Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The Historical Reception of Aristotle's Categories Aristotle's Categories1 is the subject of an extensive number of commentaries and of an unusual amount of debate, and for good reasons. To begin with, in spite of its relatively short length, it is a rather difficult text to understand, especially for those who are just beginning their study of philosophy. Yet, because it lays the foundation for many subsequent philosophical discussions in general, and for logic in particular, it was historically often the very first text of philosophy that students encountered. Even those who are more steeped in philosophy and who have studied the Categories in depth often find it difficult, albeit for different reasons. One difficulty for this latter group, as the ancient commentators on the Categories recognized, is that Aristotle himself is ambiguous about the subject of the work. What exactly is he categorizing? Is it "things that are" or "things that are said"? Furthermore, depending on how one understands its purpose, the Categories can be seen in harmony with, in contrast to, or even in contradiction to, Plato's own theory of the five highest genera. For all of these reasons and more, the Categories acted as a magnet, attracting commentaries from Aristotelians, Platonists, and Stoics alike. Quite naturally, some of these commentaries defend Aristotelianism, whereas others defend either Platonism or Stoicism by attacking Aristotle's Categories. Finally, there are still others who use the Categories as a means to expound their own philosophical systems in the process of interpreting Aristotle.
1. The title Categories refers to the book written by Aristotle, while "categories" refers to the ten highest genera, namely: substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, position, possession, time, and place.
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Given the large number of commentaries on the Categories,2 it is important to point out that for nearly two millennia commentary-writing on philosophical texts has been "one of the ways of doing philosophy,"3 which is to say that philosophers do not always write commentaries simply to explain a particular text. Rather, with the noticeable exception of Plotinus, many philosophers prior to Descartes use commentaries both as a way of explicating an important text and as a means of developing their own thoughts on various philosophical questions. As the commentary tradition developed, however, and as philosophical discussions became more complex, commentaries tended to focus less and less on a particular philosophical text, and more and more on important philosophical issues, so much so that the mere complexity of the questions asked in a commentary can be an indication of when that commentary was written.4 As a general rule, commentaries that were written early in the tradition tend to be more expository; and conversely, commentaries that were written later in the tradition tend to contain more original observations and insights from an author.
Though many of the ancient and medieval commentators, such as Porphyry, Boethius, Albert the Great, and Duns Scotus, wrote original treatises on philosophical issues, their commentaries are in themselves valuable contributions to philosophy, particularly those that come near the end of the tradition of writing commentaries.5 Consequently, studies of the various
2. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Charles H. Lohr compiled an approximately 600-page annotated bibliography of all the medieval Latin commentaries on Aristotle, published in six installments in Traditio, vols. 23–29. By my count, there were over 200 commentaries on some portion of Aristotle's Categories.
3. Richard Sorabji, "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle," in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, ed. Sorabji (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1990), 1–30; see p. 24.
4. Robert Andrews, "Question Commentaries on the Categories in the Thirteenth Century," Medioevo (Rome) 26 (2001): 265–326; see p. 267.
5. Compare Fr. Wippel's description of St. Thomas's commentaries: of his theological commentaries, "two are commentaries in the strict sense, i.e., on the De Hebdomadibus of Boethius and on the De divinis nominibus; the other two offer brief expositions of the texts of Boethius and of Peter and use them as occasions for much fuller and highly personal disquisitions by Thomas himself." John F.
Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated
Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), xviii.
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commentaries, and especially those dealing with the Categories, can be valuable works in themselves, not just for what they tell us about Aristotle. As Robert Andrews points out, medieval
"Categories commentaries are the repository of centuries of analyses of the basic concepts of Western thought, all carefully organized and awaiting modern rediscovery."6
One such commentary that is "awaiting modern rediscovery" is John Duns Scotus's Questions on the Categories. Like many of his contemporaries who wrote commentaries on the Categories, Scotus does not intend for his commentary to be simply an explication of Aristotle's work. In fact, it is not a traditional, literal commentary at all. Rather, as the title indicates, it is a question commentary. Moreover, the question format is significant because it permits him to discuss other issues that are only remotely related to the text under consideration. As a result, one is hard pressed to find a mere explication of Aristotle's Categories in Scotus's Questions on the Categories. Absent from his commentary are the rote and perfunctory questions common to most early commentaries on the Categories, such as why Aristotle defines something in the plural, or why he treats relation before he discusses quality. Consequently, Scotus's Questions on the Categories is neither a study of what Aristotle says, nor even of what Scotus thinks Aristotle says; rather, it is a study of what
Scotus thinks about particular issues related to the ten categories and to logic. For a greater appreciation of this commentary, let us first look at the background and context of the work.
The Background and Context of Scotus's Commentary Aristotle's Categories poses different problems for different readers. Those who are newer to the study of philosophy are likely to find it difficult because of its abstract terms or because of Aristotle's dense writing style. More experienced philosophers, however, are likely to find it difficult because of the questions and issues that it raises. Accordingly, some philosophers, such as Porphyry, found it necessary to write two commentaries on it: a simple one designed for pedagogical purposes, and a more advanced one that addresses the more abstract philosoph6. Andrews, "Question Commentaries," 266.
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ical questions that are raised in the text. Unfortunately, Scotus is not one of the philosophers to produce two commentaries.
As one can see from even a cursory glance at his commentary, Scotus and his audience are not like Augustine's friends, who "scarcely managed to understand the book."7 On the contrary, they obviously have a very good grasp of the categories in particular and logic in general. One reason for this expertise is that by the time Scotus wrote his commentary, part of the standard requirement for an undergraduate at the University of Paris was to listen to at least three lectures on the Categories, one cursory lecture given by a bachelor and two ordinary lectures given by a master.8 Consequently, the significance of Scotus's Questions on the Categories does not lie in its explication of Aristotle's Categories. Rather, its importance resides in the questions, arguments, and insights that Scotus raises about a wide range of issues, including, among others, signification, understanding, equivocity, analogy, univocity, being, substance, quantity, quality, relations, issues that are only remotely raised by Aristotle's text.
Such questions and arguments do not come out of nowhere but are largely a result of three broad factors. First, many of the questions and arguments found in Scotus's commentary are a result of the commentary tradition Scotus inherits.9 These are questions that are driven by the ambiguities and perplexities of Aristotle's text itself. For example, why does Aristotle define equivocals in the plural, or why is it that he describes things as equivocal, since we tend to think of equivocity as pertaining to language and not things? Another question pertains to the subject of the work. Thus, many of his contemporary commen7. Augustine, Confessions, trans. F. J. Sheed (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1992), 64.
8. James Weisheipl, "The Curriculum of the Faculty of Arts at Oxford in the Early Fourteenth Century," Mediaeval Studies 26 (1964): 143–85; see pp. 150–51.
9. For a parallel instance, compare the discussion on universals that is first introduced in Porphyry's Isagoge, then elaborated on in Boethius's Second Commentary on the Isagoge, which in turn is developed by Abelard and others. Spade provides a wonderful selection of texts that trace this discussion. See Paul Vincent Spade, trans. and ed., Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1994).
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tators claim that the subject of the Categories is ens incomplexum dicibile ordinatum in genere, a phrase apparently derived from Boethius, who in turn probably took it from his predecessors.10
Scotus, however, argues that this catchphrase fails to describe the subject of the categories. Rather, as obvious as it may seem to some (and this was by no means obvious to his contemporaries), according to Scotus the subject of this work is simply the ten categories as they are conceived by the intellect.
A second factor surrounding Scotus's Questions is the recent recovery of the remaining works of Aristotle. For approximately seven centuries from Boethius's translation of the text into Latin, Aristotle's Categories was the only text of Aristotle available to philosophers and theologians. The recovery, however, of the rest of his corpus of writings produced a renewed interest in the Categories. Thus, a number of questions are raised about how this text relates to his other works, such as his Physics or Metaphysics. For example, many thirteenth-century commentaries raise the question of whether the categories are the same when studied in logic and in metaphysics. Likewise, the longest question within the text concerns the univocity of being.
A third major influence on Scotus's commentary is the renewed interest in the subject, or, shall I say, science, of grammar, which was cultivated by a group of philosophers known as the Modistae. Let us look at each of these influences in turn.
The Commentary Tradition By the time Scotus composed his commentary, at least fifty other commentaries had been written on the Categories. These commentaries fall into six main groups. Even though only the last group of commentators has a major influence on Scotus's own commentary, a review of the long commentary tradition, of which Scotus is a part, will show that commentators often build
10. This phrase is explained in detail in the fourth chapter. That this phrase owes its origin to Boethius is suggested by Andrews; see Robert R. Andrews, "Peter of Auvergne's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1988), 14. For the lack of originality of Boethius as a commentator, see
James Shiel, "Boethius' Commentaries on Aristotle," in Aristotle Transformed, ed.
Sorabji (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 349–72. See also Sten Ebbesen,
"Boethius as an Aristotelian Commentator," in Aristotle Transformed, 373–92.
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upon or react to one another, and that Scotus, so to speak, inherits a vast repository of questions and issues relating to the categories.
The first group consists of five different commentaries on the Categories written sixty years or so prior to the birth of Christ.
The first commentary is by Andronicus of Rhodes, who is responsible for reviving Aristotle's teaching and for compiling a critical edition of his writings. By appending commentaries to some of Aristotle's writings, Andronicus ostensibly began a long tradition of commentary-writing on Aristotle's works. Within a few years of Andronicus's commentary, Ariston, a self-professed
Aristotelian known for abandoning Plato's Academy in order to become a Peripatetic philosopher, wrote his own commentary. Shortly thereafter, the third and fourth commentaries were written by Eudorus, an Academic, and Athenodorus, a Stoic, while the fifth one was written by Andronicus's pupil, Boethus of Sidon.11
Although none of these works is extant, there is enough fragmentary evidence to support the following two observations about this first group of commentaries. First, they contain dramatically different interpretations of Aristotle's text, some maintaining that it is only about words, and others that it is about metaphysical things. The fact is that Aristotle is ambiguous about the purpose of the Categories. It could be about words, concepts, or beings. For sometimes he speaks of the "things that are said," while at other times he simply says the "things that are."12 In spite of his ambiguity, though, the various possible interpretations are rather limited. On the basis of the existing evidence, it seems that this earliest group of commentators managed to exhaust all the possible interpretations, interpretations which are partially motivated by their broader
11. Hans B. Gottschalk, "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators," in Aristotle Transformed, 69. These commentators wrote at the following approximate times: Andronicus of Rhodes (circa 60 BCE), Ariston (circa 60 BCE), Eudorus the Academic (circa 50 BCE), Athenodorus the Stoic (circa 50 BCE), and Boethus (circa 40 BCE). It should be pointed out that Athenodorus also wrote a work titled Against Aristotle's Categories.
12. Cf. Categories, ch. 1 (1a 17, 20).
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philosophical orientations. As a general rule, the Stoics tended to take the Categories to be about grammar, while the Platonists, at least those who followed the skeptical trend of the New Academy, were critical of the Categories since the latter understood it to be a treatise about metaphysics. The Aristotelians, though, typically argued that the Categories was about concepts, which are intermediate between utterances and extramental things.
By the time the fifth commentary was written, however, Boethus of Sidon hinted at a fourth possible interpretation, one that eventually became the standard interpretation for subsequent commentators, namely, that the Categories is about simple terms that signify things.13
A second feature worth noting about some of these first commentaries is that they provide examples of how commentators use Aristotle's text to introduce new ideas. Two instances will suffice to illustrate this point. First, according to Gottschalk,
Andronicus changes the last two categories from "when" and "where" to "time" and "place," presumably because he thinks that "time" and "place" exist in their own right and that "where" and "when" are only their attributes.14 The other instance concerns the categories "action" and "passion," which one commentator reduces to a single category, namely, motion. This reduction is quickly ruled out by Boethus since it contradicts
Aristotle's teaching about the first mover, who is entirely active.15
Although these five commentaries were all written within a short period of one another, writing about the Categories slowed for the next two centuries. This lull, however, should not be taken as an indication that the Categories had been entirely forgotten; early in the second century CE interest in this work was once again revived. This revival, which initiated the second group of commentaries, was started by three Platonists, all known for their "intemperate attacks on Aristotle":16 Atticus, Lucius, and Nicostratus. Of the three, Nicostratus's work seems to 13. Gottschalk, "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators," 70. To what extent Boethus articulates this fourth, more inclusive, interpretation, though, is unclear. Arguably, it is Porphyry who first develops this position in detail.
14. Ibid., 73.
15. Ibid., 76–78.
16. Ibid., 80.
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be the most important since it is "nothing less than a collection of all possible objections to Aristotle's teaching."17 This characterization aside, the attacks made by the Platonists actually indicate that Aristotle's teaching is seen by the Platonists as a serious threat. Of course, criticizing Aristotle only resulted in more commentaries defending the Stagirite. Immediately after the attacks made by the Platonists, Peripatetics such as Herminus,
Aspasius, Adrastus, and Alexander of Aphrodisias all responded with commentaries of their own, in which they cleared up many, if not all, of the misunderstandings and criticisms leveled against Aristotle by some Platonists.18
Although the texts of these commentators are also lost, clearly Aristotle's Categories was a major focus of philosophical interest at this time, influencing both Aristotelians and non-Aristotelians alike. Sorabji states it well: "Outside the Aristotelian schools, the chief interest in the first two centuries CE still focused on Aristotle's Categories. The work seems to have acted as a catalyst, attracting commentaries from three schools, the Stoic, Platonist, and Aristotelian."19 Gottschalk notes that subsequently, "almost every
Aristotelian of note wrote a commentary or interpretive essay" on the Categories.20 Even of those philosophers who did not write a specific commentary on it, some, such as Albinus and Philo, incorporated elements of the Categories into their own philosophy, whereas others, most notably Plotinus, found it necessary to attack it.21 As Evangeliou points out, while those who disagreed with it tried to refute it, no one "ignored or underestimated the doctrine of the categories and its philosophical importance."22
17. Ibid., 80. For information about Nicostratus, see K. Praechter, "Nikostratos der Platoniker," Hermes 57 (1922): 481–517. For an extended bibliography on all the ancient commentators mentioned here and in the next few paragraphs, see Sorabji, Aristotle Transformed, 485–506.
18. For Adrastus and Aspasius, see H. P. F. Mercken, "The Greek Commentators on Aristotle's Ethics," in Aristotle Transformed, ed. Sorabji, 407–44; see p. 438.
In addition, see Sorabji, "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle," 29–30; and Christos C. Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 17.
19. Sorabji, "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle," 1.
20. Gottschalk, "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators," 69.
21. Ibid.
22. Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry, 18. Evangeliou adds that
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In sum, by the time Porphyry wrote his famous introduction to the Categories in the third century, it was on its way to becoming a "central work of medieval logic."23
With the exception of the medieval commentators on the Categories, we know the most about the third group of commentators. These commentators are all, by and large, Neoplatonists writing between 250 CE and about 610 CE. The most prominent of this group include Porphyry, Dexippus, Marius
Victorinus, Boethius, Ammonius Saccas, Simplicius, Philoponus, Olympiodorus, and Elias.24 Much is known about these commentators, but my observations will be limited to Porphyry and Boethius since they are the most important commentators influencing Scotus's commentary. Two broad generalizations, however, characterize the works of these commentators as a whole. First, the pressure to harmonize the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle tends to distort their commentaries.25 Second, these commentaries betray a gradual but perceptible shift in attitude from that of the early pagan commentators hostile to Christianity to that of the later Christian commentators.26 this "attitude of the ancient commentators towards the Categories contrasts with the tendency of many modern scholars who seem to confine the importance of Aristotle's logic to the theory of the syllogism and, therefore, tend to neglect the categorial doctrine which does not admit syllogistic treatment" (18 n. 3).
23. Andrews, "Peter of Auvergne's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories," 2.
24. Some of these commentaries are available in English, including the following: Porphyry, On Aristotle's Categories, trans. Steven K. Strange (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Dexippus, On Aristotle's Categories, trans.
John Dillon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Ammonius, On Aristotle's Categories, trans. S. Marc Cohen and Gareth B. Matthews (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1991); and Simplicius, On Aristotle's Categories 9–15, trans. Richard Gaskin, Ancient Commentaries on Aristotle, general ed. Sorabji
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). These commentators lived during the following times: Porphyry (205–270 CE), Dexippus (circa 330), Marius Victorinus (285–370), Boethius (480–524), Ammonius Saccas (445–526), Simplicius (515–545 or later), Philoponus (490–570), Olympiodorus (circa 560), and Elias (550–600).
25. Overall, the commentaries on the logical writings seem to suffer less distortion than those on either the Physics or the de Anima. Cf. Sorabji, "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle," 15.
26. Porphyry is the best example of those who are hostile to Christianity, his Against the Christians being the most formidable assault on Christianity by a
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By far the greatest Neoplatonist to write a commentary on the Categories was Porphyry. In fact he first produced two commentaries on this central work: one short and elementary, probably for pedagogical purposes, and a longer one, presumably more elaborate and systematic for advanced philosophers.27 Great as he is, though, his commentaries on the Categories are not purely expository works. In addition to explicating the text, he appears to have two other goals in writing his commentaries on the Categories: (1) to respond to the criticisms of Plotinus, his mentor and teacher; and (2) to reconcile Platonism and Aristotelianism in order to combat the growing threat of Christian Gnosticism.
Stated differently, his purpose was not simply to articulate the true teaching of Aristotle, as the Peripatetics claimed to do, but "to interpret the Aristotelian doctrine of categories in such a way as to make it compatible with Platonism and acceptable to Neoplatonic Schools." 28
Earlier commentators, as we saw, tended to interpret the Categories as exclusively about words, concepts, or things, but not about all three. In order for Porphyry to reconcile Aristotle's
Categories with Platonism, however, he had to move beyond the exclusive interpretations advanced by the earlier philosophers and to articulate a more inclusive position.29 In essence, Porpagan. Over time, however, that hostility largely gave way to Christian philosophers, such as Philoponus, Elias, David, pseudo-Elias, Stephanus, and Boethius.
For a discussion of this transformation, see Sorabji, "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle," 10–15.
27. Of course, it is also Porphyry who writes the Isagoge, which is traditionally thought to be an introduction to the Categories.
28. Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry, 7. According to Evangeliou, Porphyry's primary motive for reconciling Plato and Aristotle was his hatred toward Christianity. Although it is only a hypothesis, Evangeliou notes: "If we assume that Porphyry recognized more clearly than Plotinus, that the real enemy of Platonism (and by extension Hellenism) was neither Aristotelianism nor Stoicism but Christian (and non-Christian) Gnosticism, then we can clearly see why he was not pleased with Plotinus's tactics and why he tried hard to reconcile
Plato and Aristotle" (see p. 5).
29. To what extent the earlier commentators actually advanced a fully articulated inclusive interpretation is not entirely clear. Iamblichus, a student of Porphyry, criticized the earlier commentators thus: "O men! You fight each other without really fighting each other. Though you tell the truth, none of you
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phyry's interpretation is a compromise with earlier, one-sided positions, since he attempts to synthesize all of the genuine elements found in each of the earlier interpreters. As Evangeliou states it, the "fact that all the three parties had quoted Aristotle in order to support their favorite position was viewed by later commentators as an indication that each of them was partially correct."30 Although Porphyry's inclusive interpretation was reputedly articulated by both Boethus and Herminus before him, his particular articulation of this inclusive interpretation became the standard favored by subsequent commentators. In essence,
Porphyry claims that Aristotle's purpose in writing the Categories is "to deal with significant vocal signs signifying things by means of signifying concepts.31 How this interpretation reconciles Platonism and Aristotelianism, though, is not entirely clear, nor is it important to the present study.32 What is important, however, is that this inclusive interpretation seems to lay the foundation for is wholly right. And none of you is entirely wrong, though you tell lies." Iamblichus's criticism suggests that the previous commentators had not adopted the correct, inclusive interpretation, which he inherits from Porphyry. All that Evangeliou will say on this issue is that, prior to Porphyry, there was "a tendency toward" an inclusive interpretation. The lack of extant texts, combined with the fact that the existing commentaries diverge in identifying the holders and followers of each interpretation, makes it even more difficult to discern the novelty of Porphyry's interpretation. For a fuller discussion of the various possible interpretations in the early commentaries, as well as the quotation from Iamblichus, see Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry, 327–32.
30. Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry, 32.
31. Ibid., 27. In Porphyry's extant commentary, which is the more elementary one, the reference to signifying concepts is left out, presumably because he does not want to make matters too complicated in an elementary commentary.
See Giorgio Pini, Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus: An Interpretation of Aristotle's
Categories in the Late Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 9.
32. Cf. Evangeliou's judgment on this matter: "From the success and influence which Porphyry's thesis had on the subsequent generations, it may be inferred that he had based [his reconciliation] on sound arguments. It would not do to simply say [sic] that it was the assignment of different areas to each philosopher that helped Porphyry's reconciliatory efforts. Aristoteles logicus and Plato theologus may serve well as a motto, but it cannot hold up under scrutiny. For the question is that Aristotle had his "theology," which he calls πρώτη φιλοσοφία, and Plato had his "logic," which he calls διαλεκτική. Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry,
179.
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medieval developments in grammar and logic, a point which will arise again in the discussion of the Modistae.
After Porphyry, the next major commentator that deserves mention is Boethius. Like Porphyry, Boethius also thinks that he can reconcile Plato and Aristotle. His immediate purpose for writing his commentaries, however, seems not to be to reconcile
Platonism and Aristotelianism but rather, as is well known, to preserve Plato and Aristotle in Latin.33 As he himself states it in his commentary on de Interpretatione, his goal is "to translate and comment upon every single work of Aristotle [he] can lay [his] hands on."34 Regarding his commentary on the Categories, Boethius admits to drawing largely from the works of Porphyry since
"he seemed to be easier and clearer than others."35 As a result, Boethius accepts what becomes the canonical interpretation of the Categories: it is a work about significant vocal signs signifying things by means of signifying concepts. The importance of Boethius's works in general, though, resides in the fact that he was primarily responsible for preserving Aristotle's logical writings in Latin for the next six hundred years. In particular, Boethius's translation of and commentary on the Categories, coupled with the Categoriae decem, a Themistian paraphrase of Aristotle's Categories attributed to St. Augustine at that time, make the Categories the "only Aristotelian work alive throughout the Middle Ages."36
33. In his commentary On Aristotle's Categories, Boethius admits that he is drawing largely upon Porphyry's commentary. Like Porphyry, Boethius planned to write two commentaries on the Categories, one elementary and one advanced.
This being so, it seems likely that any attempt to reconcile Platonism and Aristotelianism on Boethius's part would also draw heavily upon Porphyry's reconciliation.
34. Shiel, "Boethius' Commentaries on Aristotle," 349. As has often been pointed out, to "form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished much. He translated the Isagoge of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the Isagoge, and commentaries on the Categories and the de Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero." H. F. and E. K. Rand Stewart, Boethius: The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1926), ix–x.
35. Shiel, "Boethius' Commentaries on Aristotle," 350.
36. Andrews, "Peter of Auvergne's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories," 1.
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Despite the fact that later Neoplatonists Philoponus, Elias, David, pseudo-Elias, Stephanus, and Boethius were all Christians, philosophy as a whole did not seem to fare too well in the Latin West from the sixth to the twelfth century. The Christian Emperor Justinian closed the Academy in Athens in 529
CE because of its paganism, forcing many philosophers to seek safety in the East, where philosophy took root and flourished.
Consequently, a fourth group of commentaries on the Categories was written in Syriac. These include commentaries by Paul the Persian (fl. 550), Sergius of Reš'aina (d. 536), Aba of Kashkar
(fl. c. 600), Silvanus of Qardu (early seventh century), Athanasius of Balad (d. 687), Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), George of the Arabs (d. 724), Theodore bar Koni (late eighth century), David bar Paul (fl. 785), Mošeˉ bar Keˉphaˉ (d. 903), and Hunayn ibn
Ishaˉq (d. 873). This last Commentary, in turn, appears to be the source for the Arabic tradition.37
A fifth group of commentaries was produced by Islamic thinkers in the tenth and eleventh centuries, such as those written by Al Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroës.38 These commentators introduced the terms "first intention" and "second intention" to distinguish the study of logic from the study of metaphysics— terms not found in any Greek or Latin commentary prior to the tenth century.39 These new terms create the following problem:
37. For more on the Syriac tradition, especially as it paved the way for the Islamic tradition, see the valuable introduction to The Earliest Syriac Translation of Aristotle's Categories, trans. Daniel King (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
38. For Al Farabi's commentary, see D. M. Dunlop, "Al Farabi's' Paraphrase of the Categories of Aristotle," Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957): 168–97; idem, "Al Farabi's
Paraphrase of the Categories of Aristotle," Islamic Quarterly 5 (1959): 21–54. His commentary on the Categories has recently been translated and published; see
Averroës, Averroës' Middle Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories and de Interpretatione, trans. Charles Butterworth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
39. Although there is some disagreement in the thirteenth century about the very nature of concepts, it is generally recognized that terms of first intention are concepts of extramental things, such as the concept "man" or "substance," whereas terms of second intention are concepts of concepts, such as "genus" or "species." These terms are discussed in more detail in the third chapter. For now, however, it should be pointed out that the terms "first intention" and "second intention" are usually attributed to Avicenna; cf. William Kneale and Martha
Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 229–30; and
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according to a frequently quoted passage of Avicenna, "The subject of logic . . . [is] intentions secondarily understood, which are added to intentions primarily understood."40 According to another view, though, the subject of logic is the syllogism.41 How can the subject of logic, though, be both syllogisms and second intentions since it is not immediately obvious that they are the same thing? While some medieval philosophers fail to see the contradiction between these two positions, Duns Scotus, by articulating his views on how the categories are the subject of a science, both recognizes this contradiction and resolves it.42
The last group of commentaries on the Categories, however, is by far the largest and most significant. This group consists of at least thirty commentaries written within approximately eightyfive years of one another, from 1240 through 1325.43 The most important of these commentaries were written by Peter of Spain
(1230), Robert Kilwardby (1240), Roger Bacon (1250), Albert the Great (1260), Martin of Dacia (1270), Peter of Auvergne
(1275), Simon of Faversham (1280), and Radulphus Brito (1290).44 Considered as a group, these commentaries mark a David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, ed. Luscombe and Brooke, 2d ed. (London: Longman, 1988), 179. Gyekye and Grignaschi, however, challenge the standard historical account and argue instead that the terms are first introduced by Al Farabi, not Avicenna; see K. Gyekye, "The Terms 'Prima Intentio' and 'Secunda Intentio' in Arabic Logic," Speculum 46 (1971): 32–38; and M. Grignaschi, "Les traductions latines des ouvrages de la logique arabe et l'abrégé d'Alfarabi," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 39 (1972): 41–107.
40. Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, ed. Van Riet and Verbeke, 3 vols., I, 10.73–75 (Louvain-Leiden: Peeters-Brill, 1977–1983).
41. According to Pini, this position is articulated by Robert Kilwardby, who is strongly influenced by Boethius, and it subsequently becomes the standard position. See Pini, Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus, 20. Like many of his contemporaries, Scotus also accepts this position. See his Quaestiones in librum Porphyrii
Isagoge, q. 3, nn. 7–14.
42. Both Radulphus Brito and Peter of Auvergne fail to see the contradiction in these two positions. See Pini, Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus, 34.
43. The twenty-five commentaries are only the ones that are edited. For a complete account of the texts that are available, see Andrews, "Peter of Auvergne's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories," 6–7; and Andrews, "Question
Commentaries," 271, 294.
44. The dates given are only approximations. In addition to Peter of Auvergne's commentary, Peter of Spain's commentary is the only other one from
INTRODUCTION
significant change from literal commentaries, "where the wordby-word exposition was sometimes interrupted by brief disputes or debates," to question commentaries, which ultimately "take labyrinthine forms of sub-questions, initial responses later rejected, opinions of others, distinctions, and digressions."45 One may wonder, however, why there are more commentaries on the Categories in this century than there are in all of the preceding centuries combined. Likewise, one may wonder why these commentaries change from being primarily literal expositions of Aristotle's text into question commentaries that have less and less to do with Aristotle's text. The answer to both of these questions is, I think, due in part to the recovery of the rest of Aristotle's writings and the rise of grammar as a distinct science.
The Recovery of Aristotle As is well known, Boethius preserved the Categories and On Interpretation, as well as Porphyry's Isagoge in Latin. Thanks to him, these works were available to Western philosophers and theologians throughout the Middle Ages. At the end of the twelfth century, though, newly recovered works of Aristotle began to appear in Latin for the first time, most importantly the rest of his Organon, the Physics, and his Metaphysics. Arguably, these works provided the greatest stimulus to the study of Aristotle's
Categories, as the number of commentaries on the Categories in the thirteenth century indicate.
Aristotle's Metaphysics is important to a study of the Categories because it provides a different account of the categories, one not immediately reconcilable with the account of the categories that Aristotle presents in the Categories itself. Although there are a number of differences between the two works, only two need to be mentioned here.46 The first difference is that in the this group that has been translated into English. See Peter of Spain, "Categories," in The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, ed. Kretzmann,
Kenny, and Pinborg, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 88–102.
45. Andrews, "Question Commentaries," 267–68. The importance of the question format will be discussed below.
46. As one will see in Scotus's Questions on the Categories, there are a number of statements from the Metaphysics, as well as from the Physics and the Top-
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Metaphysics Aristotle introduces the distinction between form and matter as they relate to the categories, a distinction he does not employ in the Categories. Thus, in the Metaphysics, we learn that a primary substance is composed of both form and matter, a composition that is absent in the Categories.47 The second difference is that in the Metaphysics Aristotle argues that forms are more truly substances, whereas in the Categories he claims that primary, concrete substances are more truly substances than secondary substances are. Because of these two major differences, medieval commentators attempt to reconcile the two works, with varying degrees of consistency. Many thirteenthcentury philosophers adopt a solution influenced by Porphyry's attempt to reconcile Platonism with Aristotelianism, namely, that in the Categories Aristotle studies signifying words, whereas in the Metaphysics he studies the categories as the highest genera signified by those words. Scotus, however, does not think that this approach is sufficient. Instead, he argues that there is a twofold consideration of the categories: one as they are considered by the logician and the other as they are considered by the metaphysician. In the former way, the categories are considered insofar as they are understood, that is, as concepts.48 In the latter way, the categories are not considered as highest genera but only insofar as they are simple things. Thus Scotus seems to think that the differences between these two considerations ics, that are thought to contradict something that Aristotle says in the Categories.
Consequently, all such statements become opportunities for the commentators to reconcile the conflicting works, normally by means of some sort of distinction.
Interestingly enough, though, the fact that Aristotle only mentions eight categories in the Metaphysics appears not to bother the medieval commentators in the way that it does modern commentators. See Scotus's Questions on the Categories, q. 11, n. 11, where he explicitly says that Aristotle lists ten categories in the Metaphysics, even though Aristotle actually lists only eight there. The Latin text of the Questions on the Categories that has been used for the translation in this volume is that which appears in Quaestiones in librum Porphyrii Isagoge et quaestiones super
Praedicamenta Aristotelis, ed. R. Andrews, G. Etzkorn, G. Gál, R. Green, T. Noone, and R. Wood, in Opera philosophica, vol. 1, critical ed. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1999).
47. Cf. Metaphysics V, ch. 2 (1013a 25–14a 25).
48. Cf. q. 2, n. 5.
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of the categories are actually greater than many of the previous commentators are willing to concede.
Alongside the Metaphysics is the recovery of the rest of Aristotle's Organon, especially the Posterior Analytics.49 As a result of the recovery of these works the medieval commentators became aware of the precise nature of demonstrative knowledge or scientia and the various requirements that must be met in order to have a science.50 Covington describes the effect these works have in this way: "The rediscovery of the Posterior Analytics and the remainder of Aristotle's logical works led to a methodological revolution in which Aristotle's criteria for scientific knowledge were applied to all fields of study."51 Of course, it is commonly accepted in the Middle Ages that logic is a science.
Furthermore, it is recognized that the categories are an essential part of logic. From these two positions, however, the question arises of whether or not the categories are also the subject of a science, one that is somehow subordinate to or part of the science of logic. In fact, most medieval commentators on the categories raise the question of whether or not the categories are the subject of a science.52
Two arguments are typically put forth against the claim that the categories are the subject of a science. First, to know something is identical to understanding its cause. As the highest
49. Dod indicates when each of these works first appeared in the Middle Ages. See Bernard G. Dod, "Aristoteles Latinus," in The Cambridge History of Later
Medieval Philosophy, ed. Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, 45–80 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982); see pp. 77–80. Serene points out that while the Posterior Analytics is first translated in 1159 by James of Venice, there is not a full commentary on it until Robert Grosseteste produced his commentary in approximately 1225. See Eileen Serene, "Demonstrative Science," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 496–517; see p. 498.
50. For a good discussion of science in the Middle Ages, see Serene, "Demonstrative Science."
51. Michael A. Covington, Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 19.
52. Sixteen of the nineteen texts that I consulted either specifically raised this question or addressed this issue. The importance of the issue for Scotus, however, can be seen in the fact that he devotes forty pages to a discussion of it, whereas the only other thinker that I could find who treats it at length is Simon
Faversham, who devotes five pages to it.
INTRODUCTION
genera, however, the categories are the causes and principles of everything else, and thus do not have a cause, and therefore cannot be the subject of a science. The second argument is that a science must have a proper unity. Again, because the categories are the highest genera, they do not have a specific, or even a generic, unity to them. Thus it follows that the categories cannot be the subject of a science.
A common solution, held by Simon of Faversham and Radulphus Brito, is to distinguish between a demonstration that reasons from causes to effects, that is, scientia propter quid, and one that reasons from effects to causes, that is, scientia quia. Given this distinction, the claim is made that there is a scientia quia of the categories but not a scientia propter quid. The second difficulty is solved by claiming that the categories have a unity of attribution since the nine accidents are ultimately attributed to a subject. This second solution, of course, is parallel to the solution offered in the science of metaphysics and raises the question of whether there is something different about the categories that warrants them to be studied in two distinct sciences.
Scotus does not accept the arguments on behalf of the position that the categories are the subject of a scientia quia. Instead, he makes the bold claim that the categories are the subject of a scientia propter quid. In addition, he claims that the categories have a specific unity to them, not just a unity of attribution.
The Science of Grammar Until the eleventh century, the study of grammar was primarily a stepping-stone to the study of logic. As such, it consisted primarily of lectures on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae and, to a lesser extent, on Donatus's Ars grammatica.53 The introduction of the logica nova, however, and the revival of dialectic had a major effect not only on the study of the categories but also
53. Thomas of Erfurt, Grammatica speculativa, ed. and trans. with commentary by G. L. Bursill-Hall (London: Longman, 1972), 15; see also Covington,
Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages, 4–7. Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae consists of eighteen books, the first sixteen of which discuss the various parts of speech and are often referred to as Priscianus maior, while the last two treat syntax and are referred to as Priscianus minor.
INTRODUCTION
on the study of grammar, namely, the slow transformation of grammar from a propaedeutic for logic into a separate science of its own. Although little is known about Peter of Helias, he appears to have been the first one to conceive of grammar as a science unto itself. As Bursill-Hall points out, he taught at Paris around 1150 and "was the first to organize the new ideas [of dialectic] into a coherent statement of grammar, incorporating the 'new' Aristotle and professing the autonomy of grammar which had not been the aim of his immediate predecessors."54
Not much is known about the development of grammar as a science over the next one hundred years, but by 1250, grammar solidified into a distinct science in its own right, as can be seen in Robert Kilwardby's monumental treatise De ortu scientiarum.55 From this time on, the study of grammar flourished as never before. Covington describes the progress thus: "Between the middle of the twelfth century and the middle of the thirteenth, grammarians' conception of what they were doing underwent a radical change. Even for a philosophical grammarian as sophisticated as William of Conches, grammar was an ars whose primary aim was to teach people to write better Latin; but within a century afterward, grammar had been reclassified as a theoretical science on a level with physics and mathematics."56 Bursill-Hall adds: "In the second half of the thirteenth century, there appeared for the first time a new type of grammatical literature which sets out in a very systematic manner a grammatical statement embodying the philosophy and logic of language which Scholastic philosophers had been developing. These theories of the nature of grammar were stated in the form of treatises on the modes of signifying (Summa Modorum
Significandi), and their authors have come to be known as the 'Modistae.'"57 These grammarians had a huge influence on the study of Aristotle's Categories.
Who are these Modistae? Most linguists identify Martin of Da54. Thomas of Erfurt, Grammatica speculativa, ed. and trans. Bursill-Hall, 19.
55. James A. Weisheipl, "Classification of the Sciences in Medieval Thought,"
Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965): 54–90; see p. 75.
56. Covington, Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages, 19.
57. Thomas of Erfurt, Grammatica speculativa, ed. and trans. Bursill-Hall, 20.
INTRODUCTION
cia as the first full-fledged Modista. As previously mentioned, he produced a commentary on the Categories around 1270. Around the same time, however, Martin also composed a treatise known as the Modi significandi, which very quickly became the standard textbook on grammar. Soon afterwards, Boethius of Dacia also composed a question commentary on Priscian's grammar book, entitled Quaestiones super Priscianum maiorem (Modi significandi).
Within the next few decades, these two books were followed by other works on the modes of signifying by authors such as John of Dacia, Petrus Croccus, Michael of Marbais, Simon of Dacia,
Radulphus Brito, Siger de Courtrai, and Thomas of Erfurt.58 Although many of these authors are from Denmark, their influence seems to have been the greatest at the University of Paris.59
We know that Thomas of Erfurt studied in Paris about 1300 and that he subsequently taught there with other grammarians before moving to Erfurt, where he spent most of his adult life.60
Pinborg observes that the "term 'Modistae' is used accordingly to denote the (mostly Parisian) masters of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century who wrote on grammar, logic, and metaphysics within this tradition."61
The important question, however, is not so much who these masters of grammar were but what they conceived grammar to be. As mentioned above, the answer to this question lies in part in the recovery of the logica nova: grammar is a speculative science. Covington describes this conviction as follows: "The object of scientific knowledge is that which could not be otherwise
(quod non potest aliter se habere), and the goal of scientific inquiry is to find the necessary first principles from which it can be deduced. This means that physics, for instance, is concerned with 58. See Covington, Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages, 23–24.
59. See Karin Margareta Fredborg, "Universal Grammar According to Some 12th Century Grammarians," Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980): 69–84; eadem, "Speculative Grammar," in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 177–95.
60. Thomas of Erfurt, ed. Bursill-Hall, 27. It should be remembered that for a long time Thomas of Erfurt's Grammatica speculativa was erroneously considered to be Duns Scotus'.
61. Jan Pinborg, "Speculative Grammar," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 255.
INTRODUCTION
principles that apply to all possible physical changes (or to exhaustive sub-classifications of them), not just to those changes that happen actually to have occurred."62 Covington adds, "Medieval grammarians reasoned that, by the same criteria, the scientific study of language would have to state principles applicable to all possible languages, not just the one under study."63
Consequently, just as the various attributes of being are reducible to substance as their ultimate principle in the science of metaphysics, so in the same way, the Modistae argue, the various accidental predicaments are likewise reduced to a primary subject in the sciences of logic and grammar.64 The reason for this similar reduction of attributes to a substance in metaphysics, logic, and grammar is that the Modistae believed that there is a parallel or isomorphism between the way things are in the real world, in our concepts, and in our language. Theoretically, then, grammar, logic, and metaphysics would be three parallel sciences, such that all the attributes demonstrated of the subject in one science would have similar and parallel attributes demonstrated of the corresponding subjects in the other two sciences. Marmo describes it this way:
[L]ogic and grammar are both rational sciences and can no longer be labeled as sermocinales scientiae. The correspondences between grammar and logic, however, are not limited to this negative feature. Both disciplines share a concern with reality. Their objects cannot be mere creations of the human mind: it is necessary for them to have a foundation in reality. As a consequence, the modi significandi, which are the proper object of grammar, are conceived as derived from the properties of the things and as common to all individual languages; grammar is therefore a universal a priori science having as its object a universal feature of language. Logic aspires to this same type of universality, and discussions about logic as a science reveal the same concern about its foundations in reality as those about the science of grammar.65
62. Covington, Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages, 19.
63. Ibid.
64. For an example of the parallel science of the categories in logic and in metaphysics, see Simon of Faversham, Quaestiones super librum Praedicamentorum, q. 1 (ed. Mazzarella, 263–67).
65. Costantino Marmo, "The Semantics of the Modistae," in Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition, Acts of the Symposium 'The Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy,' ed. Ebbesen and Friedman (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag,
1996), 83–104; see p. 99.
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This parallelism or isomorphism between the modes of signifying and the modes of understanding is often said to be the most typical or central thesis that unites "those grammarians and logicians collectively known as modistae."66 Kloesel adds that by "discovering the logical structure and the causes of language, a modista tried to explain the essential nature and purpose of human speech and the ways in which words have meaning. [For a Modista thinks] that the structure of language mirrors the structure of reality and the operations of the human mind."67
Likewise, Covington notes: "In fully developed modistic theory, all modes of signifying are held to be, in one way or another, representations of the properties of real world objects."68 Finally, Ebbesen describes it this way: "The basic idea of modism is this: each constituent of reality (each res) has a number of ways or modes of being (modi essendi) which determine the number of ways in which it can be correctly conceptualized; the ways in which it can be conceptualized (modi intelligendi) in turn determine in which way it can be signified."69
Just how might some of the parallels between signifying, understanding, and being look? At the grammatical level, there is the fundamental distinction between verbs and nouns, which parallels the basic metaphysical distinction between motion and rest, or becoming and being. This basic distinction between motion and rest is also paralleled by the difference between the concept of a particular action, such as "Socrates runs," and that same activity conceived of as a substantive noun, such as "to run." That there is a conceptual difference between a particular person running and "running" in general is highlighted by 66. Giorgio Pini, "Signification of Names in Duns Scotus and Some of his
Contemporaries," Vivarium 39 (2001): 20–51; see p. 38. I give just a preliminary description of these terms and the supposed parallelism here in this chapter, but will provide a more detailed description in the third and fourth chapters.
67. Christian J. W. Kloesel, "Speculative Grammar: From Duns Scotus To Charles Pierce," in Graduate Studies, Texas Tech University, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1981), 127–33; see p. 130.
68. Covington, Syntactic Theory in the High Middle Ages, 28.
69. Sten Ebbesen, "The Paris Arts Faculty: Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, Radulphus Brito," in Routledge History of Philosophy, ed. John Marenbon, vol. 3
(London: Routledge, 1998), 269–90; see p. 274.
INTRODUCTION
the fact that particular actions are often said not to fall under a category, whereas their abstract counterparts do. In the example provided, most medieval thinkers would argue that the particular movement of Socrates would not be classified or conceptualized underneath a category, whereas "running" would fall under the category of motion.70 Ebbesen also provides the following example:
Assume that pain is a constituent of reality. Pain is in a way like a substance: a stable thing in its own right that can have changing properties
(be intense or weak, precisely located or diffuse, for example); in a way it is like a process occurring in some subject. The concept of pain will then be able to present itself to our mind in two ways and we will consequently be capable of signifying pain in two ways. Any word that signifies it as the stable carrier of properties (per modum habitus et permanentiae) is a noun; any word that signifies it as a process in a subject
(per modum fieri) is a verb. The English words "a pain" and "to ache" signify the same common thing or "common nature" under two different modes. A third mode is expressed by the interjection "ouch."71
For reasons that I will explain in a moment, Duns Scotus is often referred to as a Modista. Sten Ebbesen claims that the modistic approach "was accepted by Boethius of Dacia and Duns
Scotus."72 Christian Knudsen also states that "Thomas of Erfurt, Peter of Auvergne, and Simon of Faversham, as well as Duns Scotus (as a commentator on Aristotle's logical works)" were Modistae.73 Although Pinborg thinks little of Scotus's logical works, he too considers Scotus to be one of the Modistae.74 Even Dominick
Perler claims that Scotus is influenced by "the so-called 'modistic approach' to semantic theory which [he] shares with other late
70. In q. 8, Scotus departs from the traditional position and maintains that such concrete accidental nouns, or verbs in this case, are orderable in the various categories.
71. Ebbesen, "The Paris Arts Faculty," 274.
72. Sten Ebbesen, "Concrete Accidental Terms: Late Thirteenth-Century Debates about Problems Relating to Such Terms as 'Album,'" in Meaning and Inference in Medieval Philosophy: Studies in Memory of Jan Pinborg, ed. Kretzmann
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 107–61; see 118–21.
73. Christian Knudsen, "Intentions and Impositions," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 486 n. 37.
74. Pinborg, "Speculative Grammar," 262 n. 24.
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thirteenth-century authors, such as Boethius of Dacia and Radulphus Brito."75 Finally, although a bit more cautious, Umberto
Eco seems to accept Duns Scotus as a Modista as well.76
Unfortunately, these claims are likely to be misleading. In the sense that I have used the word above, that is, entailing a parallelism between signifying, understanding, and being, Scotus is definitely not one of the Modistae.77 In a number of places, Scotus denies that there is always a parallel between signifying, understanding, and being. This fact has been established by several scholars, including Allan Wolter, E. J. Ashworth, Giorgio Pini, and J. A. Sheppard.78 Among these scholars, however, only Pini has made this point a matter of real importance. Nevertheless, there are two reasons that have contributed to this basic misnomer. First, as I mentioned above, Thomas of Erfurt's Grammatica speculativa has long been erroneously ascribed to Scotus.
Second, there is a basic ambiguity in the word "Modistae" and its derivatives. In a broad sense, as Ebbesen points out, the word
"modist" can describe any of the thirteenth-century arts masters 75. Dominik Perler, "Duns Scotus on Signification," Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3 (1993): 97–120; see 117.
76. "Duns Scotus and the Modistae . . . represent a sort of very ambiguous hinge. . . ." Umberto Eco, "Denotation," in On the Medieval Theories of Signs, ed.
Eco and Marmo (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1989), 143–95; see 162.
77. Marmo seems to think that Scotus does hold to a parallelism between signifying, understanding, and being, although he seems to waver a bit. As he states it: "If the acknowledgement of the necessity of propositions like homo est animal could be seen as the celebration of a strict parallelism between conceptual and ontological articulation, the assumption of French semantic principles
(such as the greatest original extension of common terms) within Scotus' ontological framework yields incertitude." Marmo, "Ontology and Semantics in the Logic of Duns Scotus," 181.
78. Allan B. Wolter, "An Oxford Dialogue on Language and Metaphysics,"
Review of Metaphysics 31 (1978): 615–48; see 620; idem, "A 'Reportatio' of Duns Scotus' Merton College Dialogue on Language and Metaphysics," in Sprache und
Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, ed. Zimmermann, vol. 1, 179–91 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), 180–83; E. J. Ashworth, "'Can I Speak More Clearly than I Understand? A Problem of Religious Language in Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and Ockham,"
Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980): 29–38; Pini, "Signification of Names in Duns
Scotus," 37–42; and J. A. Sheppard, "Two Theories of Signification in the Writings of John Duns Scotus," Franciscan Studies 58 (2000): 289–321; see 303.