Bad Names: A Linguistic Argument in Late Medieval Natural Law Theories

Abstract

The history of the use of a particular argument may seem rather like far-fetched pedantry, but I hope to show that the increasing prominence of the argument that is the subject of this paper is a symptom of important general tendencies that mark the transition from medieval to what we call early modern philosophy. Understanding the argument will, therefore, help us to understand the changes that went to make up this transition. Since a look at this transitional period is the culmination of my history, it should be made clear that by late medieval here I mean late. There is no point in this paper in debating when or where there was a renaissance or how many renaissances there might have been, but the period I have in mind extends to include some scholastics of the early seventeenth centruy. We must, however, start at the beginning and examine the argument in its original setting. There can surely be no more appropriate way for a medievalist to begin a paper than with a text from Aristotle. The Aristotelian text that provides the basis for my discussion is a quite familiar one from theNicomacheanEthic$. In Book II, Chapter 6 (1 107a, 8-14) Aristotle says,

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