Albert the Great

Albert the Great reveals the influence of Avicenna and Averroes in his psychology, though he certainly does not agree with them on all points. Although he maintains that sense as such is a material and passive power, Albert admits that after it has been actualised by the sensible form, it can make judgements. However, it appears to do so only through the common sense. Albert rejects the argument that just as there is in the soul an agent intellect which abstracts and thus actualises intelligible species so there must be an active sense which abstracts and thus actualises the sensible. He replies that it is something in the nature of the intellect which renders the potentially intelligible actually intelligible, but it is something in external reality, not anything in the powers of the soul, which renders material things actually sensible. However, what is in the sense is certainly not the form united in existence with matter as found in the external thing, but rather an intention (intentio) or species of the material thing which enables us to have sense knowledge of that thing. Since sense apprehends the sensible object through such an intention, the first grade of abstraction is found in sensation, namely, separation from the matter of the external thing. However, in so far as sensation is of actually existing sensible things, which are individuated by matter, there must remain in sense apprehension a reference to matter as present and to the individuating conditions of matter.

Rights derived from above: John of Salisbury

In the period from John of Salisbury to Richard Hooker and Francisco Suárez the concept of a right and the theory of natural rights emerged from a religious view of society with which the subsequent politics of rights has more or less willingly dispensed. At the outset sacral kingship and, more convincingly, the authority of the Church, especially the papacy, claimed divine warrant and support. At the same time those who wished to resist their superiors could usually allege violation of mutual obligation, or failure to conform to the requirements of rulership, and Christian impulses to condemn, flee, or find a radical alternative to ordinary worldly life were always active.

John of Salisbury's Policraticus, although a highly personal work, shows important aspects of the original view. John regards rights (iura) as the vital means which an ideal court (an Areopagus) would give each class or profession in a community as required to perform its proper functions (Policr. I.3) – functions in an organic social whole, which has as its soul the priesthood and whose princely head of government is an earthly image of the divine majesty. John draws his organic model for society from classical sources but adapts it to medieval Christian needs by making the sacerdotal soul a distinct class, of which the prince is in some sense a minister. In the same way, he takes over the Roman jurists' impersonal definition of fairness or equity as a rational equilibration of disparate things with respect to the same laws (iura), bestowing on each what is his own, but identifies such aequitas with the justice of God, to which rulers are emphatically subordinate.

From Aristotle through Boethius to scholasticism

‘Topic’ is the infelicitous but by now standard translation for the Latin technical term ‘locus’, designating a logical concept variously understood throughout ancient and medieval philosophy. The medieval tradition of the Topics has its roots in Aristotle's Topics. In that book, Aristotle's purpose is to present an art of arguing, more precisely the art of dialectical disputation or Socratic arguing; and most of the book is devoted to a method for the discovery of arguments. The main instrument of this method is a Topic, by which Aristotle understands primarily a strategy of argumentation (such as, ‘If the species is a relative, [one must] examine whether the genus is also a relative’) and secondarily a principle confirming the line of argument produced by the strategy (for example, ‘If the species is a relative, the genus is also’). Six of the eight books of the Topics consist largely in a loosely ordered compilation of such strategies and principles.

Aristotle considers these Topics part of dialectic and distinguishes them from two different but analogous sorts of Topics, rhetorical Topics (which aid in the construction of rhetorical arguments) and mnemonic Topics (which aid in recalling things committed to memory).

Topics received considerable attention in later antiquity from the Greek commentators on Aristotle and from Latin rhetoricians, including Cicero, who wrote his own treatise (Topica) on dialectical Topics. In the course of their work, the discipline of the Topics changed until by Boethius' time it has become very different from Aristole's art of Topics, particularly in its understanding of the nature of a Topic.

The humanists' reassessment of the study of language

The traditional account of the impact of humanism on the logic curriculum blames the supposed ‘barbarousness’ of the mediaeval logicians' use of language for the humanists' hostility to the logic of the traditional curriculum. In their standard history of logic the Kneales wrote:

“The first blow to the prestige of logic came from the humanists, or classical scholars, of the Renaissance, i.e. in the fifteenth century. Their objection to scholasticism, and to medieval logic in particular, was not that it was false in any details, but rather that it was barbarous in style and unattractive in content by contrast with the rediscovered literature of antiquity. Who but a dullard would devote his life to the proprietates terminorum when he might read the newly found poem of Lucretius De Rerum Natura or learn Greek and study Plato?”

According to this account, a commitment to eloquence as the basis for all learning led humanists to turn from logic, the study of the technical manipulation of a formal language, to rhetoric:

“The writing of elegant Latin was now the chief accomplishment to be learnt, and for this Cicero and Quintilian were the authorities. From them the men of the Renaissance acquired the Roman attitude to scholarship, with the result that genuine logic was neglected for rhetoric and books which purported to be on logic quoted Cicero as often as Aristotle.”

First philosophy, divine science, and the science of ‘being as being’

The recovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics by medieval Western thinkers prepared the way for them to concentrate on the science of ‘being as being’ in the high Middle Ages. This work was enhanced by the translation into Latin of Avicenna's Metaphysics in the twelfth century and of Averroes' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics in the early thirteenth century. But as medieval Latin thinkers began to examine Aristotle's text more closely, they encountered a problem of interpretation relating to the very nature of metaphysics.

In Metaphysics IV, c. 1 (1003a21–32), Aristotle speaks of a science which studies being as being and contrasts it with more particular sciences which restrict themselves to investigating the attributes of a portion of being. But in Metaphysics VI, c. 1 (1026a23–32), after referring to his investigation of ‘beings as beings’ and presumably, therefore, to his science of being as being, Aristotle distinguishes three theoretical sciences – physics, mathematics, and first philosophy or ‘divine science’ – and then seems to justify the viability of the last-mentioned one only insofar as it concerns itself with separate and immobile entities. One might wonder whether this first philosophy or divine science can be identified with Aristotle's general science of being as being, a difficulty which he himself recognises. He concludes the discussion by asserting that if there were no separate and immobile entity, then physics would be the first science.

The hypothesis of an Oxford—Paris split

Terminist logic grew to maturity in the period 1175—1250, a period that was also crucially important in the development of the universities of Paris and of Oxford. Scholars have recently focused their attention on divergences in the early development of the logical and semantic theories that constitute terminist logic, divergences suggesting that one cluster of doctrines is to be associated with Oxford, another with Paris. In view of the very marked differences between British and continental logic in the early fourteenth century, it seems important to investigate whether such differences can be traced backwards into the thirteenth and late twelfth centuries. As I hope to show, such divergences do in fact exist even if they are not so great as to make the traditions of Oxford and of Paris entirely independent.

Although by the turn of the thirteenth century terminist logic was acknowledged by all logicians as a common frame of reference, various interpretations of important issues were still being put forward. If divergences between the traditions of Oxford and Paris are to be established, the evidence is likely to be found in the discussions concerning the various properties of terms, such as supposition, appellation, ampliation, and restriction.

The school of the Parvipontani

Twelfth-century logicians seem to have basically agreed in claiming that an appellative (or common) name may vary its reference (appellatio) according to changes in the tense of the main verb of the proposition; they agreed further in describing this variation as either ‘restriction’ or ‘ampliation’ of the reference or appellation, and in providing rules associated with the three main tenses of the verb: present, past, and future.

The notion of consequentia

Etymologically, ‘consequentia’ suggests a following along. In medieval philosophical literature it was apparently quite proper to say that one concept follows another – e.g., that animal follows man – but more generally consequence was thought of as involving entire propositions.

There are, of course, many different relationships in which propositions can stand to each other. For instance, in a conditional proposition of the form ‘if p then q’ the proposition taking the place of ‘p’ is the antecedent of the conditional proposition, and the proposition taking the place of ‘q’ is the consequent. The relationship between that antecedent and the consequent in a true conditional is called implication by modern logicians. Again, two propositions may be related to each other in such a way that the first cannot be true unless the second is true also; and the relationship between the two propositions in that case is called entailment. Again, two propositions may constitute an argument. In the argument-form ‘p; therefore q’ the proposition taking the place of ‘p’ is the premiss and the proposition taking the place of ‘q’ is the conclusion. To employ an argument is to derive or infer the conclusion from the premiss (or premisses), and so the relationship between those two propositions is called derivation or inference.

Implication, entailment, and inference are all distinct from one another. For instance, a conditional proposition, like other propositions, is accepted or rejected by being classified as true or as false; an argument is neither true nor false but is accepted or rejected as valid or as invalid.

Spain as the bastion of late scholasticism

After the attacks of humanists, Ramists, reformers, and plain haters of philosophy over much of two centuries, it is amazing that scholasticism survived at all. Not only did it survive, it experienced a notable revival throughout much of western Europe towards the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth. Humanists and reformers were by no means unanimous in opposing the medieval scholastics. More important, the Iberian peninsula was comparatively unaffected by the intellectual and religious ferment of most of the rest of Europe. The schools of Spain and Portugal had a more or less continuous tradition of scholastic philosophy, and the leading figures in the general revival of scholastic thought round the end of the sixteenth century tend to be Spaniards like Bañiez, Vásquez, and Suárez. In northern Europe the scholastic revival looks more like a self-conscious and deliberate Aristotelian reaction to Ramists, humanists, and the like, but the northerners of whatever religious allegiance were happy enough to take guidance and inspiration from Spain.

New trends in late scholasticism

Although in obvious ways continuous with the main medieval tradition, late scholasticism, whether in its Iberian form or in its northern revival, shows certain very distinctive characteristics of its own which may be seen as marking a transition to some of the most prominent themes of early modern philosophy.

While these philosophers were nearly unanimous in rejecting medieval nominalism (indeed, in the north this was another of the things they were reacting against), Scotus, Ockham, and the later nominalistic tradition had a very powerful influence on them.

The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy finds its natural place after The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy in the sequence that begins with Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy. The sequence is not altogether smooth, however. At the beginning of The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy its editor, A. H. Armstrong, observes that although the volume ‘was originally planned in connexion with W. K. C. Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy, … [it] has developed on rather different lines, and is not exactly a continuation of that work’ (p. xii). Similarly, although The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy was conceived of as the sequel to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, the relationship between the two is not so simple as their titles suggest; in fact, the fit between this volume and the Armstrong volume is less exact than that between the Armstrong volume and Professor Guthrie's plan. Many reviewers noted that the Armstrong volume seems misleadingly titled since it is really a study of only the Platonist tradition in later Greek and early medieval philosophy; but in concentrating in that way it does indeed complement Professor Guthrie's plan, which includes the Stoics and Epicureans as well as Aristotle while leaving out the Neoplatonists. On the other hand, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy cannot be put forward as the full realisation of Professor Armstrong's expressed hope ‘that the philosophy of the thirteenth century and the later Middle Ages in the West, with later Jewish, Moslem, and Byzantine developments, will some day be dealt with in another Cambridge volume’ (ibid.).

Grammar in the early Middle Ages

Medieval speculative grammar grew out of the schoolmens' work with ancient Latin grammar as it had been transmitted in the canonical works of Donatus and Priscian. The efforts of early medieval glossators were directed towards explaining the authoritative texts, towards systematising the descriptional apparatus used by the authors, and towards harmonising the apparent or real contradictions which arose in a comparison of the grammatical and logical traditions. The results of their combined efforts were summarised in the famous Summa super Priscianum compiled about 1140 by Peter Helias. The grammarians' discussions, which had been influenced by the logicians, in their turn influenced and refined logical doctrine and played an important role in the emergence of the specifically medieval logical doctrines known collectively as terminist logic. The grammatical discussions about the meaning of substantive words, for instance, were crucial to the development of the theory of supposition. The twelfth-century grammarians emphasised the importance of explaining linguistic features causally, instead of just describing them as Priscian had done, and in this way attained a high degree of linguistic sophistication. But it would perhaps be too much to say that their efforts already inaugurated a new paradigm of linguistic description.

The general nature of ‘modistic’ grammar

Around 1270, however, a new theoretical framework was established. The phases of the development which brought this about are not yet known in detail, but the first representatives of the new doctrine seem to be Boethius of Dacia and Martin of Dacia.

Medieval Platonism

In the later Middle Ages philosophical questions on the ordinary sources of human knowledge attracted continuous though uneven attention. The fundamental problem for the discussions involved taking account of two commonly recognised extremes.

On the one hand, Augustine had in summary fashion heralded a unified philosophy. For him the best in all preceding Greek thought had been assimilated into the Platonism current in his epoch, a type now conveniently designated by the nineteenth-century term ‘Neoplatonism’. Within its own competence the perfected philosophy, as Augustine saw it, paralleled revealed biblical truth. His view set the framework for Christian intellectual tradition among the Latins for the eight ensuing centuries.

Medieval Aristotelianism

On the other hand, Boethius, from whose translations and commentaries medieval students learned their logic and received their general introduction to philosophy, had handed down an acquaintance with certain facets of Aristotle that resisted absorption into the Neoplatonic stream. By the mid twelfth century Aristotle had attained the status of the Philosopher par excellence. His thought, as enhanced by Islamic writers translated during the latter half of that century, deepened medieval inquiry into subjects significant for problems of cognition. During the thirteenth century Aristotle's major works became available in direct translation and were read with the commentaries of Averroes. They rapidly imposed their philosophical techniques upon the intellectual training in the newly established universities and guided it for the rest of the medieval period.

A grammatical distinction between categoremata and syncategoremata

The paradigm of the categorical proposition with which medieval logicians were primarily concerned is a sentence of two words that serve as the subject term and the predicate term – e.g., ‘Socrates currit.’ Any word that can be used alone as a subject term or as a predicate term is classifiable as a categorematic word; all other words are classifiable as syncategorematic words, those that can occur in a proposition, whether categorical or hypothetical, only along with at least one properly matched pair of categorematic words – e.g., ‘Solus Socrates currit,’ ‘Socrates currit contingenter’, ‘Socrates non currit’, “Si Socrates currit, Socrates movetur.’ Drawing the distinction between categoremata and syncategoremata along this line, which seems to have been the original line of distinction, produces mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes that coincide almost perfectly with certain groupings of the parts of speech (parts orationis) recognized by medieval grammarians: the names (both substantival and adjectivel), the personal and demonstrative pronouns and the verbs (excluding auxiliary verbs); the syncategoremate are all the others – e.g., the conjunction adverbs, and prepositions.

The logicians' notion of syncategoremata

The notice of synacategoremata that became important in medieval logic was, however, both narrower and broader than that comparatively orderly classification in terms of the parts of speech. Although more than fifty different words were considered in one or another medieval logicians' treatment of syncategoremate, by no means all non categorematic words in even the relatively small classes, such as conjunctions, were of enough interest to the logicians to be treated expressly among their syncategoremata.

Two sorts of questions for moderate realism

The vigorous early-fourteenth-century debate about universals was based on a rejection of Platonism, the theory that universal natures really exist independently of the particulars whose natures they are and independently of every mind. Fourteenth-century ‘moderate’ realists agreed that natures must be somehow common to particulars in reality, but Aristotle had convinced them that no one in his right mind could hold that the nature of a thing exists separated from it as Platonic forms were supposed to do. They insisted instead that the natures really exist in the things whose natures they are, as metaphysical constituents of them. But this contention had its own problems. Since there can be more than one particular in a given genus or species, natures cannot be the only metaphysical constituents of particulars; there must also be individuating principles that serve to distinguish one particular from another.

But what are these individuating principles? William of Champeaux's position that accidental properties individuate was denied by virtually everyone on the Aristotelian ground that substance is naturally prior to accidents but particular substances are not naturally prior to what individuates them. Thomas Aquinas held that prime matter, the ultimate property-bearer in composite substances, combines with quantitative dimensions to individuate. But Duns Scotus found this tantamount to conceding that accidents individuate after all. Besides, he argued, neither matter, quantitative dimensions, nor their combination was distinct and determinate in itself. Taking it as axiomatic that only what is distinct and determinate in itself can individuate, Scotus concluded that neither matter by itself, existence, nor any combination of accidents can do the job (Ordinatio II, d. 3, qq. 5, 3, and 4, respectively).

Abelard's conception of logic

Of all the scholastic logicians writing while the old logic (logica vetus) was still virtually the whole of the logical curriculum in the schools, Abelard is generally conceded to have been the most profound and original. He himself was keenly aware of the subtlety required of the logician and in one place says it depends on a divinely bestowed talent, rather than anything that can be developed by mere practice. Abelard treats dialectic (= logic) as an ars sermocinalis, i.e., like grammar a linguistic science. Its peculiar subject matter is arguments as expressed in language, whose validity it tries to judge in a scientific way. This linguistically oriented conception of the subject means that dialectic will overlap to some extent with grammar. In the first section below I shall selectively explore this overlap; in the second section I shall consider some of Abelard's views on more purely logical topics.

For Abelard logic also had a close relation to physica, i.e., the sciences of nature, since in explaining the ‘uses of words’ the logician must investigate in a general way the ‘properties of things’ which the mind uses words to signify. This relationship leads to a concern with the psychology of signification, to be explored in the third section below, and with ontology, the topic of the fourth section. This discussion is necessarily very selective and must omit consideration of many of Abelard's philosophical insights on relevant topics.

Intellectual and religious reaction to the French Revolution

The upheaval of the French Revolution destroyed many academic and ecclesiastical organisations belonging to the old order, but a reaction was not slow in coming. As Sainte-Beuve noticed in 1854, the number of Le Moniteur for Easter Sunday 1802, which published news of the Peace of Amiens and of the Concordat between Napoleon and the Pope, also published a review of a recent book: Le Génie du Christianisme, by Chateaubriand (1768–1848). An appeal to tradition against the excesses that had followed from rationalism found romantic expression in Chateaubriand's book, but the concept of tradition was to receive a more philosophical cast from others – De Maistre (1763–1852), De Bonald (1754–1840), and Lamennais (1782–1854). All three had idiosyncratic views on the role of language, and the opposition they provoked influenced the form taken by the revival of scholasticism. Writing in 1809, De Maistre claimed that the content of language depends upon the life and customs of those who use it; it eludes arbitrary enactments; it was not invented by men, nor can its diversity be attributed to human means. For De Bonald, the disagreements of philosophers oblige us to seek for moral science what physical sciences have already: a fixed point, a criterion of truth, something that will be public, readily accessible, and evident. He believed this to be ‘the primordial and indispensable gift of language, bestowed upon the human race’. Reason and experience in individuals need the setting and tradition of society, and of the language it hands on, to reach truths that go beyond particular facts.

The old and the new responses

The obligations-literature appears to have entered a new phase with the Oxford Calculators, centred at Merton College in the 1320s and 1330s. Although the Mertonian Thomas Bradwardine seems to have contributed little to the development of obligations, his contemporary Richard Kilvington was more innovative in this regard, in ways described in Part A of this Chapter.

We are in a somewhat better position to assess the contribution of Roger Swineshead to obligations. Swineshead certainly appears to have been part of the intellectual circle with which Kilvington and Bradwardine are associated, and he may well have studied with them. Probably sometime after 1330 and before 1335, Swineshead wrote his pair of treatises on obligations and insolubles. There is reason to speculate that some of the most characteristic features of Swineshead's Insolubilia grew out of reflection on Kilvington's Sophismata. It is possible that this is true of Swineshead's Obligationes as well, but that remains to be established.

Swineshead's Obligationes is markedly different from earlier treatises in the genre. So true is this that Robert Fland, writing some time between 1335 and 1370, distinguishes two separate traditions in the obligations-literature. One of these traditions he calls the ‘old response’ (antiqua responsio); it conforms to the views of Burley, to those of the treatise attributed to William of Sherwood, and to those found in most if not all of the other early treatises. The second tradition Fland calls the ‘new response’ (nova responsio); it appears to have originated with Swineshead.