Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Latin Tradition of Logic to 1100 51
that event, and is fixed because it is passed, then it presents a serious obstacle
to maintaining that the events known could be otherwise [see Marenbon, 2005b,
passim]
Elsewhere, Anselm does enter into a far complex discussion of modality, which
has been seen as an early attempt ‘to codify some aspects of the semantics implied
in the Christian use of the notions of necessity and possibility’ [Knuuttila, 1993,
70, and see 70-4]. His longest exploration of these themes is found in a set of
‘Philosophical Fragments’ preserved in a single, Lambeth manuscript [Anselm,
1969, 334-51]. A study of this side of Anselm’s thought would be out of place,
however, in an account of his logic, since he develops it in the course of thinking
about the philosophy of action and of will. Anyone interested in Anselm as a
logician should, however, examine the ‘Philosophical Fragments’, since they show
Anselm’s logical, and indeed analytical cast of mind, as he ranges widely over
areas of philosophy suggested by his theological interests, but approached in a
thoroughly philosophical spirit.
Anselm’s ‘De Grammatico’: the argument
The only finished work by Anselm not on a theological subject is a dialogue De
grammatico [Anselm, 1946]. Anselm’s biographer, Eadmer, says that he composed
the work in the same period (1080-5), just after the Proslogion, as he composed
his dialogues on truth and free-will. The dating has been challenged by Richard
Southern, who argues that Eadmer is simply misinterpreting Anselm’s own preface
to On Truth [Southern, 1990, 65]; Southern suggests the work was written twenty
years earlier. Although he is right to point out that Eadmer’s dating is in principle
open to question, there is no good reason to make this work much earlier than
anything else by Anselm. Indeed, as more knowledge is gained of the grammatical
and logical debates around the year 1100, it seems that there is a great deal in
common between its main themes and some of Anselm’s concerns — a point which
should emerge in the course of the next chapter.
The dialogue is about the problem of the place of denominatives, such as grammaticus,
in the scheme of the Categories. The early medieval notion of denominatives
(or ‘paronyms’: Grk. parônuma) comes from a short passage in the
Categories (1a12-5) and Boethius’s commentary on it [Boethius, 1891, 167D-8D].
Aristotle’s example of a denominative is grammatikos: denominatives, he says,
‘get their names from something’ — the grammatikos, for instance, from grammar.
The wider theory that emerges from his brief remark and Boethius’s amplification
is this: - A thing can often be named from one of its accidents, by using
the word for the accident with a change of ending. For instance, the male person
who is informed by the accident of knowledge of grammar (grammatica) canbe
called a ‘grammaticus’ (the gender-specification is because the ending of the word
indicates masculine sex); the man who is informed by an accident of whiteness
(albedo) can be called ‘albus’, ‘the white man’. ‘Grammaticus’ and ‘albus’ are,
therefore, denominative words. But Aristotle talks of denominative things: inhis