Harclay’s position on universals in his unedited commentary on the Sentences remains obscure, but it is clear that by the time he wrote Quaestio de universali at Oxford he is increasingly critical of Scotus’ strong realist theory of universals. Harclay states that in extramental reality the only things that exist are singular (quod in re extra animam nulla est res nisi singularis); commonness, it must be stressed, is not an extramental reality (Gal 1971:211). Harclay’s position is that there is no extramental common nature; two singular things (individual) are related by relations of similarity.
Harclay’s position is that an individual can be conceived either distinctly or indistinctly, and the example Harclay uses is that of Socrates and Plato. When Socrates is conceived distinctly, he is known through a particular concept, when he is conceived indistinctly, he is known through a universal concept. But, as Harclay argues, indistinct knowledge of Socrates is confused knowledge; that is, if one has indistinct knowledge of both Plato and Socrates standing a half mile away, one conceives of Plato and Socrates as human beings through a universal concept (human being) that does not distinguish Plato from Socrates. This knowledge is confused in that it cannot distinguish the universal concepts representing Plato and Socrates. Harclay insists that all knowledge, whether conceived distinctly or indistinctly, is of individuals. The distinct knowledge of Socrates is clearly of an individual, but so is the indistinct knowledge of Socrates in that the confused concept exists as a singular thing in the soul in that it is not predicable to another extramental thing. In the example above of indistinct knowledge, this is evident in the fact that there would be two indistinct concepts of human being in the soul of the observer.
The position defined above was criticized by Ockham because surprisingly Harclay argues that both the confused concept of Socrates and the singular extramental thing are both universal; the confused concept is universal because it represents many indistinct things in the species (different human beings), and the singular extramental thing is universal when it is conceived indistinctly. The obvious objection of Ockham being that the same thing cannot be both universal and particular (the singular extramental thing above would be both universal and particular for Harclay).
Harclay’s theory of real relations developed in conversation with and in reaction to Scotus’ theory of relations, as Henninger has demonstrated (Henninger 1989). The first position held by Harclay in his Commentary on the Sentences was similar to that of Scotus, but he would eventually come to reject Scotus’ ontology of real relations in his Quaestiones ordinariae.
Scotus held that a real relation was an extramental relative thing, a res, which is distinct from but inheres in its foundation. This formulation is rejected by Harclay who agrees with Scotus that in order for there to be a real relation it is necessary for there to be two extramental realities that exist, but argues that the relation is not a mind-independent thing (res) that inheres in a foundation. The point is that the relation is not a tertium quid, but a non-inhering condition in one of the extramental realities (things) to the other. For example, if Socrates is being seen by an Ox - to use Harclay’s example - there is not a real relative thing that inheres in Socrates. Rather, the Ox is ‘‘to the other,’’ or toward Socrates, in a new way, what Harclay calls aditas. Henninger has fleshed out Harclay’s account of real relations in great detail, demonstrating this ‘‘noninhering condition of a toward b’’ (aditas) as the distinctive aspect of Harclay’s theory of relations (Henninger 1987:118).
World History
