(7) Now such connotative names include all concrete names of the first kind (these were discussed in Ch. 5). This is because such concrete [names] signify one [thing] in the nominative and another in an oblique case. That is to say, in the definition expressing what the name means there should occur one nominative term, signifying one thing, and another oblique term, signifying another thing. This is clear for all [names] like ‘just’, ‘white’, ‘animate’, ‘human’, and so on.

(8) Such [connotative] names also include all relative names. For in their definition there always occur different [terms] signifying [either] the same [thing] in different ways or else distinct [things]. This is clear for the name ‘similar’. For if ‘similar’ is defined, it should be put like this: “The similar is something having such a quality as [something] else has”, or it should be defined in some [other] way like that. I do not care much about the examples.

(9) It is clear from this that the common [term] ‘connotative name’ is superior to the common [term] ‘relative name’. This is so taking the common [term] ‘connotative name] in the broadest sense.

(10) Such [connotative] names also include all names pertaining to the category of quantity, according to those⁹ who maintain that quantity is not another thing than substance and quality. For example, ‘body’, according to them, should be held [to be] a connotative name. Thus, according to them, it should be said that a body is nothing but “some thing having [one] part distant from [another] part according to length, breadth and depth”. And continuous and permanent quantity is nothing but “a thing having [one] part distant from [another] part”, in such a way that this is the definition expressing what the name means.

(11) These [people] also have to maintain that ‘figure’, ‘curvedness’, ‘rightness’, ‘length’, ‘breadth’ and the like are connotative names. Indeed, those who maintain that every thing is [either] a substance or a quality have to hold that all the contents in categories other than substance and quality are connotative names. Even certain [names] in the category of quality are connotative, as will be shown below.¹⁰

(12) Under these [connotative] names there are also included all such [names as] ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘one’, ‘power’, ‘act’, ‘intellect’, ‘intelligible’, ‘will’, ‘volible’,¹¹ and the like. Thus, in the case of ‘intellect’, you have to know that for the meaning of the name it has this: “An intellect is a soul able to understand.” So the soul is signified by the nominative [name], and the act of understanding [is signified] by the other part. On the other hand, the name ‘intelligible’ is a connotative name and signifies the intellect both in the nominative and in an oblique case. For its definition is “An intelligible is something apprehensible by an intellect.” Here the intellect is signified by the name ‘something’. And the intellect is also signified by the oblique [form] ‘by an intellect’.¹²

(13) The same thing must be said about ‘true’ and ‘good’. For ‘true’, which is held [to be] convertible with ‘being’,¹³ signifies the same [thing] as [does] ‘intelligible’.¹⁴ ‘Good’ too, which is convertible with ‘being’,¹⁵ signifies the same [thing] as [does] the expression ‘something volible or lovable according to right reason’.

Translation by Paul Vincent Spade, CC BY 4.0. Source: Indiana University ScholarWorks. Changes: format conversion only (PDF to Markdown; footnotes, italics and paragraph numbers kept; margin line numbers and page headers dropped).

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Footnotes

1. ‘definition expressing what the name means’. That is, the “nominal definition.” ‘What the name means’ = quid nominis, literally, the “what of the name.” ↩

2. An adjectival verb is any verb besides the forms of ‘to be’. ↩

3. That is, merely absolute. ↩

4. Ditto. ↩

5. That is, the expressions’. ↩

6. Etymologically, ‘angel’ just means “messenger.” Ockham’s point is that we want a name here for a certain kind of substance, not a job description that that kind of substance happens to fill. ↩

7. Unlike human souls, which are also simple substances, but which do enter into composition with something else, namely, the human body. The result is the composite substance we call a human being. ↩

8. ‘informed by’. That is, having the form of. ↩

9. Including Ockham himself. See Ch. 44. ↩

10. Ibid. For that matter, certain names in the category of substance can be connotative too. For example, all the names of fictitious or impossible substances, like ‘goat-stag’, ‘chimera’, and so on. ↩

11. That is, something that can be an object of the will. ↩

12. ‘by an intellect. This is one word in the ablative case in Latin. ↩

13. That is, ‘true’ in the “transcendental” sense. In this sense, truth does not belong exclusively to propositions. In this sense, we speak of “a true friend,” “a true coin” (as opposed to a counterfeit), and so on. In this “transcendental” sense, everything whatever is a true something or other, so that ‘true’ is convertible with ‘being’. Of course, Ockham also recognizes the narrower sense of ‘true’ that applies only to propositions. ↩

14. This is a traditional but significant claim, going back at least to Parmenides. Everything that is is (at least in principle) intelligible, and conversely. ↩

15. ‘Good’ was also held to be one of the so called “transcendental” terms. They were “transcendental” because they “transcended” or went beyond the distinction among the categories. They “cut across” all the categories. ↩