(1) Now that we have talked about terms that are not applicable to any one universal [term] — like ‘definition’, ‘description’, and the like (because no one universal [term] is a definition or description, but rather each definition and description is put together out of several universal [terms]) — we now have to talk about terms that are consequent1 on any universal [term]. ‘Subject’, ‘predicate’ and the like are such terms.
(2) As for ‘subject’, first you have to know that, as Damascene says in his Logica, Ch. 82 :
‘Subject’ is said in two senses, one with respect to existence and the other with respect to predication. With respect to existence, as a substance is subjected to accidents. For they have being in it, and outside it they do not substand. But with respect to predication, the subject is a particular.
(3) It can be gathered from this that something is called a “subject” because it really substands another thing that inheres in it and really accrues to it. In this sense, ‘subject’ is taken in two ways. [In one way, it is taken] strictly, and in that sense a “subject” is so called with respect to the accidents really inhering in it, without which it is able to subsist. But every thing that substands [something] else, whether the thing it substands is a really inhering accident or whether it is a substantial form informing the thing to which it accrues, is called a “subject” in the broad sense. In this sense, matter is called a “subject” with respect to substantial forms.
(4) But ‘subject’ is said in another sense [too]. For [in this other sense] it is the part of a proposition that precedes the copula, of which something is predicated. For instance, in the proposition ‘Man is an animal’, ‘man’ is the subject, because ‘animal’ is predicated of ‘man’. And ‘subject’ so taken can be taken in many senses: (a) In one sense, everything that can be put in subject position in any proposition whatever, true or false, is called a “subject” in a broad sense. Thus, any universal [term] can be a subject with respect to [any] other, as is plain with propositions like ‘Every animal is an ass’, ‘Every whiteness is a crow’, and so on.
(5) ‘Subject’ can be taken in another sense, strictly. In this sense, what is put in subject position in a true proposition where there is direct predication3 is called a “subject”. In this sense ‘man’ is a subject with respect to ‘animal’, but not the other way around.
(6) In a third sense, more strictly, what is the subject4 in a demonstrated conclusion that is known, or is apt to be known, by a science properly so called is called a “subject”. Taking ‘subject’ in this sense, there are as many subjects grouped together in a science as there are conclusions having distinct subjects.5 Thus, in logic there are many subjects, and likewise in metaphysics and in natural philosophy.
(7) ‘Subject’ is taken most strictly in [yet] another sense, for something that is first (by some kind of primacy) among such subjects.6 In this sense, sometimes the most common subject among such subjects is called the “subject” [of the science], and sometimes the one that is the more perfect, and so on for other ways of being primary.
(8) Nevertheless, this is common to all [these kinds of subject],7 that each of them is a subject by predication.
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
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I am not sure in what sense the following terms are “consequent” on universal terms. ↩
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John Damascene, Dialectica, Ch. 16, PG 94, col. 582A; Robert Grosseteste’s Latin version, Ch. 8, (Owen A. Colligan, ed., St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1953), p. 10. ↩
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In direct predication a superior is predicated of its inferior. ↩
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In senses (a) or (b). ↩
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Ditto. ↩
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That is, among subjects in sense (c). ↩
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That is, kinds (a)–(d). ↩