James of Viterbo on Universals

Abstract

The chapter starts out with a brief discussion of the similarity alleged to exist by the editors of William Ockham’s Ordinatio between a series of opinions canvassed by Ockham on the nature of universals and a series of opinions listed by James of Viterbo on the nature of concepts. It then proceeds to expound James’s little known theory of concepts and universals, and concludes that, despite interesting parallels between his views and those of the Veneralibilis Inceptor, James’s theory is still very much committed to the realist assumptions that Ockham thought metaphysics needed to dispense with.