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 NOMINALISM

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NOMINALISM

that seemed simple and innocent, thouph somewhat obscure, but one which force of circumstances made the necessary startiiifx-point of the earhest medieval speculations about the I'niversals.

Porphyry divides the problem into three parts: (1) Do genera and speoirs exist in nature, or lio they con- sist in mere proclucts of the intellect? (2) If they are things apart from the mind, are they corporeal or in- corporeal things? (3) Do they exist outside the (in- dividual) things of sense, or are they realized in the latter? " Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive subsistant sive in nudis intellectibus posita sint, eive subsistentia corporaha sint an incorporalia, et utruni separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa hiec subsistentia, dicere recusabo." Histori- cally, the first of those questions was discussed prior to the others: the latter could have arisen only in the event of denying an exclusively subjective character to universal realities. Now the first question was whether genera and species are objective realities or not: sive subsistant, sive in nudis intellectibus posita sint? In other words, the sole point in debate was the absolute reality of the universals: theirtruth, their re- lation to the understanding, was not in question. The text from Porphj'ry, apart from the solutions he else- where proposed in works unknown to the early Scho- lastics, is an inadequate statement of the question; for it takes account only of the objective aspect and neg- lects the psychological standpoint which alone can give the key to the true solution. Moreover, Por- phyry, after proposing his triple interrogation in the " Isagoge ", refuses to olTer an answer (dicere recusabo). Boethius, in his two commentaries, gives replies that are vague and scarcely consistent. In the second com- mentary, which is the more important one, he holds that genera and species are both subsistentia and intel- lecla (1st question), the similarity of things being the basis (subjectum) both of their individuality in nature and their universality in the mind; that genera and species are incorporeal not by nature but by abstrac- tion (2nd question), and that they exist both inside and outside the things of sense (3rd question).

This was not sufficiently clear for beginners, though we can see in it the basis of the Aristotelean solution of the problem. The early Scholastics faced the problem as proposed by Porjihyry: limiting the controversy to genera and species, and its solutions to the alternatives suggested by the first question: Do the objects of our concepts (i. e., genera and species) exist in nature (sub- sistenlia), or are they mere abstractions (nuda intel- lecta)? Are they, or are they not, things? Those who replied in the affirmative got the name of Reals or Realists; the others that of Nominals or Nominalists. The former, or the Realists, more numerous in the early Middle Ages (Fredugisus, R^my d'Auxerre, and John Scot us Eriugena in the ninth century, Gcrbert and Odo of Tournai in the tenth, and William of Champeaux in the twelfth) attribute to each genus and each species a universal essence (subsistentia), to W'hich all the subordinate individuals are tribu- tary.

The Nominalists, who should be called rather the anti-Realists, assert on the contrary that the individ- ual alone exists, and that the universals are not things realized in the universal state in nature, or subsistentia. And as they adopt the alternative of Porphyry, they conclude that the universals are nuda inlellecta (that is, purely intellectual representations).

It may be that Roscelin of Compiegne did not go beyond these energetic protests against Realism, and that he is not a Nominalist in the exact sense we have attributed to the word above, for we have to de- pend on others for an expression of his views, as there is extant no text of his which would justify us in saying that he denied the intellect the power of forming general concepts, distinct in their nature from sensa- tion. Indeed, it is difficult to comprehend how Nom-

inalism could exist at all in the Middle Ages, as it is possible only in a sensist philosophy that denies all nat- ural distinction between sensation and the intellect- ual concept. Furthermore there is little evidence of Sensism in the Middle Ages, and, as Sensism and Scho- lasticism, so also Nominalism and Scholasticism are mutually exclusive. The different anti-Realist sys- tems anterior to the thirteenth century are in fact only more or less imperfect forms of the Moderate Realism towards which the efforts of the first period were tending, phases through which the same idea passed in its organic evolution. These stages are nu- merous, and several have been studied in recent mon- ographs (e. g. the doctrine of Ad<5lard of Bath, of Gauthier de Mortagne, Indifferentism, and the theory of the collectio). The decisive stage is marked by Ab(5- lard (1079-1142), who points out clearly the r61e of abstraction, and how we represent to ourselves ele- ments common to different things, capable of realiza- tion in an indefinite number of individuals of the same species, while the individual alone exists. From that to Moderate Realism there is but a step; it was suffi- cient to show that a real fundamentum allows us to attribute the general representation to the individual thing. It is impossible to say who was the first in the twelfth century to develop the theory in its entirety. Moderate Realism appears fully in the writings of John of Salisbury.

C. From the Thirteenth Century. — In the thirteenth century all the great Scholastics solved the problem of the universals by the theory of Moderate Realism (Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus), and are thus in accord with Averroes and Avicenna, the great Arab commentators of Aristotle, whose works had recently passed into circulation by means of trans- lations. St. Thomas formulates the doctrine of Mod- erate Realism in precise language, and for that reason alone we can give the name of Thomistic Realism to this doctrine (see below). With William of Occam and the Terminist School appear the strictly concept- ualist solutions of the problem. The abstract and uni- versal concept is a sign (signum), also called a term (terminus; hence the name Terminism given to the system), but it has no real value, for the abstract and the universal do not exist in any way in nature and have no fundamentum outside the mind. The univer- sal concept (intentio sccunda) has as its object internal representations, formed by the understanding, to which nothing external corresponding can be attributed. The r6le of the universals is to serve as a label, to hold the place (supponere) in the mind of the multitude of things to which it can be attributed. Occam's Con- ceptualism would be frankly subjectivistic, if, together with the abstract concept, he did not admit within us intuitive concepts which reach the individual thing, as it exists in nature.

D. In Modern anil Contemporary Philosophy. — We find an unequivocal affirmation of Nominalism in Positivism. For Hume, Stuart Mill, Spencer, and Taine there is strictly speaking no universal concept. The notion, to which we lend universality, is only a collection of individual perceptions, a collective sen- sation, "un nom compris" (Taine), "a term in habit- ual association with many other particular ideas" (Hume), "un savoir potentiel emmagasind" (Ribot). The problem of the correspondence of the concept to reality is thus at once solved, or rather it is suppressed and replaced by the psychological question: What is the origin of the illusion that induces us to attribute a distinct nature to the general concept, though the lat- ter is only an elaborated sensation? Kant distinctly affirms the existence within us of abstract and general notions and the distinction between them and sensa- tions, but these doctrines are joined with a character- istic Phenomenalism which constitutes the most orig- inal form of modern Conceptualism. Universal and necessary representations have no contact with ex-