LESSONS FROM HISTORY (3): Late Medieval Philosophy and the Basic Questions
Do “Castles” exist or just a particular castle? Photo by Lisa Yount on Unsplash
By Lee Dise
Third of a seven-part series.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lee Dise is an accomplished trombonist and computer programmer, who also happens to know a great deal about things like philosophy, theology, history and related disciplines. He’s also a born-again Christian and in this multi-installment series appearing each day, starting this week on HillFaith, Lee will offer an insightful and provocative analysis of how we got from where we were to where we are today.
Ontology, the study of being, asks the basic question: What exists? What is the nature of reality? What is real? What isn’t? Answers to such questions form the foundations of our world views and imply how we should then live. This is important stuff. Lack of consensus can turn into conflict, and conflict into war.
Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) concluded that philosophy without God is idolatrous. It places man, not before His throne, but squarely on it. Man’s wisdom is just as fallen as man himself. Thinking becomes an exercise in vanity.
Paul warned us against philosophy’s snares and traps; the “Greeks” (philosophers) will always view their own thinking as wise and Christian faith as foolishness. Paul’s standard for discerning between wisdom and folly is to view all who deny the Lord as the real fools — “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” The truth is, as Paul saw it, self-evident in nature as God’s handiwork.
We must talk about Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), still regarded as a theological and philosophical giant. When Aristotle’s writings became widely available in Europe, Aquinas devoured them and worked toward reconciling ancient Greek philosophy with Christian belief.
Philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Photo by Sarah Moon on Unsplash
Islamic scholars had done the same with Mohammedan theology, and Aquinas may have felt some degree of cultural pressure to perform something similar. Aquinas is remembered for many ideas and insights, but for our purposes here we will concentrate on his concept of realism.
Aquinas argued that all things that exist are not material things. He thought that categories and abstractions, called universals, exist in some immaterial but still objective reality, and apart from the particulars whose essence they describe.
To borrow an illustration from theologian John Frame, you might be acquainted with three material objects named Fido, Rover, and Spot. Let’s say they range in weight from just a few pounds to over a hundred.
They are covered with hair and have inquisitive noses. They bark when excited or agitated. They eat a range of different things, but especially like chewing on bones. They often live in people’s homes as pets and as work animals on farms, or with the police. Fido, Rover, and Spot and millions like them exist as particulars of a universal called “dogs” or “dogness.”
There are many other universals as well: cats, horses, goldfish, mosquitoes, mammals, animals, plants, etc. Universals also exist for non-living material objects: computers, chairs, clarinets, houses, cars, sweatshirts; also, for abstract immaterial objects such as numbers and chemical formulas.
The idea of universals is nicely congruent with belief in the rationality of God’s creation. “Dogness” started out as an idea in God’s mind, and through Him this essential thought now has a real existence of its own, through its particulars. God’s ideas possess a concreteness that human subjectivity can never have. He spoke our universe into existence, after all.
However, some medieval philosophers contested this. William of Ockham (c. 1287-1347), most famous for “Ockham’s Razor,” denied the existence of universals; in his view, only the particulars have any real existence. Ockham thought that universals were merely convenient names and nothing more. This belief is called nominalism.
Fido, Rover, and Spot are just Fido, Rover, and Spot, but sometimes it’s just convenient to group them together as “dogs.” This was not a disagreement between Christians and non-believers, but between fellow Christians — Occam was a Catholic, same as Aquinas.
As one writer, Daniel Halverson, concluded, “…where Aquinas emphasized God’s rationality and omniscience, Ockham emphasized God’s freedom and omnipotence.” This dispute became an intellectual feud that grew too large for the Church to contain or resolve. It is still being disputed today.
Realists think that nominalism ultimately denies truth — after all, truth is a universal. Nominalists argue that universals are unnecessary and thus serve only as distractions.
Nominalism has helped spawn a number of non-Christian notions; it may be fair to say that it was a precursor to what eventually became known as empiricism. As Richard Weaver wrote, “The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses.”
The problem with relying on the senses is that the senses are not reliable.
Christians should always be suspicious of pagan thinking — even pagan thinking with Greek credentials. When pagan and Christian thinking are in conflict, Christian thinking should always win.
The truth exists and is not restricted to man’s cognitive limitations, but is complete and absolute in the Lord’s mind. Universals exist if the Lord thinks they do. God Himself is perceivable as a universal having three particulars —Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — all of them in possession of every Godlike characteristic.
Next: Renaissance, Reformation, and Humanism
Previously:
Sunday – “Christian Belief and the Consequences of Ideas”
Monday – “Western Civilization as Cultural Synthesis.”
Tuesday – “From the Fragments of Empire, a New Beginning”
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Platonic universals cannot be applied to living creatures in the real world, because Plato would have to make an arbitrary decision as to where to “hang” them in the cladistic diagram.
For example, suppose a universal “tree”. Could we not equally suppose a universal “plant” which incorporates in itself the ideal maple, the ideal petunia, the ideal watermelon? Could we not go up the ladder another step and suppose a universal “life form” which incorporates humans, bluejays, lichens, bacteria? Or why not go down a step and have a universal oak, a universal cherry, a universal redwood?
It makes no more inherent sense to use “tree” as the mount point for a universal than any of these others. And to create universals for them all is simply to redraw the cladistic chart, adding “universal” to every label upon it.
I think the question about universals is whether we are saying something important about them, not necessarily just whether the author would agree. That would certainly make for an interesting discussion.
I think the issue with universals is simply whether mind or sensation rules at the center.
I think a good argument can be made as to whether you can deny universals without denying coherence in creation. But I’m not as stuck on that idea as I once was.
But I don’t think it all depends on what Plato thought.
What I disagree with is the suggestion that rejection of universals as applied to physical entities leads inevitably to an entirely materialistic, reductionist world view.
Universal truth, courage, love, honor? Yep, I’m on board with that. A universal toad, tulip, tiara, tablespoon? Nope, no way.
A minor correction: The saint depicted is St. Albert the Great — not Aquinas but rather his teacher, whose thought ranged even more widely. Albert was one of the first modern scientific thinkers, and is recognized still as a patron saint of science and a Doctor of the Church. (The figure shouldn’t be mistaken for Aquinas: first of all, there’s the mitre; second, Aquinas traditionally is depicted as (and apparently was) squat or stout.