Lecture
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Scotus. As the Franciscan movement within scholasticism, Scotism was opposed to Thomism, the official doctrine of the Dominican order. A distinctive feature of Scotism was its acceptance of two fundamental positions of Duns Scotus: on the univocity of being and on formal distinction. According to Duns Scotus, formally distinct objects, although they exist not only in the mind but also outside the mind, are situated at a different level in the structure of being than real objects. Therefore the formal distinction among the divine attributes (grace, omnipotence, and so on) does not contradict the real unity and simplicity of the divine substance. From the 16th century Thomism was energetically promoted by the Jesuits, whose theologians (Suárez) commented on and modernized the system of Thomas Aquinas. From the second half of the 19th century, the teaching of Thomas Aquinas became the foundation of Neo-Thomism.
In the 13th – 14th centuries, in the late period, scholastic philosophy provoked an ever greater protest and, at first timid, critical condemnation on the part of forward-looking thinkers (Duns Scotus, Ramon Llull, Roger Bacon, W. Ockham). This period is characterized by natural-scientific research and the flourishing of nominalism.
Thomas Aquinas's principal works, the «Summa Theologiae» (1266 – 1274) and the «Summa Contra Gentiles» (1259 – 1264), appeared at the same time as the principal work of Roger Bacon (1214 – 1294), the «Opus Majus,» created in 1266 – 1268. The latter, calling for the experimental study of nature in order to uncover its secrets and increase human power, put forward a number of principles of cognition. He held it inadmissible that the cognition of the world should be based solely on logical premises, that is, solely on deduction. In his view, the deductive method of cognition cannot prove truth, and therefore, R. Bacon insisted, the experimental method, or induction – in other words, the direct, experiential interaction of the human being with the object of investigation – must necessarily be applied. According to Bacon, only experience is the source and foundation of cognition, and at the same time it is the means by which all the results of cognition, all the conclusions arrived at in the process of cognition, can be verified. R. Bacon's ideas served as a source for the natural-scientific approach to the study of the world and had the significance of a guiding thread in the process of the formation of empiricism – one of the leading directions of philosophical thought throughout the whole subsequent history of philosophy, right up to the end of the 20th century.
The nominalism of W. Ockham (1300 – 1349) marks the end of medieval scholastic philosophy.
Ockham does not recognize the existence of universals in God, nor do they exist in the world. So-called ideas are nothing other than the things themselves, produced by God. There are no ideas of species, only ideas of individuals, since individuals are the only reality existing outside the mind.
The starting point for the cognition of the world is knowledge of individuals. The singular cannot be known by means of general concepts; it is the object of direct contemplation.
God possesses intellectual intuition of ideas corresponding to individuals; man possesses intuitive cognition of individual things in sensory experience. Intuitive cognition precedes abstract cognition.
A really existing thing possesses «thisness»; a really existing thing is an indivisible unit, devoid of definitions. Concepts are formed in the mind of the cognizing subject on the basis of the sensory perception of things. Universals are signs in the mind; in themselves they are singular, not general, entities.
Universals – signs – are divided by Ockham into natural and conventional. Natural signs are concepts (representations, mental images) in the mind, relating to individual things. Natural signs precede verbal expressions – conventional signs. Among natural signs, Ockham distinguishes first and second intentions of the mind. The first intention is a concept (a mental name) that serves to stand for a thing that is not itself a sign. Second intentions are concepts that co-signify first intentions.
The logical grounding of the nominalist conception is given by Ockham in his theory of suppositions (substitutions), which explains how the use of general terms in language can be reconciled with the denial of the real existence of universals. Ockham distinguishes three types of supposition: material, personal, and simple. Only in personal supposition does a term perform a designating function, standing for (denoting) a thing, that is, something singular. In the other two, the term denotes nothing. For example, in the statement «man is a noun,» the term «man» does not denote a concrete man, but signifies the word «man,» that is, it refers to itself as a term. The term «man» in the statement «man is a species» by no means denotes some general (specific) essence of man possessing real existence; rather, it stands for the specific concept «man,» obtained only in the mind of the signifying subject. Therefore the use of general terms does not commit one to acknowledging the reality of universals.
In Ockham's nominalism, the basic premise of scholastic philosophy is denied – the conviction of the rationality of the world, of the existence of a kind of original harmony between word and being. Structures of being and conceptual structures are henceforth opposed to one another; being belongs only to the singular, the rationally inexpressible «this,» while the semantic determinacies fixed by general concepts have no place outside the mind.
Although Ockham's nominalism anticipated the end of medieval scholasticism, the first powerful blow to scholasticism, marking the beginning of its crisis, was struck by the great scholars of the Renaissance – N. Copernicus, G. Bruno, G. Galilei.
Часть 1 Philosophical Thought of the Middle Ages (Medieval Philosophy)
Часть 2 See also - Philosophical Thought of the Middle Ages (Medieval
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