This paper is consecrated to the problems of the semantics in the Anselm’s philosophy of language – one of the most important parts of his philosophical inquiry. The main care is focused to the analysis of terms veritas and rectitudo, mainly because of significatio and the semantics – e.g. significatio with respect to names (proper and common; infinite, privative and empty). Special passage refers to denominative names, because in their case Anselm of Canterbury makes differences between significatio (...) ( per se, per aliud and ut unum) and appellatio in his semantic analysis. (shrink)

“Austrian” (or “Austro-German”) philosophy of language is characterized, among other things, by the following two features: (1) Problems of language are considered within the broader framework of an intentionality-based philosophy of mind—or, to put it more precisely, questions of meaning are considered as involving a quite articulated theory of intentions; (2) several aspects of such an account are explicitly presented as inspired by or somehow already at work in the Medieval Scholastic tradition. In this study we follow the track indicated (...) by these two features and use some “Austrian” reflections on the articulation between meanings and intentions as a “heuristic filter”, as it were, to shed a new and different light on some Medieval debates in philosophy of language on the relationship between significare and intendere. It will be roughly divided into three parts. We begin by singling out some distinctive tenets of the “Austrian” strategy aimed at describing the relationship between meaning and intentions (section I), and then turn to various Medieval texts from the 13th and 14th century dealing with the two related notions of significatio and intentio (section II). The upshot of our investigation is to show how, for both “Austrian” and Medieval philosophers of language (and beyond their differences), a proper understanding of linguistic meaning—in the twofold sense of words or sentences having a lexical content and utterances having a determinate pragmatic function—presupposes an account of what one could call the “agentive intentionality”, i.e. the complex intentionality proper to practical goal-directed human behaviours. Some final remarks about outcomes, meaning, scope and perspectives opened by the method applied will conclude the study (section III). (shrink)

Significatio and suppositio are central notions in Ockham's semantics; the former is propriety of isolated terms, the later, of terms in propositional contexts. Understanding the relation between both notions is important to determine the atomistic or propositonal character of Ockham's semantics. The definition of each term refers to the other, not allowing any priority of one of them. Both terms exceed one another, covering cases which are outside the scope the other. We identify, through the analysis of this excess (...) the dominant term for the explanation of different kinds of linguistic phenomena. These different kinds of phenomena are identified with two different conceptual fields, each term being dominant in one field.Os conceitos de significatio e de suppositio são centrais na semântica ockhamiana; a primeira noção é uma propriedade de termos isolados; a segunda, de termos em proposições. A compreensão da relação entre os dois é muito importante; está em jogo o caráter atomista ou proposicional de sua semântica. A definição de cada um destes termos remete à definição do outro, não sendo possível determinar a prioridade de um sobre o outro a partir de suas definições. Ambos termos têm excessos em relação ao outro, cobrem casos não cobertos pelo outro. A análise destes excessos permite identificar o termo dominante para explicação de tipos diferentes de fenômenos lingüísticos. Estes tipos de fenômenos são identificados como campos conceituais diferentes, o que permite estabelecer a prioridade de um termo sobre o outro em campos diferentes da semântica. (shrink)

“Austrian” philosophy of language is characterized, among other things, by the following two features: Problems of language are considered within the broader framework of an intentionality-based philosophy of mind—or, to put it more precisely, questions of meaning are considered as involving a quite articulated theory of intentions; several aspects of such an account are explicitly presented as inspired by or somehow already at work in the Medieval Scholastic tradition. In this study we follow the track indicated by these two features (...) and use some “Austrian” reflections on the articulation between meanings and intentions as a “heuristic filter”, as it were, to shed a new and different light on some Medieval debates in philosophy of language on the relationship between significare and intendere. It will be roughly divided into three parts. We begin by singling out some distinctive tenets of the “Austrian” strategy aimed at describing the relationship between meaning and intentions , and then turn to various Medieval texts from the 13th and 14th century dealing with the two related notions of significatio and intentio . The upshot of our investigation is to show how, for both “Austrian” and Medieval philosophers of language , a proper understanding of linguistic meaning—in the twofold sense of words or sentences having a lexical content and utterances having a determinate pragmatic function—presupposes an account of what one could call the “agentive intentionality”, i.e. the complex intentionality proper to practical goal-directed human behaviours. Some final remarks about outcomes, meaning, scope and perspectives opened by the method applied will conclude the study. (shrink)

Il pensatore domenicano Francesco da Prato, attivo nel secondo quarto del XIV sec. tra Perugia, Siena e Firenze, rappresenta una delle prime testimonianze in Italia della ricezione di Ockham e di reazione tomista alla sua logica. Lo studio si articola in due sezioni: nella prima l'A. esamina la dottrina della significazione nelle fonti principali degli scritti di logica di Francesco: Tommaso d'Aquino, Herveus Natalis e Guglielmo di Ockham; nella seconda analizza la posizione di Francesco in scritti trasmessi nei seguenti mss: (...) Firenze, BNC., Conv. Soppr. J.5.31 ; Conv. Soppr. B.3.173 e Roma, Bibl. Angelica 1053. (shrink)

This study comments on six notabilia found in the general observations with which Brinkley begins his treatise on supposition in his Summa logicae: i) the logico-metaphysical explanation of the distinction between significatio and suppositio, ii) the ontic division principle of supposition, iii) the relationship between supposita and truth-makers, iv) what seems to be a late resurgence of natural supposition, v) a pragmatic suspension of the regula appellationum and vi) Brinkley’s apparently incompatible claims that there are communicable things and that (...) there are only singular things, a position that is a medieval form of immanent realism. Based on the two manuscripts that contain the treatise on supposition, an appendix offers a provisional edition of part of Brinkley’s Summa, a collaboration between the author and Joël Lonfat. (shrink)

This book presents an exhaustive study of the three 13-century discussions explicitly dealing with the notion of Significatio. The study aims to show that the three discussions emerge because of apparently opposite claims about the signification of words in the authoritative literature of the period. It also shows that the three discussions develop in the same direction - towards a unified use of the notion of signification, which keeps its explanatory role in semiotics, but loses its role in grammar (...) and logic. (shrink)

I. SUPPOSITION AND SIGNIFICATIONIn an insightful article on the medieval theory of supposition, Elizabeth Karger noted a remarkable development in the characterization of the material mode of supposition between William of Ockham and his contemporaries in the early fourteenth century and Paul of Venice and others at the turn of the fifteenth century.1. E. Karger, “La Supposition Materielle comme Supposition Significative: Paul de Venise, Paul de Pergula,” in A. Maierú, ed., English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries (...) (Naples, 1982), pp. 331–41. For William, material supposition is explicitly ‘non-significative’, while for Paul, every mode of supposition is a kind of signification.2. Paul of Venice, Logica Magna (Tractatus de Suppositionibus), ed. and trans. A. Perreiah (St. Bonaventure, 1971), p. 4: “nam omnis suppositio est significatio.” In particular, we can set these definitions in opposition. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo, busco clarificar algunos aspectos de la teoría del nombre de fray Luis de León contenida al comienzo de De los nombres de Cristo mediante una comparación con obras de lógica escolástica, particularmente las Summulae de Pedro Hispano y el tratado homónimo de Domingo de Soto. Procuraré mostrar que dicha teoría solo puede comprenderse acabadamente desde esta perspectiva, sin negar la relevancia de otras, en una medida mayor que la que hasta ahora han presentado los investigadores. Me (...) ocuparé especialmente de la presencia de los conceptos de “término simple”, “suppositio” y “significatio”, y del modo en que fray Luis los articula de tal forma que resulten claramente reconocibles en sus detalles por quien está versado en ellos y, al mismo tiempo, pone su sentido filosófico originario al servicio de la intención fundamental de su obra.In this article, I seek to clarify some features of fray Luis de León ’s theory of names which he presents in a passage at the beginning of De los nombres de Cristo by making a comparison between thatpassage and some scholastic treatises on logic, especially the Summulae by Peter of Spain and the homonymous work by Domingo de Soto. Specifically, I expect to show that the theory can be fully understood only on these grounds. I shall dealparticularly with the concepts of “simple term”, “suppositio” and “significatio”, and the way in which fray Luis articulates them, with the result that the scholastic elements can be clearly recognized by those who are acquainted with them and, at the same time, contribute with their essentialphilosoph- ical meaning to the fundamental objectives of the work. (shrink)

Chapter II of Foucault's The Care of the Self, 'The Cultivation of the Self,' is arguably one of the most controversial sections of the entire History of Sexuality. The diatribe over this chapter was initially mounted by Pierre Hadot's critical essay 'Reflections on the Idea of the 'Cultivation of the Self." Therein, Hadot objects to Foucault’s dissolution of the Stoic doctrinal antinomy between voluptas ('pleasure') and gaudium ('joy') and, thereby, to the relegation of the latter notion to the subordinate status (...) of 'another form of pleasure', on the one side, and of Seneca himself to the problematic rank of a sort of Epicurean on the other. The present investigation aims to unveil this aspect of the Foucault-Hadot querelle as only a pseudo-controversy engendered by Seneca recurring to two different terminological registers throughout his writings: the so-called verbum publicum and the significatio Stoica. (shrink)

In his book Appearance and Sense Gustav Shpet, comparing Immanuel Kant’s transcendental logic with the traditional probleтs of the philosophy of language, thought it appropriate and conceptually effective to turn to the medieval scholastic debate on universals. Later, in the Hermeneutics and Its Problems, he goes back to this discussion and notes that it was the framework in which the thirteenth-century tradition of “terminist” logic was formed. Shpet attributed the fruitfulness of this approach to his concept of the inner form (...) of the word. Terminist logic is based on the definition and analysis of such terms as significatio, suppositio, expositio, exponibilia, and Shpet, in examining them, demonstrates the consonance of his concept with terminist logic. Proceeding from thirteenth-century logical studies, he proposes his own approach to resolving the contradictions found in Kant’s critical philosophy. Shpet believed that transcendental idealism failed to resolve the problem of the relation between intuition and concept (even though Kantian “schematism” was a search for such resolution). This inherent Kantian problem is for Shpet a take-off point to which he kept returning throughout his career. I will pay particular attention to such works as Appearance and Sense, in which Shpet broadens the problematics of Husserl’s phenomenology, and The Inner Form of the Word, in which he reinterprets Humboldt’s philosophy of language. In both cases Shpet shows that neither Husserl nor Humboldt managed to overcome the Kantian contradiction. So the reference to Kant is a starting point from which Shpet proceeds to put forward and consolidate his hypotheses. It is in thirteenth-century terminist logic that Shpet will see an original way of overcoming the Kantian contradiction and direct us toward interpreting the problems of the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the connection, in Anselm of Canterbury, between theological issues, monastic culture and linguistic analysis. The reasoning is based on chapter thirteen of De veritate and develops the idea of truth without significatio that arises from those pages. Generally credited to the logical aspects of the Anselmian thought, the theory really needs to be understood in the light of the concepts of listening, silence, human and divine word, inside a tradition that traces (...) its origins to Paul of Tarsus, Augustine and the Regula of Benedikt of Norcia. The analysis will show how the silence must be intended as a crucial notion in the Anselmian theory of truth. In this context, the meaning of silence is threefold: language of God, soundless language of the things and, finally, mental place where true propositions can be thought. (shrink)

In his recent study on ‘The Excessiveness of Christianity’ the K.U. Leuven professor of phi- losophical anthropology Paul Moyaert describes how Christianity is marked with excessiveness in its ethical, religious-metaphysical and mystical self-understanding. Here we deal only with the middle part of the study, on “the incarnation of meaning.” In the first part of our contribution we explore Moyaerts theory of symbol. Moyaert rightly resists both an instrumental reduction of the symbol and an intellectual reduction. But in his search for (...) the own rationality of the symbol, he inclines towards absolutising its meaning, installing an intrinsic relation between the signifier and the signified. Moyaert recognises the role of human intentionality installing a signification in the symbol, but argues that the symbol exceeds that subjective signification with an objective meaning which it brings about itself. He sees an “intimate entanglement of ‘significatio’ and ‘esse’ ” which is at the heart of what he calls a “realism of meaning.” Our argument against this reasoning is that if the symbol bridges the distance between signifier and signified in an objective relationship between both, apart from every signifying human intentionality, then this symbol escapes historicity, and brings about an absolute presence, or the divine, thus becoming what we call the locus onto-theologicus susceptible to unmasking as an idol. Moyaert partly seems to recognize this, but nonetheless defends it as the “surrealistic perspective” from which we must think the symbol. In the second part of our contribution we follow Moyaert in his application of his theory of symbol to sacramental presence, especially the praesentia realis. He replaces the terms “signifier – signified” with their religious equivalents “incarnans – incarnatum,” seeming to assume that they have the same meaning. But this is not an innocent procedure. Whereas in the symbolic the distance between both poles should be held apart in order to avoid idolatry, in the movement of sacramental incarnation God bridges this distance in His becoming present through the historical. The praesentia realisis in the tradition of the Church not the highest possible symbolic presence of God, hence a kind of “praesentia surrealis”, but God’s sacramental presence, pushed to the limit of its historicity, in a manner analogous with Jesus’ being completely one of us and yet also “without sin.” Hence does faith not occur in a perspective of surrealism, but of realism. In our evaluation, we make a plea for a theological nuance of Moyaerts theory of symbol, recognising that a symbol as signifier needs to maintain distance from its signified in order to avoid becoming an idol, and so must also be recognized the historicity of the indeed irreducible otherness of the symbol for the individual. What is distinctive about the sacrament, as opposed to the symbol, is its accomplishment of God’s Mysterious movement bridging the distance between creation and Creator. Without this nuance, Moyaerts position appears to us to fall back into to the ultimate functionalisation of faith which consists in mastering contingency through the symbolic. Indeed, Moyaert is not alone among contemporary philosophers who turn from recognizing the irreducible groundlessness of life to a rediscovery of Christianity as an inspiration for philosophical anthropology which, however, threatens to reduce faith to a kind of post-religious wisdom tradition. In those cases, one suspects that this new sympathy for Christian faith may turn out to be a Trojan horse in the mother of all religious wars, still ongoing between Greek-modern autonomy and Jewish-biblical heteronomy. (shrink)

This paper looks into the contents of the Tractatus suppositionum terminorum by Master Franquera, in the context of the teaching of logic in Salamanca in the fifteenth century. Franquera’s work is characterised by its explicit realist bias and its rejection of Ockhamist theses, i.e., by its recognition of the existence of a natura communis or a universale in re, which is evident in all discussions related to suppositio simplex and the theory of significatio. But, apart from this, Franquera’s discussion (...) of the theory of suppositio stands out as a strange mixture of different doctrines: some of them are derived from thirteenth-century analyses, others from fourteenth-century developments; realist goals are reached by means of instruments that, while not being nominalist, are definitely inspired by terminism. While upholding the theses of realist schools, Franquera adopts the definitions and rules of nominalist authors. (shrink)

In his commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle’s Organon and in his other works, John Duns Scotus shows his knowledge of both the modistic theory of language and the theory of supposition. My contribution sheds some light on the relationship between Scotus’ philosophy of language and the theory of supposition, collecting and commenting on all the passages in which he makes use of it or discusses some theoretical points. I take into special account the almost unknown commentary on the Topics, which (...) is preserved in a Vatican manuscript. (shrink)