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Monday, December 14, 2009

L. M. de Rijk

L. M. de Rijk, born at Hilversum (Nederland) November, 6 1924, is Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Leiden, and Honorary Professor at the University of Maastricht.
A complete bibliography of his writings up to 1999 is available in: Maria Kardaun and Joke Spruyt (eds.) - The winged chariot. Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk - Leiden, Brill, 2000. pp. XV-XXVI. I made some corrections, updated the bibliography and omitted the publications in Dutch.


"The present volume is dedicated to De Rijk on the occasion of his 65th birthday and his retirement as a professor in Ancient and Medieval philosophy at the University of Leiden. It contains fourteen of De Rijk's philosophical studies (articles) on medieval logic and semantics. Research on manuscripts and editions of texts have not been included. As the table of contents shows, the studies cover the period from Boethius (6th century) to William of Ockham (ca. 1285 - 1347) and have been ordered according to centuries.

Now some remarks on the main lines of De Rijk's interpretations of mediaeval semantics and metaphysics, as found in the studies collected here. The title of the volume, first, indicates De Rijk's interest in Mediaeval thinkers' views on reality. These views were influenced by theology (see esp. study I). However, medieval semantic views (i.e. the philosophical theories on how terms signify) were basic as the starting point in ontological speculation. Man expresses his views on reality by way of language. De Rijk's aim is to understand how the Medieval philosophers and theologians interpreted reality according to their own semantic views.
De Rijk distinguishes between the use of a name in its name-giving function as opposed to statemental predication, where a term acts as the predicate term of a proposition. The contextual position of a name (in syntax) affects the semantic value. De Rijk gives as examples of these syntactical contexts: first of all, the proposition (in its general form: subject - predicate); further on, intensional contexts (where verbs like 'to know' influence what is said in the proposition) and modal contexts (with modal terms like 'possible' etcetera). De Rijk's analysis of an intensional contest can be seen most clearly in his studies on Peter Abailard (1079 - 1142) (studies II - VI). Universals or general names occur in contexts with verbs which denote an act of the mind, viz. abstraction. According to De Rijk, Abailard interprets universals as the intrinsic objects of the acts of understanding (see especially study III, p. 145). If someone conceives of the general name 'man', there is, in De Rijk's line of interpretation, an act of 'man-understanding'.
(...)
Word order is considered a 'rendez-vous' of logic and ontology (see especially study VIII). In asinus cuiuslibet hominis currit (which means, in an awkward litteral rendering: 'everybody's ass is running') the subject term 'ass' which (in the Latin text) precedes the distributive sign 'everybody's' is not affected by it and, accordingly, refers to one particular individual which is the common property of everybody. On the other hand, in cuiuslibet hominis asinus currit ('each man's ass is running'), in following the sign the term 'ass' is prevented from pursuing its primary inclination to refer to some individual and stands 'opaquely' for a multitude of individuals.
The verb esse ('to be') and its related forms - e.g. ens ('being'), as well as connected terms such as existentia ('existence') - are pivotal terms in medieval metaphysics, ontology and theology. The first formal object of metaphysics in the Middle Ages is either the highest spiritual substances - God and the angels (this interpretation is ascribed to the Arab Averroes) - or 'being in general' (in the interpretation given by the Arab Avicenna). In the Latin Middle Ages both views are advocated, as well as a combination. Whichever view is taken, the semantics of esse is crucially important (see especially studies I and V)."

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