Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

St. Thomas, treating of the individual in common, or the vague individual, in Summa theologiae I, q. 30, art. 4, says that a vague individual, such as “some human being,” signifies a common nature together with a determinate mode of being that belongs to singulars: namely, to subsist in itself and be distinct from others. THREE THINGS CAN BE DEBATED about this individual: first, whether an individual conceived in this way includes some account common to individuals, whether real or of reason; second, whether this common account is univocal or analogical; third, to which predication among the five predicables it belongs.

ON THE FIRST POINT, some think that individuals have only a community of negation or of intention, because all individuals agree in some negation or intention. They agree in a negation because no individual is universal or has common properties. They agree in an intention because all individuals contract a species and constitute an individual, which has the relation of being a subject to higher predicates. These authors deny that individuals agree in anything real that is common to them, since individual differences are primarily diverse and therefore agree in nothing; for Peter and Paul have nothing beneath the species of human being in which they agree. So says Martinez, above, question 3, On Species.

These authors directly oppose St. Thomas’s position. In the cited place in Summa theologiae I, reporting the view of some who said that the word “person” has only a community of negation or of intention, he excludes both: the word “person” is neither a name of negation nor of intention, but a name of a thing. “And therefore,” he says, “it must be said that even among human beings the word ‘person’ is common by a community of reason, not as a genus or species, but as a vague individual.” St. Thomas therefore holds that the same judgment applies to the community of person and of individual. But “person” signifies something common in the manner of a thing; therefore so does “individual.” He teaches the same in On the Power of God, q. 9, art. 2, ad 1¹, and q. 8, art. 3, ad 11², and in Sentences I, dist. 25, q. 1, art. 3, especially ad 4³.

THE REASON IS that individuation is the mode by which nature itself is made singular and individual. This mode can be signified in common, just as subsistence and personality can, although it is found only determinately and distinctly in singulars. Therefore it is not incompatible to have a common concept of the individual itself, not only on the side of nature but also on the side of individuation.

The minor premise is proved: When I hear the name “individual” or “person,” I conceive something signified by that name—not a nature, as is clear in itself, because an individual does not signify nature universally, but signifies the individuation of nature; nor does it signify individuation itself as determined and designated in a particular. For it is not the same to say “individual as such” and to name Peter or Paul determinately: the account of individuation belongs to many, whereas being Peter or Paul belongs to only one.

This is confirmed because when I say “some human being,” the word “human being” is not made singular but remains a common term. Otherwise “some human being” would mean the same as “this human being,” and “some human being” could not serve to form a contradiction with “no human being” unless both concerned a common term. But “some human being” is a vague individual and signifies not merely nature, but nature together with a mode of individuation. Therefore the mode of individuation is conceived in common; for if it were signified in the singular, “human being” would be made singular, as when we say “this human being.”

YOU WILL SAY that the mode of individuation is indeed conceived in common, but not as something real, rather as something of reason: either some negation, such as incommunicability in a person, or the negation that the collection of one individual’s properties is found in another, or some second intention of predicability or of being a subject.

But against this St. Thomas presses the point: “person” is not a name of negation or of intention, but a name of a thing; and we can say the same of singularity and particularity. In On the Power of God, q. 9, art. 2, ad 2 and 5⁴, St. Thomas explicitly distinguishes the account of intention in a person from the account of the mode of existing individually, which is sometimes designated by the name of an intention. It is clear that the very mode of singularity is found in reality and is something positive: it has a positive effect, namely, making a nature perfectly one, undivided in itself and divided from others. It likewise makes a nature capable of a positive effect, namely, existence and the accidents inhering in it insofar as it is singular; and the exercise of all real actions or passions belongs only to a singular. Numerical unity is not a pure negation, but includes something positive; otherwise a multitude, which is composed of numerical unities, would not be something positive. That personality or subsistence is something positive and not a pure negation must be proved in the question On Substance⁵ and in Physics VII⁶.

ON THE SECOND DIFFICULTY, namely, whether an individual in common is univocal or analogical, it seems that since individual differences themselves are primarily diverse, nothing univocal can be attributed to them under the account of individual difference. For one cannot consider something common in simple differences as contractible through differences, as St. Thomas ably deduced in Summa theologiae I, q. 3, art. 8, ad 3, and q. 90, art. 1, ad 3. One could therefore answer, not implausibly, that the concept of an individual is analogical with respect to all individual differences, and that it is contracted and abstracted in the way analogates are from their analogical concept: not by resolving two concepts, one abstracted from the other, but through the same concept made more or less explicit, and hence through transcendence within the determinate differences themselves. St. Thomas seems to suggest this in Summa theologiae I, q. 30, art. 4, when he says that “a vague individual signifies a common nature together with a determinate mode of being that belongs to singulars, namely, to subsist in itself and be distinct from others. But in the name of a designated singular, a determinate distinguishing feature is signified.” Thus according to St. Thomas, a common individual and a determinate individual differ only by whether the distinguishing feature is determinate or not.

Nevertheless, I think three things must be said here.

THE FIRST IS THIS: If we abstract the concept of individuation from the individual differences themselves, this incomplete concept of individual difference in common with all individual differences is not univocal but analogical. The reason is that it is like a transcendent concept imbibed in the differences themselves; it is not contracted by other differences, since that would lead to an infinite regress. And since those individual differences are primarily diverse, they cannot be resolved into two concepts, one abstracted from the other and included in it. Therefore the account is analogical, since it is included in the differences.

THE SECOND IS THIS: If in each genus and category we abstract in common, not the difference of individuation itself, which is something incomplete, but the individual itself, constituted from difference and nature in the manner of a whole and a complete being, then it is not properly universal and univocal, but universal and univocal only reductively and in a qualified sense; simply speaking, it is analogical. The reason is that this concept of an individual is formed from nature and a mode of individuation taken in common, and that mode is not univocal but analogical with respect to this or that individual difference. Therefore, although on the side of the concept of nature it contains individual differences potentially and can ground univocity with respect to them, on the side of the concept of individuation it is not univocal with respect to the differences in singulars. Thus, simply speaking, the concept does not remain univocal except in a qualified sense; simply speaking, it is analogical, because it does not abstract from the differences in every respect, so that individuation is not imbibed in them. Univocity requires the concept to be simply one. But if it is one only on one side, while on the other it does not simply set aside the differences but actually includes them, it remains partly one and partly diverse, which is to be analogical. For example, if animal were constituted not by the very account of sentient being but by rational and irrational taken in common, animal could not be simply univocal for human being and horse, since it would actually include their differences and would not abstract from them. Since an individual in common includes an individual difference that does not perfectly abstract from the individual differences themselves, it consequently cannot abstract from them and thus does not remain simply one. The case is different for a specific difference constituting nature according to quiddity and the concept of nature, for example, rational. Nature, which is composed of that difference and a genus, simply contains lower differences potentially and so abstracts univocally from them. But an individual difference in common does not constitute nature in the being of nature; it constitutes it in the state of individuation. With respect to this state, individuation in common cannot constitute a nature that abstracts perfectly from singular differences, but rather a mode of nature that includes them. If a vague individual, such as “some human being,” is taken as something complex by virtue of two concepts, then properly it is neither analogical nor univocal, because it is not one concept but several: one signifies nature, namely the word “human being,” and the other signifies the mode of individuation in common, namely the word “some.”

I SAY THIRD: If individuation is taken as the second intention of an individual, namely, as a relation of reason, it is simply univocal with respect to all relations of individuation. For the relation of individuation is a kind of relation of reason, namely, the lowest relation of being a subject, which can be divided univocally into this and that relation found in this and that individual conceived by way of being a subject. It therefore has a distinct foundation from the other relations and a distinct species, which is divided into its individuals, as other relations are.

ON THE THIRD QUESTION, namely, which kind of predication a vague individual belongs to, Cajetan here held that an individual is predicated not in answer to “what” but in answer to “what sort,” because it is predicated as a mode, which can properly be said to be predicated “in what mode,” not “in what.” He says this predicable is distinct from the others, just as a definition is predicated of its inferiors yet is not one of the five predicables; thus the vague individual is not one of the five predicables. However, as we said above⁷, a definition is not one of these five predicables because it is a complex “what,” whereas the predicables are simple. If, then, a vague individual is a complex “what,” it too will be excluded from the five predicables, like a definition. If it is taken as the force of an uncompounded term, it remains to explain why a vague individual does not belong to “what” among the five predicables, but is predicated in a mode distinct from them all. For if it is a univocal predicable and constitutes another mode of predicating besides these five, Porphyry omitted it improperly by listing only five.

We easily resolve this difficulty by saying that a vague individual is not univocal but analogical, and therefore is not contained among the predicables, which contain only univocal predicates. Or certainly only those things are contained among them that are properly universals in predication, since a universal is what is divided into the five predicables. Although an individual is conceived in common, it does not thereby become a universal, even by way of a difference or the third predicable. An individual is an individual, whereas a universal abstracts from every individuation, even individuation taken in common, since abstraction of a universal makes nature contractible through differences, while individuation in common is not contractible through differences; rather, it is the individual difference itself taken in common, which we showed above⁸ does not univocally abstract from particular differences. Nevertheless, this predication of an individual is reduced to predication of a species, not because it is predicated in answer to “what,” as the species itself is, but because it predicates a mode of specific nature, namely, individuation. A completing mode is reduced to the thing whose mode it is, as subsistence is reduced to substance. Yet an individual does not signify a proper attribute of being, as Vasquez says in Summa theologiae I, q. 31, art. 4, disp. 130, ch. 2, because a proper attribute follows a nature through a necessary connection and grounds a predication of eternal truth with it, and therefore belongs to the whole species; the mode of individuation does not stand to the nature of the species in this way. Although unity as a transcendental is an attribute of being, because it abstracts from formal or individual unity, individuation itself is not a proper attribute of a nature or species; with respect to the individual itself it is not a proper attribute either, for it would be an attribute of itself. It is therefore a completion of nature by way of its ultimate determination and indivision.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

First it is argued: It is incompatible for an individual to be conceived in common, because communicability and division into many are incompatible with it much more than with an angelic nature, since by its intrinsic concept an individual is predicable of only one. Therefore there is no vague individual.

Nor can one say that it is common denominatively but formally an individual and that by which a predication occurs, because that denomination of universality is contrary and repugnant to the formal account of an individual: being in one and being in many are opposed. Therefore an individual cannot receive that denomination. For when a subject is incompatible with an intention, it cannot be denominated by it; a human being, for example, cannot be denominated by the intention of genus. Therefore, if an individual is formally incompatible with being in many, it cannot receive the denomination of being predicated of many.

This is confirmed because the Philosopher says in the chapter On Substance⁹ that a primary substance is predicated of nothing, since it is said of no subject and is in no subject. But a primary substance is a singular in the genus of substance; therefore it cannot be conceived in common so as to be said of many. Finally, as we said, individual differences are primarily diverse. Therefore they cannot have anything common in which they agree; for if they had such a thing, the concepts of the individual differences would be resolved into it and consequently would not be primarily diverse, but would agree in something and differ through something added.

THE REPLY is that communicability is incompatible with a designated and determinate individual, but not with a vague individual taken in common. “Peter” or “this human being” cannot be communicated to many because they are determinate individuals. But “some human being” can be conceived as communicable to many, although it is not universal, and so it is not a subject to which such communication is incompatible.

Or, second, it is said that an individual is what is predicated of only one as that by which, or as the form of, such predicability. But this form, conceived as a certain thing and in the signified act, can denominatively and as that which receive the intention of being predicated of many. Hence, although such individuation is incompatible with being formally predicated of many and with the exercise of predication—since it cannot be the form and basis of predication of many—when conceived materially as a certain thing it is not incompatible with that denomination. A human being, however, even when conceived materially as a certain thing, cannot receive the intention of genus, because it does not abstract from many species.

The reply to the confirmation is likewise that a primary substance conceived determinately and distinctly is not predicated of any subject, but it can be so predicated when conceived in common with respect to this and that primary substance. Or it has this formally and as that by which, but denominatively and as that which it can be said of many.

To the other part of the argument it is replied that it proves individual differences do not have a univocal common concept that is simply one and abstracted, but it does not prove that they cannot have some common concept, at least analogical and in the manner of a transcendent concept imbibed in the differences, as was said.

Second it is argued: All individual differences and all individuals are signified in common under one and the same account, namely, insofar as they agree in the function of making something singular. Therefore the account common to them is univocal and the same.

The antecedent is proved: it is possible to conceive in common and indistinctly the mode or function of making something singular. Therefore that concept is at least univocal under that indeterminacy.

THE REPLY is that this function or mode of making something singular cannot actually abstract from determinate individual differences, because they are primarily diverse and cannot be resolved into two concepts, one contracting and the other contractible, as was said; each contracting difference participates in that function of making something singular. Although it is conceived indistinctly and in common, it is nevertheless conceived as not perfectly set apart from the differences themselves, but as actually included in them, although it does not explain them actually when conceived in common. Thus it abstracts from them in the way an analogical concept and transcendentals do from their inferiors, as is explained more fully in the treatise On Analogy¹⁰.