book could exist without any copies of it or any mindsconceiving of it. So, this common nature has real existence only inthe singulars, informing them, and giving them their recognizablycommon characteristics. However, these common characteristics can berecognized as such only by a mind capable of abstracting the commonnature from experiencing it in its really existing singular instances.But it is on account of the real existence of these individualizedinstances in the singulars that the common nature can truly bepredicated of the singulars, as long as they are actually informed bythese individualized instances.

The items thus distinguished and their interconnections can berepresented by the following block-diagram. The dashed frames indicatethat the items enclosed by them have a certain reduced ontologicalstatus, a “diminished” mode of being, while the boxespartly sharing a side indicate the (possible) partial identities ofthe items they enclose.^[41] The arrows pointing from the common term to the singulars, theirindividualized natures and items in the mind on this diagram representsemantic relations, which I am going to explain later, in connectionwith Ockham’s innovations. The rest of the arrows indicate theflow of information from experience of singulars through the sensoryfaculties to the abstractive mind, and to the application of theuniversal information abstracted by the mind to further singularexperiences in acts of judgment.

Figure 4. Thevia antiquaconception

Obviously, this is a rather complicated picture. However, itscomplexity itself should not be regarded as problematic or evensurprising, for that matter. After all, this diagram merelysummarizes, and distinguishes the main stages of, how the human mindprocesses the intelligible, universal information received from amultitude of singular experiences, and then again, how it applies thisinformation in classifying further experiences. This process mayreasonably be expected to be complex, and should not be expected toinvolve fewer stages than, e.g., setting up, and retrievinginformation from, a computer database.

What renders this picture more problematic is rather the difficultiesinvolved in identifying and distinguishing these stages and thecorresponding items. Further complications were also generated by thevariations in terminology among several authors, and the variouscriteria of identity and distinctness applied by them in introducingvarious different notions of identity and distinctness. In fact, manyof the great debates of the authors working within this framework canbe characterized precisely as disputing the identity or distinctnessof the items featured here, or the very criteria of identifying ordistinguishing them.

For example, already Abelard raised the question whether the conceptor mental image, which we may identify in the diagram as the objectiveconcept of later authors, should be identified with the act ofthought, which we may identify as the subjective concept, or perhaps afurther act of the mind, calledformatio, namely, thepotential intellect’s act of forming the concept, using theintelligible species as the principle of its action. Such distinctionswere later on severely criticized by authors such as John Peter Oliviand others, who argued for the elimination of intelligible species,and, in general, of any intermediaries between an act of the intellectand its ultimate objects, the singulars conceived in a universal manner.^[42]

Again, looking at the diagram on the side of the singulars, most13^th century authors agreed that what accounts for thespecific unity of several individuals of the same species, namely,their specific nature, should be something other than what accountsfor their numerical distinctness, namely, their principle ofindividuation. However, one singular entity in a species of severalco-specific individuals has to contain both the principle of thespecific unity of these individuals and its own principle ofindividuation. Therefore, this singular entity, being a composite atleast of its specific nature and its principle of individuation, hasto be distinct from its specific nature. At any rate, this is thesituation with material substances, whose principle of individuationwas held to be their matter. However, based on this reasoning,immaterial substances, such as angels, could not be regarded asnumerically distinct on account of their matter, but only on accountof their form. But since form is the principle of specific unity,difference in form causes specific diversity. Therefore, on thisbasis, any two angels had to be regarded as different in species. Thisconclusion was explicitly drawn by Aquinas and others, but it wasrejected by Augustinian theologians, and it was condemned in Paris in 1277.^[43]

So, no wonder authors such as Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus workedout alternative accounts of individuation, introducing not onlydifferent principles of individuation, such as the Scotists’famous (or infamous)haecceity, but also different criteriaof distinctness and identity, such as those grounding Henry ofGhent’sintentional distinction, or Scotus’sformal distinction,^[44] or even later Suarez’modal distinction.^[45]

But even further problems arose from considering the identity ordistinctness of the individualized natures signified by several commonterms in one and the same individual. The metaphysical debate over thereal distinction of essence and existence from this point of view isnothing but the issue whether the individualized common naturesignified by the definition of a thing is the same as the act of beingsignified by the verb ‘is’ in the same thing. In fact, thefamous problem of the plurality vs. unity of substantial forms mayalso be regarded as a dispute over whether the common naturessignified by the substantial predicates on the Porphyrian tree in thecategory of substance are distinct or the same in the same individual(cf. Callus 1967). Finally, and this appears to be the primarymotivation for Ockham’s innovations, there was the questionwhether one must regard all individualized common natures signified inthe same individual by several predicates in the ten Aristoteliancategories as distinct from one another. For the affirmative answerwould involve commitment to a virtually limitless multiplication ofentities.

Indeed, according to Ockham, thevia antiqua conception wouldentail that

a column is to the right by to-the-rightness, God is creating bycreation, is good by goodness, just by justice, mighty by might, anaccident inheres by inherence, a subject is subjected by subjection,the apt is apt by aptitude, a chimera is nothing by nothingness,someone blind is blind by blindness, a body is mobile by mobility, andso on for other, innumerable cases.^[46]

And this is nothing, but “multiplying beings according to themultiplicity of terms… which, however, is erroneous and leadsfar away from the truth”.^[47]

9. Universals in theVia Moderna

To be sure, as the very debates within thevia antiquaframework concerning the identity or non-identity of various itemsdistinguished in that framework indicate, Ockham’s charges arenot quite justified.^[48] After all, severalvia antiqua authorsdid allowthe identification of thesignificata of terms belonging tovarious categories, so their “multiplication of beings”did not necessarily match the multiplicity of terms. Furthermore,sincevia antiqua authors also distinguished between variousmodes or senses of being, allowing various sorts of“diminished” kinds of being, such asbeings ofreason, their ontological commitments were certainly not asunambiguous as Ockham would have us believe in this passage. However,if we contrast the diagram of thevia antiqua framework abovewith the following schematic representation of theviamoderna framework introduced by Ockham, we can immediatelyappreciate the point of Ockham’s innovations.

Figure 5. Thevia modernaconception

Without a doubt, it is the captivating simplicity of this picture,especially as compared with the complexity of thevia antiquapicture, that was the major appeal of the Ockhamist approach. Thereare fewer items here, equally on the same ontological footing,distinguished from one another in terms of the same unambiguousdistinction, the numerical distinction between individual realentities.

To be sure, there still are universals in this picture. But theseuniversals are neither common natures “contracted” toindividuals by some really or merely formally distinct principle ofindividuation, nor some universal objects of the mind, which exist ina “diminished” manner, asbeings of reason.Ockham’s universals, at least in his mature theory,^[49] are just our common terms and our common concepts. Our common terms,which are just singular utterances or inscriptions, are common invirtue of being subordinated to our common concepts. Our commonconcepts, on the other hand, are just singular acts of our singularminds. Their universality consists simply in the universality of theirrepresentative function. For example, the common term‘man’ is a spoken or written universal term of English,because it is subordinated to that concept of our minds by which weconceive of each man indifferently. (See Klima, 2011) It is thisindifference in its representative function that enables the singularact of my mind to conceive of each man in a universal manner, and thesame goes for the singular act of your mind. Accordingly, there is noneed to assume that there is anything in the individual humans,distinct from these humans themselves, a common yet individualizednature waiting to be abstracted by the mind. All we need to assume isthat two humans are more similar to each other than either of them toa brute animal, and all animals are more similar to each other thanany of them to a plant, etc., and that the mind, being able torecognize this similarity, is able to represent the humans by means ofa common specific concept, the animals by means of a common genericconcept, all living things by means of a more general generic concept, etc.^[50] In this way, then, the common terms subordinated to these conceptsneed not signify some abstract common nature in the mind, andconsequently its individualized instances in the singulars, for theydirectly signify the singulars themselves, just as they are directlyconceived by the universally representative acts of the mind. So, whatthese common terms signify are just the singulars themselves, whichare also the things referred to by these terms when they are used inpropositions. Using the customary rendering of the medieval logicalterminology, the things ultimately signified by a common term are itssignificata, while the things referred to by the same termwhen it is used in a proposition are their (personal)supposita.^[51]

Now if we compare the two diagrams representing the respectiveconceptions of the twoviae, we can see just how radicallyOckham’s innovations changed the character of the semanticrelations connecting terms, concepts and things. In bothviae, common terms are subordinated to common concepts, andit is in virtue of this subordination that they ultimately signifywhat their concepts represent. In thevia moderna, a conceptis just an act of the mind representing singulars in a more or lessindifferent manner, yielding a more or less universal significationfor the term. In thevia antiqua, however, the act of themind is just one item in a whole series of intermediaryrepresentations, distinguished in terms of their different functionsin processing universal information, and connected by their commoncontent, ultimately representing the common, yet individualizednatures of their singulars.^[52] Accordingly, a common term, expressing this common content, isprimarily subordinated to the objective concept of the mind. But ofcourse, this objective concept is only the common content of thesingular representative acts of singular minds, their subjectiveconcepts, formed by means of the intelligible species, abstracted bytheir active intellects. On the other hand, the objective concept,abstracting from all individuating conditions, expresses only what iscommon to all singulars, namely, their nature considered absolutely.But this absolutely considered nature is only the common content ofwhat informs each singular of the same nature in its actual realexistence. So, the term’s ultimatesignificata willhave to be the individualized natures of the singulars. But theseultimatesignificata may still not be the singularsthemselves, namely, when the things informed by thesesignificata are not metaphysically simple. In theviamoderna conception, therefore, the ultimatesignificataof a term are nothing but those singular things that can be theterm’ssupposita in various propositions, as a matterof semantics. By contrast, in thevia antiqua conception, aterm’s ultimatesignificata may or may not be the samethings as the term’s (personal)supposita, depending onthe constitution of thesesupposita, as a matter ofmetaphysics. The singulars will be thesupposita of the termwhen it is used as the subject term of a proposition in whichsomething is predicated about the things informed by these ultimatesignificata (in the case of metaphysically simple entities,the term’ssignificata andsupposita coincide).^[53]

Nevertheless, despite the nominalists’ charges to the contrary,thevia antiqua framework, as far as its semanticconsiderations are concerned, was no more committed to the realdistinction of thesignificata andsupposita of itscommon terms than thevia moderna framework was. For if thesemantic theory in itself had precluded the identification of thesesemantic values, then the question of possible identity of thesevalues could not have been meaningfully raised in the first place.Furthermore, in that case such identifications would have beenprecluded as meaningless even when talking about metaphysically simpleentities, such as angels and God, whereas the metaphysical simplicityof these entities was expressed precisely in terms of suchidentifications. But also in the mundane cases of thesignificata andsupposita of concrete and abstractuniversal terms in the nine accidental categories, severalviaantiqua authors argued for the identification of these semanticvalues both within and across categories. First of all there wasAristotle’s authority for the claim that action and passion arethe same motion,^[54] so the significata of terms in these two categories could not beregarded as really distinct entities. But several authors also arguedfor the identification of relations with their foundations, that is tosay, for the identity of the significata of relative terms with thesignificata of terms in the categories quantity and quality. (Forexample, on this conception, my equality in height to you would bejust my height, provided you were of the same height, and not adistinct “equality-thing” somehow attached to my height,caused by our equal heights.)^[55]

By contrast, what makes thevia moderna approach simpler isthat it “automatically” achieves such identificationsalready on the basis of its semantic principles. Since in thisapproach thesignificata of concrete common terms are justthe singulars directly represented by the corresponding concepts, thesignificata and (personal)supposita of terms aretaken to be the same singulars from the beginning. So these commontermssignify andsupposit for the same thingseither absolutely, provided the term isabsolute, or inrelation to other singulars, provided the term isconnotative. But even in the case of connotative terms, suchas relative terms (in fact, all terms in the nine accidentalcategories, except for some abstract terms in the category quality,according to Ockham) we do not need to assume the existence of somemysterious relational entities informing singular substances. Forexample, the term ‘father’ need not be construed assignifying in me an inherent relation, my fatherhood, somehowconnecting me to my son, and suppositing for me on that account in thecontext of a proposition; rather, it should merely be construed assignifying me in relation to my son, thereby suppositing for me in thecontext of a proposition, while connoting my son.

10. The Separation of theViae, and the Breakdown of Scholastic Discourse in Late-Medieval Philosophy

The appeal of the simplicity of thevia moderna approach,especially as it was systematically articulated in the works of JohnBuridan and his students, had a tremendous impact on late-medievalphilosophy and theology. To be sure, many late-medieval scholars, whowere familiar with both ways, would have shared the sentimentexpressed by the remark of Domingo Soto (1494–1560, describinghimself as someone who was “born among nominalists and raised by realists”)^[56] to the effect that whereas the realist doctrine of theviaantiqua was more difficult to understand, still, the nominalistdoctrine of thevia moderna was more difficult to believe.^[57] Nevertheless, the overall simplicity and internal consistency of thenominalist approach were undeniable, gathering a strong following bythe 15^th century in all major universities of Europe, oldand newly established alike.^[58]

The resulting separation and the ensuing struggle of the medievalviae did not end with the victory of the one over the other.Instead, due to the primarilysemantic nature of theseparation, getting the parties embroiled in increasingly complicatedways of talking past each other, thereby generating an ever growingdissatisfaction, even contempt, in a new, lay, humanist intelligentsia,^[59] it ended with the demise of the characteristically medievalconceptual frameworks of bothviae in the late-medieval andearly modern period.

These developments, therefore, also put an end to the specificallymedieval problem of universals. However, the increasinglyrarified late-medieval problem eventually vanished only to give way toseveral modern variants ofrecognizablythe sameproblem, which keeps recurring in one form or another in contemporaryphilosophy as well. Indeed, one may safely assert that as long asthere is interest in the questions of how a human language obviouslyabounding in universal terms can be meaningfully mapped onto a worldof singulars, thereis a problem of universals, regardless ofthe details of the particular conceptual framework in which therelevant questions are articulated. Clearly, in this sense, theproblem of universals is itself a universal, the universal problem ofaccounting for the relationships between mind, language, andreality.

Bibliography

[Note: This list contains only items referred to in the notes.Excellent, up to date, comprehensive surveys of the medieval problemof universals are provided inSpade 1985 [Other Internet Resources] andLibera 1996.]

Primary Literature

• Aquinas,Opera Omnia, R. Busa (ed.), Stuttgart-BadCanstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980.
• Aristotle,The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes(ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Augustine,On the Free Choice of the Will, tr. T.Williams, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993
• Augustine,De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, A.Mutzenbecher (ed.), Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 44a,Brepols: Turnholt, 1975
• Avicenna,Metaphysica V, 1, S. Van Riet (ed.), 2 vols.,E. Peeters: Louvain, and Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977, 1980.
• Berkeley, G.,A Treatise Concerning the Principles of HumanKnowledge, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982.
• Bonaventure,et al.,De Humanae Cognitionis Ratione:anecdota quaedam Seraphici Doctoris Sancti Bonaventurae et nunnulorumeius discipulorum, Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi): St. Bonaventure,1883.
• Biel, G.,Collectorium: Collectorium circa quattuorlibros Sententiarum Gabrielis Biel; W. Werbeck,et al.(eds.), Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1973.
• Cajetan, T.,Commentary on Being and Essence, tr. L. J.Kendzierski and F. C. Wade, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,1964.
• Giles of Rome,In Primum Librum Sententiarum,Frankfurt/Main: Minerva, 1968 (Venetiis, 1521).
• Henry of Ghent,Summae quaestionum ordinariarum theologirecepto praeconio solennis Henrici a Gandavo, (Parisiis Inaedibus Jodoci Badii Ascensii 1520), New York: Franciscan Institute,1953.
• John Duns Scotus,B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Commentaria Oxoniensiaad IV libros Magistri Sententiarum, novis curis edidit p.Marianus Fernandez Garcia, Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) propeFlorentiam, ex typographia Collegii s. Bonaventurae,1912–1914.
• John of Salisbury,Metalogicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press,1929.
• John Wyclif,Tractatus de Universalibus, I. J. Mueller(ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
• Plato,Collected Dialogues, E. Hamilton and H. Cairns(eds.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
• Seneca,Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales,Loeb classicallibrary: Latin authors, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1962–1967.
• Soto, D.,In Porphyrii Isagogen, Aristotelis Categorias,librosque de Demonstratione, Commentaria, Venice, ex officinaDominici Guarraei, et Io. Baptistae, fratrum, 1587, reprint,Frankfurt: Minerva, 1967.
• Spade, P. V., (tr.),Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem ofUniversals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham,Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
• Suarez, F.,Disputaciones Metafisicas, Madrid: EditorialGredos, 1960.
• Suarez, F.,On the Various Kinds of Distinctions(Disputationes metaphysicae, Disputatio VII, de variisdistinctionum generibus), tr. intro. C. Vollert, Milwaukee:Marquette University Press: 1947.
• Thomas of Sutton,Quodlibeta, München: BayerischeAkademie, 1969.
• Vincent Ferrer,Tractatus de Suppositionibus,Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromman Holzboog, 1977.
• Vives, J. L.,Against the Pseudodialecticians, tr. R.Guerlac, Dordrecht-Boston-London: D. Reidel Publishing Company,1979.
• William Ockham,Summa Logicae, Ph. Boehner,etal. (eds.),Opera Philosophica, vol. I., St.Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1974.
• William Ockham,Ordinatio: Guillelmi de OckhamScriptum in librum primum sententiarum ordinatio: distinctionesXIX-XLVIII, G. I. Etzkorn and F. E. Kelley (eds.),OperaTheologica, vol. IV, St. Bonaventure, NY: The FranciscanInstitute, 1979.

Secondary Literature

• Adams, M. M., 1987,William Ockham, 2 volumes, NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Amerini, F. and Cesalli, L. (eds.), 2017,Universals in theFourteenth Century, Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.
• Ashworth, E. J., 1974,Language and Logic in the Post-MedievalPeriod (Synthese Historical Library: Volume 12), Dordrecht: D.Reidel.
• Callus, D. A., 1967, “Unicity and Plurality of Forms”,inNew Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: McGraw-Hill,1967–79.
• Cross, R., 2014, “Medieval Theories of Haecceity”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/medieval-haecceity/>.
• Gracia, J., 1994,Individuation in Scholasticism: The LaterMiddle Ages and the Counter Reformation (1150–1650),Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
• Gracia, J., 1984,Introduction to the Problem of Individuationin the Early Middle Ages (Analytica Series), München andWashington, D.C.: Philosophia Verlag and Catholic University ofAmerica Press; 2nd edition, 1988.
• Henninger, M., 1989,Relations: Medieval Theories1250–1325, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Hissette, R., 1977,Enquête sur les 219 articlescondamnés à Paris le 7 Mars 1277,“Philosophes médiévaux,” Volume 22, Louvain:Publications Universitaires.
• Hyman, A., and Walsh, J. J., (eds.), 1973,Philosophy of theMiddle Ages, Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Klima, G., 2011, “Indifference vs. Universality of MentalRepresentation in Ockham, Buridan, and Aquinas”, in Amerini, F.– Marrone, F. – Porro, P. (eds.) Later MedievalPerspectives on Intentionality (Quaestio 10/2010), BrepolsPublishers/Pagina soc. Coop., Turnhout/Bari, 2010, pp. 99–110.
• –––, 2000a, “Thomas of Sutton on theNature of the Intellective Soul and the Thomistic Theory ofBeing”, in J. Aertsen,et al. (eds.),Nach derVerurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an derUniversität von Paris im letzten Viertel des13. Jahrhunderts, Studien und Texte (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28),Berlin-New York, 2000, pp. 436-455. [Author preprint of Klima 2000a available online]
• –––, 2000b, “Aquinas on One and Many”,Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale (AnInternational Journal on the Philosophical Tradition from LateAntiquity to the Late Middle Ages of the Società Internazionaleper lo Studio del Medioevo Latino), 11: 195–215.[Author preprint of Klima 2000b available online]
• –––, 1999, “Ockham’s Semantics andMetaphysics of the Categories”, in P. V. Spade (ed.),TheCambridge Companion to Ockham, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 118–142. [Author preprint of Klima 1999 available online]
• –––, 1996a, “The Semantic Principles Underlying Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Being”,Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 5: 87–141. [Author preprint of Klima 1996a available online]
• –––, 1993a, “‘Socrates estspecies’: Logic, Metaphysics and Psychology in St. ThomasAquinas’ Treatment of a Paralogism”, in K. Jacobi (ed.),Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischenund semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, Leiden: Brill, pp.489–504.
• –––, 1993b, “The Changing RoleofEntia Rationis in Medieval Philosophy: A Comparative Studywith a Reconstruction”,Synthese, 96: 25–59. [Author preprintof Klima 1993b available online]
• –––, and Hall, A.W. (eds.) 2011,Medieval Metaphysics, or is it“Just Semantics”?, Newcastle upon Tyne: CambridgeScholars Publishing.
• Kretzmann, N.,and A. Kenny and J. Pinborg (eds.), 1982,The Cambridge Historyof Later Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• Libera, A. de,1996,La querelle des universeaux: De Platon à la fin duMoyen Age, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996.
• Marrone, S.,2001,The light of Thy countenance: science and knowledge of Godin the thirteenth century, Leiden-Boston: Brill.
• Panaccio, C.,2004,Ockham on Concepts, Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Pasnau, R.,2002,Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study ofSumma Theologiae 1a 75–89, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• –––, 1999a,“Peter John Olivi”,inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Winter 1999Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win1999/entries/olivi/>
• –––, 1999b,“Divine Illumination”,inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Winter 1999Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win1999/entries/illumination/>
• –––,1997,Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Read, S. L., 1977, “The Objective Being of Ockham’sFicta”,The Philosophical Quarterly, 27:14–31.
• –––, 2015, “Medieval Theories: Propertiesof Terms”, inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.(Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/medieval-terms/>
• Schmidt, R. W., 1966,The Domain of Logic according to SaintThomas Aquinas, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Spade, P. V., 1982, “The Semantics of Terms”, inKretzmann,et al., 1982,pp. 188–196.
• Tweedale, M., 1982, “Abelard and the Culmination of OldLogic”, inKretzmann,et al., 1982,pp. 142–157.
• Wood, A., 2011, “Aquinas, Scotus, and Cajetan on‘Horseness is just Horseness’”, inKlima,et al., 2011,pp. 69–84.

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• Klima, G., 1997,Comments on Peter King, “The Failure of Ockham’s Nominalism”, (Paper read at the Central Division Meeting of the AmericanPhilosophical Association, Pittsburgh, PA, April 26, 1997.)
• Klima, G., 1996b “Nulla virtus cognoscitiva circa proprium obiectum decipitur” comments on Robert Pasnau, “The Identity of Knower and Known”. (Paper read at the Central Division Meetings of the AmericanPhilosophical Association, Chicago, April 25, 1996.)
• Paul Spade’s Medieval Logic and Philosophy site
• Spade, P. V., 1996a,Thoughts, Words and Things: An Introduction to Late Mediaeval Logic and Semantic Theory, Version 1.0, 1996. (PDF file)
• Spade, P. V., 1996b, “Boethius against Universals: The Arguments in the Second Commentary on Porphyry” (PDF file)
• Spade, P. V., 1985,A Survey of Medieval Philosophy, Version 2.0, 1985. (PDF file)

Related Entries

language of thought hypothesis |mental representation |mental representation: in medieval philosophy |properties |relations: medieval theories of |tropes