The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology: Acts of the XIIIth International Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, Kyoto, 27 September-1 October 2005

448 Pages·2009·2.061 MB·English

by  Tetsuro Shimizu, Charles Burnett

Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale
— Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale, 14 —
General Editor: Kent EMERY, Jr. (University of Notre Dame)

THE WORD IN MEDIEVAL LOGIC,
THEOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY

Acts of the XIIIth International Colloquium of the Société
Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale
Kyoto, 27 September-1 October 2005

edited by

TETSURO SHIMIZU and CHARLES BURNETT

prepared for the press by
KENT EMERY, Jr. and STEPHEN M. METZGER

F
BREPOLS
2009
This Colloquium was sponsored and funded by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science

All of the essays published in this volume have been reviewed by
members of the Bureau of the SIEPM

© 2009, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher.
D/2009/0095/180
ISBN 978-2-503-53319-3
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Tesuro SHIMIZU, Introduction....................................................................1

Irène ROSIER-CATACH, The Augustinian Threefold Word and An-
gelic Mental Speech..................................................................................15
Katherine H. TACHAU, Words for Color: Naming, Signifying and
Identifying Color in the Theologies of Roger Bacon and His Con-
temporaries...............................................................................................49
Taki SUTO, Logic and Grammar in Boethius: A Logical Analysis of
the Parts of Speech....................................................................................65
Yukio IWAKUMA, Vocales Revisited........................................................81
Christopher J. MARTIN, Imposition and Essence: What’s New In
Abaelard’s Theory of Meaning?.............................................................173
Charles BURNETT, The Theory and Practice of Powerful Words in
Medieval Magical Texts.........................................................................215
Steven HARVEY, Logic, Theology and the Beginning of Medieval
Jewish Philosophy..................................................................................233
Yoshinori UEEDA, Thomas Aquinas, Being and Actuality....................245
Matthew KOSTELECKY, Verbum, Thomas Aquinas and the Via
negativa..................................................................................................261
Shinsuke KAWAZOE, Verbum and Epistemic Justification in Tho-
mas Aquinas...........................................................................................273
Richard CROSS, The Mental Word in Duns Scotus and Some of His
Contemporaries.......................................................................................291
Simo KNUUTTILA, Meaning and Essence in Thomas Aquinas, John
Duns Scotus and William of Ockham....................................................333
Joël BIARD, Verbe, signe, concept : L’effacement du verbe intérieur
au XIVe siècle.........................................................................................347
Luisa VALENTE, Verbum mentis – Vox clamantis: The Notion of
the Mental Word in Twelfth-Century Theology.....................................365
Alain DE LIBERA, Langage negatif et negativité chez Maître Eck-
hart..........................................................................................................403
Index of Manuscripts..............................................................................429
Index of Ancient and Medieval Names..................................................431
Index of Modern and Contemporary Authors.........................................435

INTRODUCTION
TETSURO SHIMIZU
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei
et opera manuum eius adnuntiat firmamentum
dies diei eructat verbum et nox nocti indicat scientiam
non sunt loquellae neque sermones
quorum non audiantur voces eorum
in omnem terram exivit sonus eorum
et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum. (Psalm 18:2-5)
The Significance of Choosing the Word as the Subject
of the SIEPM Colloquium held in Japan
The annual Colloquium of the SIEPM was held in Kyoto, Japan, from 27
September to 1 October 2005, sponsored by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science. During the prior discussions about its subject by
the Japanese Committee for the Colloquium as well as in the deliberations
with the Bureau of the SIEPM (especially with Charles Burnett), we tried
to find the most appropriate theme for a conference that would take place
in an environment quite different from the countries of the Christian tradi-
tion in which all the previous SIEPM Colloquia had been held. The solu-
tion was, in fact, offered by the particular situation of our being in Japan.
For language is the most obvious and the highest barrier that separates
Japanese scholars from the inter-communicating circle of Western schol-
ars. We are always aware of this barrier and struggle to find means to
cross over it. On the other hand, we sometimes realize that this barrier can
be to our advantage, for, because we must make such an effort to under-
stand the language of Western culture, we might discover some points that
Western scholars have missed. Thus, attending to the word itself seemed
to be the most appropriate arena in which Western scholars in medieval
philosophy might meet Japanese scholars.
The choice of Kyoto as the venue for the Colloquium also seemed
most appropriate, for Kyoto is the city that most impressively represents
Japanese culture. It has 1200 years of history, and it was the capital of
Japan, at least formally, from 794 to 1868. It is surrounded by thickly for-
ested mountains, and it has about 400 Shinto shrines and 1,650 Buddhist
2 Tetsuro Shimizu
temples as well as beautiful imperial villas, all full of cultural treasures.
To hold a congress on such a subject in such a venue was likely to open
up new horizons and stimulate fresh ideas for our research on Western
medieval philosophy.
As an introduction to the essays contributed to the proceedings of the
colloquium, I should like, first of all, to examine why language is the
highest barrier for the Japanese, and then to make a few remarks on what
happened in the history of the idea, ‘word’, before its entry into medieval
thought, after its entry, and after its exit.
It seems to me that our system of meaning is somewhat different from
those of Western languages or cultures. First, the Japanese, among a few
countries in Asia, use ideograms, i.e., Chinese characters, combined with
Japanese syllabic characters, which are phonetic. We tend to use, roughly
speaking, the former to express the main parts of a sentence, while using
the latter for syncategorematic parts (to use the terminology of medieval
logic). When a speaker utters a vox that corresponds to two or more dif-
ferent homophonic words, we frequently ask: “To which Chinese charac-
ter does this correspond?” That is, even when we cannot distinguish the
words at the vocal level, we can distinguish them at the written level, and
in the majority of cases the word at the written level has a one-to-one cor-
respondence with a concept. Another point to note is that the Chinese
characters are common to Chinese and Japanese, and, even if a Japanese
cannot understand Chinese when it is spoken, he or she can understand
written Chinese to a certain degree. Written words and the corresponding
concepts are common to both languages, though not entirely.
Thus if Aristotle had been born in our culture, he could not have be-
gun De interpretatione with the phrase which has been translated into
Latin as:
Sunt ergo ea quae sunt in voce, earum quae sunt in anima passionum
notae, et ea quae scribuntur, eorum quae sunt in voce. Et quemad-
modum nec litterae omnibus eaedem, sic nec eaedem voces; quorum
autem hae primorum notae, eaedem omnibus passiones animae sunt,
et quorum hae similitudines, res etiam eaedem. De his itaque dictum
est in his quae sunt dicta de anima. Alterius est enim negotii.1
Rather, he would have written:
Sunt ergo ea quae scribuntur, earum quae sunt in anima passionum
notae, et ea quae sunt in voce, eorum quae scribuntur (Those things

1 ARISTOTELES, De interpretatione c.1 (16a2-8), ed. L. MINIO-PALUELLO (Aristoteles
Latinus 2), Bruges-Paris 1965, 5.
Introduction 3
that are written are the symbols of the passions in the mind, and those
things that are in vocal sounds are symbols of the written things).
Again, instead of “though vocal sounds are not the same for all, nor
are written letters,” he would have thought that “quemadmodum nec voces
omnibus eaedem... litterae autem eaedem omnibus sunt; quorum hae pri-
morum notae, eaedem omnibus passiones animae sunt, et quorum hae
similitudines, res etiam eaedem (though vocal sounds are not the same for
all, the written letters are the same for all, and the passions in the mind, of
which the vocal sound and letters are symbols, and the things, of which
the passions in the mind are likenesses, are the same as well).”
To be fair, some Chinese characters have two or more meanings that
are entirely different from each other; some ideograms are, so to speak,
homographic. For instance, (cid:12110)
Plate 1: Historical transition of the character (cid:12110)
is one of the most popular hi-
from left to right(cid:2)
eroglyphs or pictographs and
means a species of animal.
The oldest form of this charac-
ter is shown in plate 1 on the
right. This is found amongst
the inscriptions on bones and
tortoise carapaces from an-
cient China, and one can rec-
ognize what it signifies even

without knowing Chinese,

namely “an elephant”.
Thus, we use (cid:12110) to indicate elephants, but not only elephants, since
we also use it to indicate ideal or abstract entities. For instance, (cid:3521)(cid:12110),
(cid:8443)(cid:12110), (cid:2640)(cid:12110) and (cid:5584)(cid:3037) are among words frequently used in philosophical
contexts. These are examples of a word consisting of two characters, in
which the meanings of each character are combined. The meanings are
“impression”, “phenomenon”, “event” (or “phenomenon”) and “imagina-
tion”, respectively. But when we read and write (cid:12110) in these words, we are
hardly aware of the elephant; rather, by (cid:12110) we understand ‘shape, image
or appearance.” Thus, (cid:12110) is homographic and has two meanings: “ele-
phant” and “image”. In addition, (cid:3037) consists of “human being” and “ele-
phant”, so it does not mean “elephant” any more, but originally “an image
of a human being,” and then “image” in general, and is used for a statue,
picture, image or icon.
Some presume that the reason why (cid:12110) acquired such a second meaning
4 Tetsuro Shimizu
is as follows. In ancient China
Plate 2: Transition of (cid:8176): a hand is depicted at
elephants were common, and
the trunk of the elephant.
people used them in work. For
instance (cid:8176) (an earlier form of
(cid:8017)) is another popular character
indicating “doing” or “acting”,
and this character is said origi-
nally to consist of a human hand
and an elephant (plate 2), and
signifies disciplining a wild ele-
phant. Afterwards, however, the

elephant ceased to exist in the

main centres of China and was
known only through bones and ivory. Its character remained in their lan-
guage, but the Chinese did not have any actual knowledge of the elephant.
So people wondered or imagined what elephants were like. Imagining an
elephant is tantamount to imagining its shape or appearance. Thus the new
meaning, shape, image or appearance came into existence.
Secondly, there has been an academic tradition of reading and inter-
preting Chinese texts in Japan. Students are trained to read Chinese writ-
ten sentences aloud in Japanese, translating the text as they read. Many
Chinese characters are uttered according to their ancient Chinese pronun-
ciations, for they were imported to Japan with the characters themselves.
The order in which the Chinese characters are read, however, is entirely
different from the order in which they are written, and Japanese “syn-
categorematic” parts are frequently added in reading, so that the sentences
read aloud are essentially Japanese.
For instance, there is a sentence (cid:6416)(cid:8961)(cid:2567)(cid:11745)(cid:6535) consisting of five char-
acters, which mean “spring”, “sleep”, “not”, “realize” and “dawn” respec-
tively, and can be translated into English as, “Spring sleep does not realize
dawn”, i.e., “When I sleep in the spring, I cannot realize dawn (because of
my deep sound sleep).” This is the opening phrase of one of the most
popular Chinese poems, and the traditional reading of the sentence in
Japanese is as follows: “Shun-min akatsuki-wo oboe-zu.” In this sentence,
“shun-min” is the direct reading of the first and second characters of the
Chinese sentence, (cid:6416)(cid:8961), with the pronunciations imported from ancient
China along with the characters. Thus a Japanese reader takes the first two
characters and reads them aloud as “shun-min”, understanding that “shun”
and “min” correspond to the Japanese words “haru” (spring) and “nemuri”
(sleep) respectively. Then he or she skips to the last character (cid:6535)(cid:2)(dawn)