Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Prima Pars Artis Logicae

In explaining the definition of a name, we said that the word “straight” is included to exclude oblique cases. That these are not names is clear from Aristotle, On Interpretation I, the chapter on the Noun and the Verb,¹ because the proper account and function of a name is to signify directly by naming in itself; oblique cases do not signify in this way. Therefore, they are not names.

The major premise is clear from the etymology of “name.” The minor premise is proved as follows: to signify something by naming is to signify it as if by noting and designating what it is in itself. But the cases “whose” and “to whom” signify a thing as belonging to another, not in itself and per se. Therefore, they are not names; rather, they are called cases because they fall away from the proper account of a name. Hence Aristotle and St. Thomas, in the same place, lecture 4, also assert—

[Lacuna: Reiser p. 223 is missing from 259-270.pdf; in its place the leaf numbered 233 is bound in, which belongs to On the Discourse*. The text resumes on p. 224.]*

Likewise, oblique cases differ from the straight case only through a different exercise of the very same representation; they do not add a different representation.

THE REPLY: The antecedent is granted and the consequent denied. The difference is that some modes function only as an application of a concept, while others function as an explication of a concept. The former do not arise from a different way of understanding or representing a thing, but from the application and use of the intellect, insofar as, by understanding a relation of one thing to another, it applies and joins one to the other in different ways. Such are the relation of predicate and subject, the difference of supposition, and the like. Truth and falsity similarly arise from whether a thing is or is not. Thus, when a thing exists, truth arises in the statement; when it does not exist, falsity arises, while the statement itself remains unchanged, as Aristotle said in the chapter on Substance,² because the representation need not change; rather, the object’s existence changes, so that a different relation of conformity or nonconformity to it results. In the same way, from the object’s co-existence with cognition, intuitive or abstractive cognition arises without a new representation (according to the probable opinion). Thus, the modes cited in the argument are only applications of a concept, and so they do not vary it in its representation. But the mode of obliqueness, which a future or past tense in a verb, or “what,” “whose,” and “to whom” in a noun, imports, pertains to a different way of understanding one and the same thing, as the cited Holy Doctor says in the Quodlibet. Something is understood in the straight case as a person or thing acting, and in the oblique as something acted upon or as connoting the being of another. These are different modifications of the representation and of the represented object, arising from different ways of understanding it. For the relation of an acting, possessing, or undergoing person—“by whom” or “to whom”—is not signified as a thing, but as a mode of a thing, which is signified now as “from which,” now as “to which,” etc. A concept is therefore produced under that different mode of explication. Thus this is not mere application, but explication and a different representation.

THE SECOND ARGUMENT: Oblique cases vary the intrinsic representation of a concept; therefore, they differ categorematically from the straight case, contrary to St. Thomas’s first statement.

The consequent is proved: categorematic distinction, and distinction in the account of a term, is had through a different mode of expressing one and the same thing. For example, “I run” and “running” signify the same thing; nevertheless, one does so in the mode of something flowing, the other in the mode of a noun or something standing per se, so that one is a noun and the other a verb. The same can be seen in finite names, since they differ categorematically from infinite names.

A confirmation: “white” and “whiteness” differ categorematically by the absolute and the connotative, because although they signify the same thing, they differ on the side of what is connoted or substituted. Therefore, “whose” and “what” will all the more bring about categorematic diversity.

THE REPLY: The consequent is denied. In proof of it, the antecedent is distinguished. If categorematic distinction is had through a different mode of expressing the same thing, so that the difference is only on the side of signification, the antecedent is denied; if it is a difference on the side both of signification and of the thing signified, the antecedent is granted. Oblique cases, however, retain the same thing signified and only make oblique the mode and relation in which it is understood; therefore, they do not differ categorematically. Infinite names, on the other hand, transfer a name to another thing signified, namely, to the negation of its positive form, and so they differ categorematically on the side of the thing signified.

In reply to the confirmation: the antecedent is granted and the consequent denied. The absolute and the connotative, the common and the singular, differ through a mode of signifying attributed to the thing itself, which modifies the thing signified in itself. For example, a thing as absolute or with a connotation, in the mode of something adjacent or standing per se, imports in some way a diversity in the thing. Oblique cases, however, only express a different mode of consignifying that pertains to a certain deficiency of the noun itself insofar as it is a noun: the noun signifies a thing in such a way as to note or designate what it is, while an oblique case signifies that it belongs to or is for someone. This varies the mode of consignifying the thing in the account of a noun, and pertains to the mode of consignification, not to a mode that affects the thing in itself categorematically. For such a mode can also be designated through the nominative case and not only through an oblique case, as is clear in examples concerning the common, the connotative, the absolute, and so on.