International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 51, No. 2, Issue 202 (June 2011) Abelard on Status and their Relation to Universals: A Husserlian Interpretation Mark K. Spencer ABSTRACT: The discussion of universals in Peter Abelard’s Logica ‘Ingredientibus’ has been interpreted in many ways. Of particular controversy has been the proper way to inter- pret his use of the term status. In this paper I offer an interpretation of status by comparing Abelard’s account of knowledge of universals to Edmund Husserl’s presentations of catego- rial and eidetic intuition. I argue that status is meant to be understood as something like an ideal object, in Husserl’s sense of the term. First, I present Abelard’s discussion of status and distinguish this term from universals, things, acts of understanding, and forms. Next, I consider Husserl’s account of categorial and eidetic intuition. Finally, I draw parallels between the two while showing how an interpretation of status as ideal object overcomes the interpretive problems encountered by other commentators on Abelard. P ETER ABELARD’S COMPLEX DISCUSSION of universals in his glosses of the Isagoge of Porphyry at the beginning of his Logica ‘Ingredientibus’ has been subject to numerous interpretations. 1 Among the troublesome passages in this discussion is one in which Abelard describes God’s knowledge of formae and status, for it is unclear what precise role divine knowledge plays in his theory of universals. Throughout his works Abelard holds that universals (universales) are only sermones, that is, words insofar as they are meaningful, not individual things (res individuales) or properties shared by or participated in by individual things. 2 However, Abelard also refers to the status in which all the things of the same kind share. It is in virtue of status that universals are applied to individual things. In addition, Abelard refers to the common likeness (communis similitudo) of the thing. Both human minds 1 See John F. Boler, “Abailard and the Problem of Universals,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 1 (1963): 37–51; Gyula Klima, “The Medieval Problem of Universals,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, found at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/#6, section 6; D. E. Luscombe, “Peter Abelard,” in A History of Twelfth Century Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 282–93; Peter King, “Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, ed. Jeffrey E. Bower and Kevin Guilfoy (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 72–83; John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 174–201; and Martin M. Tweedale, Abailard on Universals (Amsterdam, Netherlands: North Holland Publ. Co., 1976). For compendia of other views on the subject, see Marenbon, Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 175–76 n3; Tweedale, Abailard on Universals, pp. 3–7. 2 See Abelard’s refutation of the views that say that universals are parts or collections of things in Logica ‘Ingredientibus,’ pp. 10–16. All page and line number references to Abelard are from Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, Band XXI, Heft I, Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schriften, I. Die Logica ‘Ingredientibus,’ I. Die Glossen Zu Porphyrus, ed. Bernhard Geyer (Münster: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1919), hereafter LI followed by page and line number. All translations and emphases are mine, with reference to translations by Richard McKeon in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh (Indianapolis IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1973) and by Paul Vincent Spade in Five Texts on the Medieval Problem of Universals (Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 1974).