Virtually, all the writings of Jerome contain explicit polemics with nominalism and with nominalist logic. According to him, the universals are not only mere terms or signs, but they play a key role in the area of ‘‘real propositions” (propositio realis). It is because the truth of a real proposition precedes the signs; it is therefore such a proposition which itself testifies about itself, and itself designates itself. This is the case with every individual thing - for instance, in the case of a concrete man, who signifies an individual man anD his internal nature that is essentially proper to the man (albeit formally distinct From him). Thus the truth of the proposition ‘‘man is a living being’’ does not exist in this text, but in re, inasmuch as an individual man is constituted from the genus of a living being and from human nature. Such a proposition, thus, is not based on written or spoken Language. It is based on the ontological order of things, that is, on a level that Jerome separates from the level of language (Kaluza 1997). On the contrary, the real proposition establishes a basis for the possibility for a proposition in language because the real proposition precedes the proposition of terms and, properly speaking, causes it - just as a real thing is the cause of its own signs. Therefore, reality precedes designation by signs and thus, according to Jerome, the true logic is not based on signs, but on things: Vera logica non in signis sed in rebus est fundata.
World History
