Introduction

1. Whether the Moderate Realism of Aquinas is a Better Approach to Understanding the World Around Us than Ockham’s Nominalism

2. Introduction • The problem of universals: Do essences exist? Are they real? • The interdependence between epistemology and metaphysics • The denial of essences in Ockham’s nominalism and its effects in all areas of philosophy • Metaphysics • Logic • Epistemology • Anthropology • Ethics • Politics

3. Real Distinction Between Essence and Existence in Aquinas’s Moderate Realism • The real difference in God’s mode of being from all other being • Being is composed of essence and existence for created being • In God essence and existence are one • Existence is an act • Created things participate in their act of existence which they receive from God’s creating act • Essence receives and limits existence in created things • What is substance? Operation follows upon being

4. Are Essences Real? • Plato called them forms or ideas and believed they existed in “another world” • “Two worlds” in the Extreme Realism of Plato • Concrete world we know through our senses • Forms world through which we know concepts • Aquinas’s moderate realism says one world • Things exist as particulars • Universal concepts are real abstracted forms of substances • Nominalism is the opposite of Extreme Realism

5. Nominalism • Pure Nominalism says universals don’t exist • William of Ockham: “… universals are not things other than names” • Denial of essences in Nominalism • No basis in nature for the similarity in things outside the mind • Denial of universals in language • Conceptualism (a milder form of nominalism) admits universal in the mind but denies essences or any natural basis of similarity of things outside the mind

6. Ockham’s Conceptualism • Concepts are mere groupings of things performed mechanistically by the mind • Words are signs signifying the mental concepts • Signs don’t communicate similarity in nature because there is no basis for the similarity outside the mind • Being is equivocal – the being of each thing is in every way different from the being of another thing • Being for Aquinas is analogical – each being is similar but different from every other being • Metaphysics is the key to understanding the world around us

7. The Failure of Ockham’s Nominalism • If all trees are different, how can we call them all trees? • A self-contradiction by using terms we deny • Signification of a universal concept by means of a sign, which is an image or picture cannot communicate reality reliably • The denial of real natural classes without a metaphysical basis for their assortment into classes in the mind • A failure to account for the similarity in things outside the mind

8. Terms Are Either: • Univocal – has one and only one meaning • In “I ate an apple” ate and apple are univocal • Equivocal – has two or more quite different meanings • When I say “the river has two banks” and “the town has two banks” banks is used equivocally • Analogical – has two or more meanings that are: • Partly the same and partly different • Related to each other • When I say “a good man gave his good dog a good meal” the term good is used analogically

9. Aquinas’s View of Nature and Creation: the Analogy of Being • What does Aquinas mean by the term natural? • Natural kinds • Caused by God supernaturally • The world is a single co-participate organized in relation to one another • Natural things have an origin and end • God possesses every being possible in His self-knowledge • God is All Perfections: Goodness, Beauty, Truth… • For example, The Goodness in God is analogically the goodness in natural things

10. The Problem of the One and the Many • “How can that which is universal in the mind represent what is not universal in reality? • Things exist as particulars, however they exist as composites of form and matter. • Essential forms are received in matter • Essence receives and limits existence • The first act of the intellect: understanding • Substantial forms are received in the senses and an intelligible species is abstracted by the intellect • The intelligible species is that by which the active intellect knows universal concepts of “things in themselves”

11. Duns Scotus’s Influence on Ockham • Duns Scotus believes being is univocal • “God and creation are situated within one extension of being with God being more powerful in every respect”1 • Denies Aquinas’s analogy of being • Denies analogical use of language, language is univocal • Consequently, God’s supernatural influence, grace, is viewed outside the extension of univocal being and super-added • Effects split between faith and reason, philosophy and theology…pushing religion to the margins of humanism • Voluntarism is a result of nominalism and denies natural law • Ockham goes one step further and believes being is equivocal – there is no similarity in particulars outside the mind • 1 Joel Garver, “Nominalism and the Modern”, www.joelgarver.com

12. Deconstruction of Moderate Realism • Depends on the denial of essences and functionality of substances - OperatioSequitorEsse or “Operation follows upon being” • Conceptualist path in Locke and Kant - Idealism • Nominalist path in Hume and Hobbes – Empiricism • Both paths deny: • Causality • Teleology • Natural Law • The natural “fallacy” in Hume – an “ought” cannot be determined from an “is” • Denial of a discernible scale of natural values prevents moral norms that are objective, universal and intelligible

13. All Areas of Philosophy Depend Upon a Legitimate Metaphysics Source: Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic, South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine’s Press, 2004, p. 360.