Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

74 John Marenbon
the course of these disputations I forced him through the most clearly
reasoned arguments to change his old view about universals, indeed to
reject it. He held the view about the commonness of universals according
to which the same thing as a thing (essentialiter) isatoneandthe
same time whole within its single individuals, which do not differ as
things (in essentia) but only through the variety of their many accidents.
He corrected his view by saying from then on that the thing is
the same, not as a thing, but through non-difference (non essentialiter
sed indifferenter). And, since for logicians the chief question about
universals has always been in this — so much so that even Porphyry,
writing about universals in his Isagoge, does not presume to give a
conclusion, saying ‘To treat of this is extremely profound’ — when
William had no choice but to correct, or rather abandon, this view, his
lectures came to be so badly regarded that they were hardly accepted
on the other parts of logic, as if the whole of this art were contained
in that one view, on universals.[Peter Abelard, 1967, 65:80 – 66:100]
The first view held by William is usually labelled ‘Material Essence Realism’; a
fuller account of it, along with his own counter-arguments, can be found in both
of Abelard’s mature Porphyry commentaries (from c. 1119, and c. 1125). But
Abelard may not have developed by 1108 the same arguments that he would later
use. Nor is it clear whether Material Essence Realism was William’s invention,
or merely the theory he happened to have adopted. Moreover, Abelard wrote
his Story of my Disasters probably c. 1131, nearly a quarter of a century after
this dispute with William, and with the aim of preparing for his re-entry into the
Parisian schools by casting his controversial career and personal life in a favourable
light, under which he was the victim of envy. It would not be surprising if he
had magnified the importance of his difference with William or the extent of his
intellectual victory.
There are also chronicle sources which provide some names and suggestions
about logic in the late eleventh century. In Hermann of Tournai’s account (written
1142 or later) of the restoration of the abbey at Tournai by Odo (who would
go on to write On Original Sin), he describes a certain master Rainbertus of Lille
as reading logic ‘in the same way as certain contemporaries in voce’ [Hermann of
Tournai, 1883, 275]. He contrasts Rainbertus unfavourably with Odo, who ‘read
logic for his pupils in re in the manner of Boethius and the ancient doctors’ (...
eandem dialecticam non iuxta quosdam modernos in voce, sed more Boetii antiquorum
doctorum in re discipulis legebat). Hermann goes on to apply to logicians like
Rainbertus a comment that Anselm addresses to Roscelin (in the revised version
of his treatise), that they are not ‘dialecticians, but heretics in dialectic’ [Hermann
of Tournai, 1883, 275]. A chronicle from Fleury (c. 1110) records that at the time
when Lanfranc died, that is to say, 1087, the eminent logicians were John, who argued
that the art of logic is ‘concerned with utterances’ (vocalis), and his followers,
Robert of Paris, Roscelin of Compiègne and Arnulf of Laon [Bouquet, 1781, 3]. Of
these names, Roscelin is well known through Anselm’s testimony, and it may be