81 on Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics L. M

On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics

L. M. DE RIJK

i Introduction

aim of this study is, rather than to give a contribution to the T he history of semantics as such, to show (1) the interdependence of Ancient (and Mediaeval) semantic views and metaphysical doctrines, and (2) how some Mediaeval semantic points of view may be clarified when traced back to the corresponding Ancient views. As far as Antiquity is concerned, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics as well as Neoplatonism and Peripatetics are discussed. However, it should be noticed at the outset that in many cases it is practically impossible to discern exactly what precisely in the different views found in Late Antiquity came from what School, let alone to attribute the various views to specific authors. To my mind, in his inspiring paper on the logical doctrines in the Neoplatonic and the Peripatetic schools 1 A. C. Lloyd made the correct approach to the subject matter. When discuss- ing the question how much of the Neoplatonic views is borrowed from Stoic logicians his answer is that substantially it is nothing but the fact that the forms of Neoplatonism are sometimes conditioned by Stoic logical doctrine and terminology; what still remained under those adventitious shapes is the intrinsic impetus and natural direction of Neoplatonism itself (Lloyd, 158).

It seems to be useful to dwell a while on the question. Lloyd rightly points (loc. laud.) to Simplicius, who knew better than we what was Stoic and what was not. Well, this commentator tells us (In Arist. Categ., 28-9) that Porphyry's larger, lost commentary on the Categories expounded Stoic doctrines to the extent that these covered the subject

1 Neoplatonic Logic and Aristotelian Logic in: Phyonesis, A Journal for Ancient Philosophy (1) i956, 58-72 and 146-i60, henceforth quoted as Lloyd. This study should be corrected in many points, however.

81 matter in hand kata tgn koindnian tou logoit, but rarely does he recognise any acceptance of them. For that matter, coming across with a Neoplatonian some doctrine and terminology that we know as definitely Stoic does certainly not imply that the man was acting under Stoic influences. To give first an example pointed out by Lloyd, z58-9. Several passages in the Stoicoyum veteyum fragmenta (e.g. ed. Von Arnim, II, 23 21; 22824) make it clear enough that the view of the sensible substance as a bundle of (unique) properties indicated with the term `atlayoisma' is a common one with the Stoics. On the other hand it is found in Porphyry's Isagoge (721-23: idiotêtôn athyoisma) and in Plotinus (Enn. VI, 3, 8) ; Sextus Empiricus (Adv. math. VII, 276-7) explicitly refers this use of 'athroisma' to the Academy. That it is, however, pure Platonism may be gathered from Plato's using the term in a passage (Theaetetus, 157 B-C) where he is denying that sensible particulars are substances or even genuine sub- jects of a proposition. Therefore the conclusion can be drawn that the description of the sensible particular as nothing but a bundle of properties' originated with Plato and coalesced in the Middle Academy with Stoic logic and ontology and became a technical tool in the Stoa as well as in the Academy, with each of them for their own motives. Lloyd is quite right in remarking that when it reappeared in the Neo- platonic version of Aristotelean logic, it would have sounded to con- temporaries as Stoic; its doctrinal justification, however, is found as 2 early as in the Theaetetus passage.2 There is another famous issue of the kind, viz. the allegued Stoic influence in the Dialectica commonly ascribed to St. Augustine. Bar- wick held this work to be made out of a Stoic work on logic.3 As a matter of fact the Augustinean tract does contain many things which are quite common to the Stoics, as may appear from Barwick's analysis of it (ofi. cit., 8-21). However, Barwick himself remarks (z9; 22) that the (allegued) Stoic 'Vorlage' must have been of a peculiar type: it occasionally joined the Aristotelean logicians in using specifically Peri- patetic terminology. This should have made him somewhat suspicious, indeed. Whenever in St. Augustine's Dialectica doctrines and terminology are found which come across in Stoic logic, too, it is quite possible, indeed, that the matter concerned is of a definitely Platonian (c.q.

2 Cp. Timaeus, 49-50--l shall return on the item 'subject viewed as a bundle of properties' in the next paper of this serie. 3 Karl Barwick, ProbleJne der stoischen Sprachlehre und Rhetorik, in : Abh. der sachs. Akad. der Wiss. zu Leipzig, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 49, Heft 3, Berlin 1957, 8.