Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

one thing, and Harpo’s humanity, which is something else, but these two humanities are similar to one another? If we take the first alternative, we are committed to something that really exists out in the world and is universal. If we take the second alternative, then true universality occurs only in the mind of someone who abstracts and isolates humanity as a general concept. An analogy might help here. The first option would be like your watching the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup on television while I am watching it in a cinema. One and the same movie is being viewed in two places at the same time. The second option would be like two actual bowls of duck soup made according to the same recipe. They taste exactly alike, but were made from different sets of ingredients and are two distinct meals. (Vegetarians may want to vary the example slightly, using the Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers.) In the twelfth century, philosophers working in France split over the correct understanding of universals, and more or less along the lines I’ve just indicated. Some thinkers, whom we can call “realists,” believed that humanity is something real that exists in the world. It is present, or instantiated, every time that a human exists. Others found this impossible to accept, and insisted that everything that really exists is something particular. Historians refer to this camp as the “nominalists.”