A Comparative Investigation of Common Nature and its Epistemological and Linguistic Realizations in Avicenna's and Scotus's Philosophy of Language

Subject Areas : Epistemological researches

parisa najafi ^{1 *} , fateme kookaram ² , Mahmood Reza Moradian ³

1 - Assistant Professor, Department of English Language, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Lorestan University of Lorestan, Khorramabad, Iran.
2 - Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Mazandaran University
3 - Associate Professor, Department of English Language, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Lorestan University of Lorestan, Khorramabad, Iran

Received: 2024-12-27 Accepted : 2025-04-21 Published : 2025-05-14

Keywords: Common Nature, Epistemological, Linguistic, Avicenna, Scotus,

Abstract :

The purpose of this paper is a comparative investigation of the common nature and its epistemological and linguistic realizations in Avicenna's and Scotus’s philosophy of language. As the primary and secondary sources show, Avicenna and Scotus recognize the common nature as a proper existence which is neither universal nor particular. Instead, it is prior and indifferent. The, the common nature is realized in the real or physical existence. In the next realization, it is conditioned to mental existence. According to these two philosophers, universality, particularity, unity, and plurality are concepts that are related to the mental existence. For Scotus, the common nature is even less than unity. The mental existence for them includes individual phantasms and universal concepts, which are later synthesized into definitions of different types, the explanation and exemplification of which would appear in the text of the paper. Avicenna talks of complete and incomplete essential definitions, complete and incomplete descriptive definitions, and nominal definitions of different kinds. Scotus also talks of intuitive and abstractive definitions. For his elaborative logic, Avicenna's realm of definitions is more elaborate. Finally, the mental existence is projected into linguistic existence is proper utterance of simple and compound ones, which are united into propositions of different types. The details of the linguistic expression come in the paper.

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