Abstract
The chapter starts out with a brief discussion of the similarity alleged to exist by the editors of William Ockham’s Ordinatio between a series of opinions canvassed by Ockham on the nature of universals and a series of opinions listed by James of Viterbo on the nature of concepts. It then proceeds to expound James’s little known theory of concepts and universals, and concludes that, despite interesting parallels between his views and those of the Veneralibilis Inceptor, James’s theory is still very much committed to the realist assumptions that Ockham thought metaphysics needed to dispense with.
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Notes
- 1.
Ockham, Ord. d. 2, q. 8, OTh II, 267, n. 1. The editors also refer the reader—but this time without citing any particular texts—to d. 19, q. 5 of Durand of Saint-Pourçain’s Sentences commentary and d. 23, q. un. of Peter Auriol’s Scriptum. I will not be looking at either text in this article. All references, unless specified otherwise, are to James of Viterbo.
- 2.
For the quodlibets, see James of Viterbo, Quodl. 1, 2, 3; and for Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis I-XVII and XXV.
- 3.
A partial translation of the passage from James’s quodlibet can be found in Spade (1995, 36). The translation in J2 extending from “If it is something formed …” to the end of the paragraph, as well as James’s conclusion, is my own.
- 4.
QDP q. 6, 151: “Dicitur autem conceptus rei, non autem res absoluta; quia extra animam non dicitur aliquid genus aut species, nisi materialiter et in potentia. Unde dicit Commentator, in II Metaphysicae, quod universale non habet esse, nisi secundum quod est in anima.”
- 5.
QDP q. 6, 151: “Inde est quod genus definitur a philosophis per praedicari, quod est actus animae negotiantis circa res.”
- 6.
James makes this point rather clumsily in QDP q. 6 (151, l. 237), by stating that “the thing signified by the universal is not numerically one.” What he means is that a universal does not have just one significatum, but many.
- 7.
James makes this point explicitly only in regard to similitude (“nihil est sibi ipsi simile,” QDP q. 15, 257, l. 1282), but the same point can be extended to equality.
- 8.
QDP q. 15, 257: “Semper enim similitudo requirit distinctionem, non solum eorum quae sunt similia, sed et eius secundum quod dicuntur similia.”
- 9.
Quodl. 3, q. 7, 113: “Duo enim similia secundum albedinem habent distinctas albedines.”
- 10.
Quodl. 3, q. 7, 113: “Ad hoc autem dicendum est quod duplex est identitas: una quidem simpliciter, ut cum dicitur aliquid idem sibi; alia vero secundum quid, sicut plura individua eiusdem speciei dicuntur idem propter conformitatem in natura.”
- 11.
QDP q. 6, 151: “Quod non potest intelligi nisi de forma intellecta, quae est conceptus animae.”
- 12.
QDP q. 25, 144–145: “Huius tamen totius secundum similitudinem, scilicet universalis, est quaedam distinctio trimembris, et solet communiter dici quod est triplex universale, scilicet ante rem, in re et post rem. Ante rem ut idea, quam Plato posuit; in re ut illud quod communiter vocamus universale, quod dicitur de pluribus; post rem ut species intelligibilis.”
- 13.
- 14.
See Quodl. 3, q. 4, 73, ll. 493–495.
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Côté, A. (2017). James of Viterbo on Universals. In: Pelletier, J., Roques, M. (eds) The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66634-1_19
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