5. “Unde haec vox, homo est asinus, est vere vox et vere signum; sed quia est signum falsi, ideo dicitur falsa” (I, iii, 31). “Nomina significant aliquid, scilicet quosdam conceptus simplices, licet rerum compositarum …” (I, iii, 34).
6. The preposition per “denotes the instrumental cause” (IV Sent. 1, 1, 4). Elsewhere he affirms that “praedicatio per causam potest … exponi per propositionem denotantem habitudinem causae” (I Sent. 30, 1, 1). Or “dicitur Christus sine additione, ad denotandum quod oleo invisibili unctus est …” (Super Ev. Matthaei 1, 4). In all these and in similar cases the term denotatio is always used in the weaker sense.
7. De Rijk (1962–1967: 206), for example, affirms that in Abelard “a point of view appears to prevail that is not based on logic” and that the term impositio “stands in most cases for prima inventio” and that “rarely is it encountered with the sense of denoting some actual imposition in this or that proposition emitted by some actual speaker. When even the voces are separated from the res, their connection with the intellect leads the author into the realm of psychology, or confines him to that of ontology, since the intellectus in its turn is referred to reality. The theory of predication too appears to be extremely influenced by the prevalence of perspectives that do not belong to logic.” Hence, the medieval logicians “would have obtained better results if they had completely abandoned the very notion of signification” (De Rijk 1982: 173). But we cannot expect the medievals to think in terms of modern truth-functional semantics.
8. In the Vienna commentary on Priscian (see De Rijk [1962–1967]: 245), a name “significat proprie vel appellative vel denotando de qua manerie rerum sit aliquid.” Thus, denotare still appears to be connected with the significance of universal nature.
9. “Suppositio vero est acceptio termini substantivi pro aliquo. Differunt autem suppositio et significatio, quia significatio est per impositionem vocis ad rem significandam, suppositio vero est acceptio ipsius termini iam significantis rem pro aliquo.… Quare significatio prior est suppositione” (Tractatus VI, 3).
10. See Chapter 4 in the present volume.
11. We have in mind the first and more reliable part of the text, dedicated to the true Scotus and not to Thomas of Erfurt.
12. Concerning this issue, see Pini (1999).
13. For significare, see Boehner (1958) and for denotari, Marmo (1984).
14. “Item repraesentatum debet esse prius cognitum; aliter repraesentans nunquam duceret in cognitionem repraesentati tamquam in simile. Exemplum: statua Herculis nunquam duceret me in cognitionem Herculis nisi prius vidissem Herculem; nec aliter possem scire utrum statua sit sibi similis aut non. Sed secundum ponentes speciem, species est aliquid praevium omni actui intelligendi objectum, igitur non potest poni propter repraesentationem objecti” (Quaest. In II Sent. Reportatio, 12–13). See also Tabarroni (1984).
15. “Sicut per istam ‘Homo est animal’ denotatur quod Sortes vere est animal. Per istam autem ‘Homo est nomen’ denotatur quod haec vox ‘homo’ est nomen … Similiter per istam “Album est animal,” denotatur quod illa res, quae est alba, sit animal, ita quod haec sit vera: ‘Hoc est animal,’ demonstrandum illam rem, quae est alba et propter hoc pro illa re subjectum supponit.… Nam per istam: ‘Sortes est albus’ denotatur, quod Sortes est illa res, quae habet albedinem, et ideo praedicatum supponit pro ista re, quae habet albedinem.… Et ideo si in ista ‘Hic est angelus,’ subjectum et praedicatum supponunt pro eodem, propositio est vera. Et ideo non denotatur, quod hic habeat angelitatem … sed denotatur, quod hic sit vere angelus.… Similiter etiam per tales propositiones: ‘Sortes est homo,’ ‘Sortes est animal’… denotatur quod Sortes vere est homo et vere est animal.… Denotatur quod est aliqua res, pro qua stat vel supponit hoc praedicatum ‘homo’ et hoc praedicatum ‘animal’ ” (Summa, II, 2). There is at least one example, taken from the Elementarium logicae and cited by Maierù, of denotare in the active voice, in which Ockham distinguishes between the two meanings of appellare. The first meaning is Anselm’s, while, apropos of the second, Ockham writes: “aliter accipitur appellare pro termine exigere vel denotare seipsum debere suam propriam formam.” It would seem that here denotare stands for “govern” (or “require”) or postulate a coreference within the framework of the linguistic context.
16. For a similar use of denotari, see Ockham’s Quaestiones in libros Physicorum III, partial edition by Corvino (1955).
17. Maierù (1972) cites Peter of Mantua: “Verba significantia actum mentis ut ‘scio,’ ‘cognosco,’ ‘intelligo,’ etc. denotant cognitionem rerum significatarum a terminis sequentibus ipsa verba per conceptum.” Right after this sentence, Peter gives an example: “Unde ista propositio ‘tu cognoscis Socratem’ significat quod tu cognoscis Socratem per hunc conceptum ‘Socratem’ in recto vel oblique” (Logica, 19vb–20ra). It is evident that denotare and significare mean more or less the same thing, and that both terms are used to speak of propositional aptitudes—an intensional theme if ever there was one.
10
On Llull, Pico, and Llullism
We have only to leaf through a few studies on Christian Kabbalism (for instance, Secret 1964; French 1972; Evans 1973) to meet up with the cliché of Ramon Llull the Kabbalist, served up with minimal variations. Llull as magus and alchemist appears in the context of magic in the Prague of Rudolf II, as well as in the library of John Dee, who “was deeply immersed in Llullism and apparently accepted the traditional attitude toward the Llullist-cabalist synthesis” (French 1972: 113). Llull is present in the works of professed Kabbalists (such as Burgonovus, Paulus Scalichius, and the superficial and credulous Belot)1 as well as in those of the enemies of Kabbalism, like Martino Del Rio,2 to the point that, when Gabriel Naudé came to write his Apologie pour tous les grands hommes qui ont été accusés de magie (Paris, 1625) he felt obliged to defend the poor Catalan mystic energetically against any suspicion of necromancy. To add to the confusion, “in a later Renaissance transformation, the letters B through K used in the Llullian Ars became associated with the Hebrew letters that the cabalists contemplated and that supposedly signified angel names and the attributes of God. These Hebrew letters, which were thought to have a summoning power over the angels, were the same ones used by practical cabalists like John Dee” (French 1972: 49).