Until recently, Wyclif’s philosophy has generally been described in terms of the vigorous arguments for philosophical realism that characterize his metaphysics, which has led to the use of the term “ultrarealism” to describe his thought. The result of this approach has been the assumption that Wyclif’s interests lie primarily in revivifying an ontological program harking back to the twelfth-century in a reactionary rejection of the Ockhamist Moderni conceptualism. This is a mischaracterization of Wyclif’s philosophical approach caused in large part by nineteenth-and twentieth-century scholars’ unfamiliarity with the sensitivity to the logic and semantics of terms and propositions pervading philosophical discourse in Oxford in the fourteenth century. Before engaging in the metaphysics and philosophical theology that make up the Summa de ente, Wyclif had explored questions of the reference of terms and propositions in a number of earlier treatises, including the three grouped together in De logica, and a treatise on Insolubilia. Wyclif’s logic is less notable for innovation in inferential reasoning than it is for the clarity with which it introduces students to the general elements of Aristotelian syllogistic. The popularity of Wyclif’s logic that continued into the fifteenth century, after his more controversial works had been condemned, arose from the utility of its introductory treatise, the first of the three logical treatises. The second two treatises are less approachable, in large part because Wyclif begins his chapters with an ostensibly traditional question about how terms refer with particular propositions and then invariably launches into complex analysis of the relation of species of reference to the semantics of propositions and the corresponding relation of such propositions to questions in ontology. His chief interest is in establishing a theory of propositional realism, the understanding of which makes his ontological realism, his Scripture hermeneutics, and other significant elements of his philosophical theology much more intelligible.
Wyclif’s conception of the relation of propositions to things is that whatever is, is a proposition. ‘‘A proposition,
Broadly speaking, is ‘a being signifying in a complex way’; and so, because everything that is signifies in a complex way that it exists, everything that is can well enough be said to be a proposition.’’ The problems that arise from this are manifold: how to account for propositions expressing absence or nonexistence, or for false propositions, or for propositions of indeterminate or future contingent truth-value? In what sense is the fact that a stone is lying in the road propositionally structured? Why should there be a necessary isomorphism between the propositions we construct to describe our perceptions of reality and the nature of the world outside our minds?
His theory of the reference of terms is derived from Ockham, who understood that terms naturally signify concepts, which naturally represent things in the world. Wodeham followed Ockham, and introduced the complex significable, akin to a state of affairs to which our statements about the world refer, but did not posit an isomorphism between things in the world, the complex significable that relates the things in the world, and the propositions we construct describing the complex significable. Wyclif made the leap to suppose that reality is structured in exactly the way that the sentences we form in our minds, and with our words, suggest. He explains that there are five kinds of propositions: mental, vocal, and written ones, real ones, and true ones. The latter two are especially relevant to Wyclif’s realist ontology.
A ‘‘real proposition” is the individuated reality of a creature, made up of a subject and a predicate. Take Socrates: in him there is this person, an individuated particular of the human species, which functions as the subject. In him there is also a human nature, which is essentially present in the subject as a predicate. Uniting the subject, Socrates, and the predicate, a human nature, is his essence, the actualization of the union of the two, making the real proposition ‘‘Socrates (subject) is (essential actualization) a human being (predicate).’’ A ‘‘true proposition’’ is a truth significant apart from the thing. For example, ‘‘To be a man’’ is a complex truth, indicating the truth of a number of real propositions considered in themselves. That is, the existence of all the subjects having human being as a predicate essentially actualized in them comprises a reality ‘‘to be a man.’’ This is functionally similar to Adam Wodeham’s complex significable. So there are real propositions existing as individuals in creation, and true propositions existing as describing, and organizing, the individuals.
As a linguistic proposition has subject and predicate, so every created being has a predicative structure. Predication, then, becomes more than just a topic for philosophy of language; it is the primary element to be described in metaphysics. Wyclif lists three kinds of predication in De universalibus that account for every aspect of a particular thing’s being. Real formal predication expresses the existence of a form in a subject. The proposition ‘‘Peter is a man’’ describes the state of affairs of the form Humanity existing in Peter, while ‘‘Peter is musical’’ describes the state of affairs of a formal quality in Peter whereby he is musical. Real essential predication indicates an indissoluble, real identity between subject and predicate, although we can rationally distinguish between the definition of the subject and the definition of the predicate. Hence, while ‘‘Peter is a man’’ and ‘‘Humanity is in Peter’’ appear to say the same thing, the first expresses a truth about a particular being, Peter, while the second seems to have for its subject Humanity. Humanity is formally distinct from Peter, for we conceive of an idea of Humanity from our experience of Peter, but we cannot actually separate Humanity from Peter. When we say something like ‘‘Humanity entails being a rational animal,’’ the referent is this Humanity that is formally distinct from each of its subjects. This is the basis for what Wyclif will describe as Universals of Communality in his description of the kinds of universals; it is not something really distinct from particular human beings, but it is a real something about which true propositions are formulable. The questions that naturally arise from this asserted isomorphism between propositions and reality, such as the referent of propositions about nonexistent entities like ‘‘All chimeras growl,’’ are the focus of De logica, making it absolutely necessary for understanding his realist ontology.
World History
