Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

According to Gilbert, it is the total form that individuates, and it includes all the properties the thing has over its whole existence. As an added bonus, Gilbert now has a nice story to tell about that other, more celebrated difficulty, the problem of universals. We arrive at a universal by noticing the similarity between singular characteristics, for example the four instances of humanity in the four Marx Brothers. But, Gilbert insists, everything that really exists is singular. Universal humanity, freed from connection to any individual human, is only a conceptual construct. Still, it guides our thought in a useful and accurate way, since each human really does possess his or her own singular humanity. On this score Gilbert is fairly close to Abelard’s nominalism. We can also guess what he might say to the obvious complaint that he is just helping himself to the idea that Groucho’s humanity, cigar-smoking, and so on are “singular.” Is he assuming too much here? After all, what we wanted to explain in the first place is how it comes to be that there are single things in the world, and not just universal things. To this Gilbert can reply that there are no universal things: nothing can exist without being singular. If Groucho is a cigar-smoking human, then his cigar-smoking and humanity must be real. So they must be singular.