Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Logic at the Turn of the Twelfth Century 77
engaged in ‘mere’ exegesis is too easy, and it certainly does not explain the complexities
of many passages in Gerlandus. If these logicians were making a conscious
decision to treat logic as an art of language, neutral with respect to metaphysical
issues, then they were engaged in a rather sophisticated philosophical task. But
were they?
Yukio Iwakuma has also advanced a theory about the opponents of the prevocalists,
the realists. William of Champeaux is known, from the account in the
Story of my Disasters above all (see §6 above) to have advanced a realist theory
of universals which Abelard refuted, and then to have espoused a different variety
of realism. Iwakuma believes that he can attribute a corpus of works to William.
Early in his life, Iwakuma contends, William wrote the Introductiones of Master
G. and of Master William Paganellus (see above, § 4). A little later, he went
on to write P3, C8 (in its original version), H11 and P14. B8 and B10 are, he
believes, related to a lost commentary by William, and the revised versions of C8
are the works of William’s students, as it seems in his view is H9. Iwakuma’s
arguments for these attributions are based on shared prologue-patterns and the
fact of being copied in multiple manuscripts, which he considers to show that
they were all written by a single, influential master [Iwakuma, 1999, 101-22; cf.
Iwakuma, 2003a]. He also finds parallels between doctrines in these commentaries
and those in the Introductiones, and between doctrines attributed to William of
Champeaux in other sources and some passages in C8 and H11; whilst P14 is
attributed to him because it has passages identical with P3 and it refers in passing
to the ‘indifference’ theory of universals (particulars belong to the same species in
virtue of being non-different from each other; metaphysically speaking, this theory
is not in fact a variety of realism at all), which William adopted, according to
Abelard, after he had been forced to give up Material Essence Realism [Iwakuma,
1999, 114].
Unfortunately, the position is less easy to make out with reasonable probability
than Iwakuma believes. Although William may have had a part to play in
the composition of some of these commentaries, Iwakuma’s attribution of them to
William of Champeaux and his students is highly questionable [Cameron, 2004].
All of the commentaries are anonymous, and the fact that they have some similarities
in form (for instance, in their prologues) need not point to a single author.
Indeed, to look for the author is to misunderstand what sort of compositions these
commentaries are (cf. above, §2). Moreover, it is not yet clear to specialists how to
date the different versions of this group of commentaries; there are parallels with
Abelard’s Logica Ingredientibus which very probably result from Abelard’s ideas
— perhaps from lectures — being borrowed. These composite commentaries may,
when studied further, prove a valuable source of information for thinking about
universals in the first 30 or so years of the twelfth century. They certainly do not
provide an instant guide to what the position was c. 1100. [Cameron, Forthcoming
should clarify the position better than has been done so far, and explore the
philosophical relevance of this material.]