Boethius and Aquinas

2. Altissimum negotium: Universals

CHAPTER 2 Altissimum negotium: Universals Porphyry wrote his Introduction or Isagoge to the Categories of Aristotle in order to deal with what came to be called the five predicables: genus, species, difference, property and accident. Without prior knowledge of these, Porphyry felt, it would be very difficult for a beginner to follow Aristotle's book. Given that purpose, Porphyry did not want to make his introduction itself overly demanding. Thus it was that he set aside an issue of great moment in order to get immediately to work. Now concerning genera and species I beg off asking whether they subsist or are in mere understanding alone, whether subsisting they are corporeal or incorporeal, and whether they are separate from or in sensible things. A discussion of this sort is most profound and falls to a far more demanding inquiry.' This small paragraph has generated a veritable flood of commentary and discussion. Indeed, it is difficult to find in the history of western thought a passage of comparable length that has had so vast an effect. A discussion too difficult and demanding to undertake now? What better bait to snare the commentator could there be? If Boethius respects Porphyry's tantalizing demur in his first commentary on the Isagoge, he deals at some length with the three questions in the second commentary. This is not to say that he ignores the problem on the first occasion. We will be looking I. "Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem, sive subsistant, sive in solis nudis intellectibus posita sunt, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita: et circa haec consistentia dicere recusabo. Altissimum enim negotium est hujusmodi, et majoris egens inquisitio." Text as found in Boethius, PL 64,8:z.A-B. 61 Art of the Commentary at both treatments if only because the first is usually ignored in favor of the more developed second commentary. The Problem of Universals consists of three questions which can be stated as disjunctions. Genera and species, the subject matter of the Isagoge, (I) either really subsist or exist in the mind alone (2) are either corporeal or incorporeal (3) either exist separately from bodies or are conjoined with them. It can be seen that the second disjunction presupposes that the first has been settled in favor of the emphasized option. So too the second disjunction is settled as indicated. This is why the problem of universals is often equated with the question formed from the third disjunction. THE FIRST COMMENTARY ON PORPHYRY The First Question "Prima est quaestio, utrum genera ipsa et species vere sint, an in solis intellectibus nuda inaniaque fingantur: the first question is whether genera and species themselves truly are or are empty and inane fabrications of thought alone." 2 Note how Boethius weights the question by employing a debunking language calculated to stir up opposition in Fabius (his interlocutor in this dialogue commentary) and prompt the right answer. Do genera and species really exist or are they empty and useless mental constructs? Fictions, products of dreams ... Boethius begins by distinguishing two parts of our soul, sense and intellect. Through the objects of the senses the quality of sensed things is grasped and from this, by way of speculation, conceived, thereby paving the way for the incorporeal. I see a number of men, and I know that I see them; recognizing them as men, I claim to understand. 2. Ibid., 19A. Altissimum negotium: Universals 63 Intelligence, strengthened as it were by knowledge of sensible things, raises itself to sublimer understanding, conceiving the species of man, which contains individual men and falls under the genus animal "and it understands this incorporeal thing which it takes from its corporal particulars first sensed and understood in single men." 3 For we must think of the species man (hominem quidem ilium specialem), which we all gather together within the ambit of the name, as incorporeal, since it is conceived by mind and intelligence alone. Mind using sensible things as stepping stones ascends to higher understanding of primordial and incorporeal beings. But mind is not only an artist enabling us to gain understanding of incorporeal things by way of sensible things, it is also the source of fabrications and lies. Such fantastic notions as that of the centaur, the hybrid of horse and man, are constructed by the mind. That is why Porphyry wonders whether genera and species...