Medieval Philosophy by John Marenbon

Author:John Marenbon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199663224
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Universals (Avicenna and Abelard)

There is a core question about universals, which perplexed ancient and medieval thinkers, and still exercises philosophers today; they have even borrowed the medieval nomenclature for the main positions taken. Some things in the world are the same, not by being numerically identical (as John Marenbon is numerically identical with the author of this book), but by being the same in some respect: this saucer, that coin, and that mirror are all the same, for instance, in being round; all the animals in that field are the same in being horses. Is it enough simply to suppose that there are these many particular things which are the same in these respects, or is there some additional entity, besides the particular things—a universal—in respect of which they are the same? Those who believe there are such entities—universal things—are called ‘realists’; those who consider that real universals are unnecessary are ‘nominalists’ (from the Latin nomen = name): they accept that there are universals in language (such as the words ‘round’ and ‘horse’), but deny that there are universal things.

There is at least one striking difference between medieval and contemporary ways of posing the ‘problem of universals’. It is partly, but not wholly, a matter of terminology. In the Categories, Aristotle divides things into substances and nine sorts of accident (see Chapter 4). A primary substance is a particular belonging to a natural kind, not the result of human artifice: a man or woman, a flower or a stone (but not a table or a house). The accidents are properties which attach to substances, and can come and go. So, for example, ‘Fat red-faced John, Arthur’s son, is sitting, wearing a jacket, in the kitchen this morning, eating and hearing the music’ describes a primary substance, John, and his accidents in each of the categories. John also has properties, known as differentiae, which are not accidents because he cannot be without them: they include rationality, a defining feature of all humans, and having sense perception, a defining feature of all animals, human and non-human. In the Middle Ages, the problem of universals was usually posed about substances.

Medieval thinkers asked whether, in addition to the primary substances, there are universal secondary substances: species (such as Man), and genera (such as Animal or Living Thing) which bring together different species. Philosophers today not only use a different terminology; they also usually discuss universal properties, such as roundness or redness, rather than substances. One reason for the difference is a gap between medieval and contemporary science. Following Aristotle, most medieval thinkers thought of natural kinds as fixed and determinate, whereas we consider them to be continuously evolving and to have fuzzy boundaries. This difference is not, however, as wide as it first appears. Medieval writers did also discuss universal properties (accidents and differentiae, in their terms), and many contemporary philosophers accept that there are some determinate, fixed natural kinds, such as water, and these do indeed figure in some contemporary discussions about universals.

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