アベラールの普遍論

Abstract

This paper considers in the first place Abelard's theory of universals systematically, and then examines its various constituents from a historical point of view. In his commentary on Porphyrius' Isagoge, Abelard, rejecting both William of Champeaux's realism that things are universals, and Roscelin's nominalism which maintains that universals are nothing more than sounds, reaches the conclusion that universals are signifying words (voces significativae). Universals as signifying words, according to Abelard, produce in our mind the intellection of universals, which is abstractive intellection, and whose object is the common conception of individual things. Abstractive intellection is not vacant, but conforms to state of things (status rei); for, when it looks only at this one among the qualities the nature has, it does not mean that it considers anything that is not in that nature, neither does it view that one separately considered as really separated. Therefore state of things, which Abelard says to be that in which all things contained in a species or genus agree, answers in reality to the object of this abstractive intellection, i. e., to the common conception of individual substances. Accordingly, universal word, which produces abstractive intellection, designates directly state of things, and through it, the individual things that agree in that state. Considered by itself, however, state of things has its own natural being (esse naturale), which is in its naturalis aptitudo separated from sensible bodies; Plato's theory is in this sense given justice to. The source of Abelard's nominalism may be found in Boethius's commentary on Aristotle's Categoriae. For Boethius shows in this commentary that categories are not things, but words, while they are supreme genera according to Porphyrius. The realism of his status-theory may well be traced to Boethius' answer to the problems raised by Porphyrius; Boethius there thinks similitude in things, when abstracted from individuals, makes the conceptions of genus and species. Abelard's state seems to be the development of what Boethius called similitude. And Abelard's Platonism, so to say, may probably be traced back to Porphyrius' Isagoge, which often treats universals as prior by nature to individuals. To conclude, we cannot treat him merely as a nominalist or a realist, nor can we call his theory of universals simply Aristotelian or Platonic. His merit rather consists in his original synthesis based upon the clarification of those elements which are so vaguely or confusedly stated in the writings of Porphyrius and Boethius.