Family Resemblance in the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

In 'Universals and Family Resemblances'l Renford Bambrough claimed that Wittgenstein solved the problem of universals, and held that this solution is (quoting Hume on Berkeley on abstract ideas) 'one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters'. More recently, J. W. Thorp argued that Wittgenstein, far from solving the problem to which the scholastics addressed themselves, did not even address himself to that problem.2 I want to argue a third view: the doctrine of family resemblance is hoary. The doctrine is at least as old as medieval moderate realism, and perhaps is as old as the Categories. More particularly, I will argue that Aquinas accepted the doctrine, though I think that Abelard, Scotus, and Ockham were also proponents of family resemblance. To simplify matters even further, I will largely confine my discussion to Chapter Three of On Being and Essence.3 If my interpretation of Aquinas' view is correct, Bambrough and Thorp are both wrong, though for different reasons. Naturally, such a claim is always somewhat perverse. We cannot expect Aquinas to have used the language of twentieth century philosophy, nor to have been preoccupied with the same issues that plague ourselves. Aquinas never heard of 'the family resemblance theory', nor even of its Latin equivalent. But though Aquinas' words may have been different, and the context in which he argued might have been different, and though his views on related topics may have differed greatly from Wittgenstein's, that does not prevent his having agreed with, and even argued for, the two claims I take to be central to the theory of family resemblances. The first of these claims is that no two things, both of which are F, ever are F because they possess some third, numerically identical thing, F-ness, in common. (One might object that Wittgenstein never claimed this, but I think Bambrough's Wittgenstein did, and it is with that Wittgenstein that I am concerned here.) This is the anti-realist side of the doctrine. Did Aquinas disagree with this? Aquinas, following the Categories, equated universals with genera and species, and said, 'human nature ... can have the character of a species