4. Anselm regularly calls the significate of a sign its signification (sig-
peter king eternal, is Truth; since his ontology already contains an eternal being, he adds nothing by having eternal truths, and therefore (in some sense) eternal truth-bearers distinct from statements. But the details of his account depend on his views in the philosophy of religion rather than the philosophy of language, so we will not explore them here. notes 1.
Likewise, these activities do not require that Anselm had in mind a distinction between technical and nontechnical uses of language, much less that he was committed to the former. Desmond Paul Henry has argued that Anselm was in fact so committed, and that in his philosophical works he was trying to create a technical logical vocabulary that could be part of a system of formal logic, struggling against the confines of ordinary Latin usage. See: Desmond Henry, The "De grammatico" of St. Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964); Desmond Henry, The Logic of St. Anselm
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); Desmond Henry, Commentary on "De Grammatico": The Historical-logical Dimensions of a Dialogue of St. Anselm (Dordrecht: Reidel Press, 1974). But for skepticism about Henry's thesis, see Marilyn McCord Adams, "Re-reading De grammatico, or, Anselm's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories," Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 11 (2000), and John
Marenbon, "Some Semantic Problems in Anselm's De Grammatico," in M. W. Herren, C. J. McDonagh, and R. G. Arthur (eds.), Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).
In what follows, citations to texts of Anselm refer by volume and page number to F. S. Schmitt, Anselm Opera Omnia (cited in the bibliography at the end of this volume). The exception to this rule is for references to the Philosophical Fragments, for which page numbers are given to F. S. Schmitt, Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des LI. Anselm von Canterbury, in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, vol. iii (1936). All translations from Anselm are my own.
See especially Augustine's De Magistro and De Doctrina Christiana.
Anselm regularly calls the significate of a sign its signification (significatio), an unfortunate habit since the term is ambiguous between (a) the property possessed by the sign in virtue of its activity of signifying, and (b) the significate of the sign. Anselm's intent is usually clear from context, and I will silently disambiguate his usage when it is called for.
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5. Anselm is clearly following Aristotle in De Interpretatione 1 (16a3–8) for (a) and (c), but his addition of (b) is original. Gaunilo also mentions something like (b) in Pro Insipiente 4, to dismiss it in favor of (c) as the usual case (S i: 127).
6. The traditional account is derived from the passage from Aristotle referred to in the preceding note, supplemented with his remark in De Interpretatione 3 (16b20–22) that "he who speaks gives rise to an understanding" – understood as translated into Latin, and commented on, by Boethius (for the importance of this proviso, see Norman
Kretzmann, "Boethius on Spoken Sound Significant by Convention," in John Corcoran (ed.), Ancient Logic and Its Modern Interpretations
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975)). The relation was expressed with several verbs: constituere, generare, manifestare, exprimere. Somewhat surprisingly, Anselm refers to the traditional account only a few times:
De Gramm. 11 (S i: 160); De Casu Diab. 11 (S i: 249) by implication; and Phil. Frag. 43 when correctly distinguishing constituere intellectum from constituere aliquid in intellectu (a distinction that sometimes got away from him). Yet there is no question about his adoption of it; his writings are shot through with the assumption that spoken and written words get their meaning from the concepts with which they are associated.
7. See De Gramm. 14 (S i: 160): "Even if body or surface should come to mind [on hearing 'white'], which happens because I am accustomed to whiteness being in them, the name 'white' does not signify either of them."
8. That is, rationis intellectu, a formula Anselm takes to be parallel to per rationem (Mon. 10; S i: 25). In translation the phrase "rational conception" splits the difference between the senses "definition" and "(the faculty of) reason."
9. Mon. 10 (S i: 25). Also he mentions (a) and (b) as alternative ways of thinking about things in Mon. 33 (S i: 52).
10. This is the burden of Mon. 31 (S i: 49–50). Anselm develops the systematic parallel between human thinking/saying and the divine Word from Mon. 10 onwards, as a leitmotif of his whole work.
11. See, for instance, Resp. ad Gaun. 2 (S i: 132): "If [something] is understood, it follows that it exists in the understanding; for just as what is thought is thought by means of a thought, and what is thought by a thought thereby exists in the thought as it is thought, so too what is understood is understood by means of an understanding, and what is understood by an understanding thereby exists in the understanding as it is understood – what could be clearer than that?" This principle is important for the ontological argument of Prosl. 2.
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peter king 12. This is the error Gilbert Ryle ridicules as part of the "'Fido'-Fido
Theory of Meaning": if the meaning of a name is identified with its bearer, the nonexistence of the bearer necessarily renders the name meaningless.
13. Prosl. 2 (S i: 101). See Peter King, "Anselm's Intentional Argument,"
History of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (1984) for an analysis of Anselm's example of the artist, and how the ontological argument depends on these semantic principles.
14. Whether this line of reasoning is ultimately satisfactory is not clear.
When Socrates exists, we seem to be thinking of him; when he fails to exist, we may still think of him, but it cannot be given the transparent referential reading it had while he existed. Anselm dodges the question by insisting on the identity of the thinking-of-Socrates with Socrates, when he exists; we still may have a thinking-of-Socrates when Socrates no longer exists – there just will not be anything in the world to which the thinking is now identical. The success of this dodge depends on whether Anselm can plausibly avoid hypostasizing thought-contents by refusing to draw a distinction among thinking, the intentional object of thought, and that to which the object corresponds.
15. Augustine faced the same difficulty: De Magistro 2.3. Contemporary philosophers of language treat (a)–(c) as posing the same kind of puzzle as nondenoting terms, such as "Socrates" after his death, and solve them all by drawing a distinction between two semantic relations, namely sense and reference. Such names lack reference, perhaps necessarily, but that does not prevent them from having perfectly good senses, even senses that are negative, privative, or necessarily empty. The fact that Anselm returns again and again to (a)–(c) is to my mind good grounds for thinking he did not draw our distinction between sense and reference.
See the discussion of appellation in De Gramm. 12 below.
16. Anselm clearly sees the connections among (a)–(c). In addition to the parallel noted here, he treats them all of a piece in Phil. Frag. 42 loc. cit.; De Conc. Virg. 5 treats (a) and (c) together; De Casu Diab. 10–26 is devoted to the question how we can be afraid of evil if it is nothing; and so on.
17. Anselm initially puts the point unfortunately, saying that "nothing" and "evil" signify "a quasi-something" (quasi aliquid). He does better later, saying that they signify "as though there were something" (quasi sint aliquid): see S i: 250–51.
18. In a slogan: a sign signifies something, but not necessarily some thing.
Anselm's ready acceptance of nondenoting terms already hints at this direction. But what are these non-thing "somethings" that can be the Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
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significates of words? Anselm can be forgiven his reluctance to start down this path.
19. Anselm, like other medieval philosophers, takes semantics to be firmly grounded on metaphysics, so probably would not allow this claim to be generalized to (say) artifact-kinds, such as "teacup," much less to general referring phrases, such as "books and hats in my office."
20. Anselm reiterates these claims about proper names and demonstrative expressions in De Gramm. 20 (S i: 166) and De Conc. Virg. 1 (S ii: 140).
Again, his claims do not obviously generalize to other singular referring expressions, or even to demonstratives combined with other terms (such as "this pile of bricks"). But given the underlying metaphysics Anselm would probably admit the same considerations to apply mutatis mutandis to names of individual substances.
21. Anselm's initial remark does not decide the issue, since it could be read as maintaining that proper names signify persons in respect of their distinctive properties, or that they merely signify persons, who are, incidentally, made singular through a collection of distinctive properties. (Anselm's Latin inclines to the latter reading, if anything, since he writes personam quae habet rather than habeat.) His mention of what is understood when Jesus is named is definitive, however.
22. Strictly speaking, this is too fast. An understanding that includes distinctive properties will as a matter of fact pick out only a single individual, but that alone does not suffice to make an expression semantically singular. For the latter, we need to be assured that the expression could only apply to a single thing, and Anselm's discussion, while suggestive, does not go quite so far.
23. Anselm is here following Aristotle (Categories 1 [1a12–15]), and the associated discussion in Boethius's commentary (On Aristotle's Categories 167d–168d). Once again, it is not clear that Anselm would permit generalizing his account to all adnominal phrases.
24. Anselm carries out much of his discussion in the material mode, asking whether a denominative, that is, what is signified by a denominative term, is a quality or a substance. I will use the formal mode, since
Anselm apparently regards the two as purely intertranslatable.
25. Anselm writes quo res ipsa usu loquendi appellatur, which is usually read by commentators as meaning that S is ordinarily called "A." But that reading does not fit Anselm's horse-example (discussed below);
"white" is not a name for horses in common speech. In context, however, it would be understood correctly and not flagged as a deviant or bizarre usage – a running concern in De Grammatico – hence the interpretation of "usus loquendi" given here.
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peter king 26. See De Gramm. 14–15 (S i: 161) for Anselm's claim that "white" appellates the horse in this context.
27. Many commentators have succumbed to the temptation: see for instance Henry, Commentary on "De Grammatico," 211–14; Wolfgang
Gombocz, "Anselm ¨uber Sinn und Bedeutung," in Anselm Studies 1 (1983): 135; Marilyn McCord Adams, "Re-reading De grammatico."
John Marenbon, "Some Semantic Problems in Anselm's De Grammatico," 10, voices skepticism, rightly in my opinion.
28. Anselm rejects mere psychological association because the associated items are not brought to mind through something else (the literal meaning of "per aliud"); they are just extraneous occurrences, stray thoughts.
See De Gramm. 14 (S i: 160).
29. Hence the translation "as unified": see Adams, "Re-reading De grammatico": 86.
30. Whether Anselm would sanction the extension of (3) to artificial wholes as well as natural wholes is an open question. Certainly a house with floor, walls, and ceiling in good order differs from a mere heap of houseparts, and the difference seems to be precisely that the parts are appropriately unified in the former case but not in the latter; "house" picks out not merely house-parts but house-parts ut unum, that is, properly arranged.
31. Anselm describes substance as the principal element in man, and remarks that we must also take into account all the differentiae running down the Porphyrean Tree. He does not explicitly say in this passage that he is concerned with the common name as opposed to speaking of "(a) man" – the lack of articles in Latin leave the question open – but it is clear from the surrounding discussion that this is his concern. See also the end of De Gramm. 19 (S i: 165).
32. The same regress can be motivated against the more general proposals that "brave" signifies per se either (a) something brave; (b) having-bravery; (c) something-having-bravery. See De Gramm. 20–21
(S i: 165–68). Technically the difficulty here is a nugatio, of the sort Aristotle famously describes regarding the meaning of "snub" as snub-nosed.
33. Since "brave" signifies men only per aliud, it cannot signify bravery and men as a unified whole; hence it can at best represent them as an accidental unity, which is what in fact a brave man is (metaphysically speaking).
34. This is an instance of a general truth for Anselm, namely that words systematically change their signification when applied to God.
35. Phil. Frag. 25; see also De Ver. 5 (S i: 182).
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36. Again, see also De Ver. 5 (S i: 182). Anselm notes that the grammatical distinction between active and passive voice usually matches the distinction between verbs that signify actions and those that signify endurings, though not always: De Ver. 8 (S i: 187).
37. This sense encompasses at least items in the category of Action (actions properly so-called), Passion ("endurings"), and State, and perhaps items in the category of Relation and Position too. Combined with the copula, of course, items in all the nine dependent categories could be verbally linked to substances, but Anselm does not mention this possibility.
38. For further details of Anselm's account in the Philosophical Fragments, see E. F. Serene, "Anselm's Philosophical Fragments" (unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1974); Douglas Walton, "Logical Form and Agency," Philosophical Studies 29 (1976); Douglas Walton,
"Anselm and the Logical Syntax of Agency," Franciscan Studies 14 (1976); and K. Segerberg, "Getting Started: Beginnings in the Logic of Action," in G. Corsi et al. (eds.), Atti del Convegno internazionale di storia della logica (Bologna: CLUEB, 1989).
39. The verb facere has the several senses "to do," "to make," "to cause,"
"to bring about"; no single English translation can do it justice. Note that it is one and the same verb in question, though.
40. Anselm offers a similar account for "Man is an animal" (Homo est animal) in Phil. Frag. 27, but the case of the sun is more perspicuous (and does not involve difficulties with Latin's lack of articles).
41. Anselm's remarks at the end of the passage about the Sun and the shining each having their own being are part of his analysis of causal contexts at this point, and not strictly part of the account of predication. Statements need not postulate the existence of the things they involve. Good thing, too, since Anselm immediately turns to cases in which one thing causes another not to be.
42. Adapted from the discussion in Phil. Frag. 27, where Anselm says literally: "Hence what is conceived is the cause that being (esse) is said of it."
43. The official account of verbs, as noted above, declares that their distinctive feature is that they signify time. It is not clear how this explains their predicative force. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that actions, even in Anselm's broad sense, are events that take place in time. But Anselm does not supply any explanation.
44. Anselm sometimes talks sloppily of statements signifying truth or falsity. If we took him literally, statements would be names of these properties, which they clearly are not. Instead, this phrase must be shorthand
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