Galina Vdovina. Thomas Compton Carleton and mental fictions. Vol. 3. No. 2. 2018

Publication Details

Abstract

The article deals with the conception of mental being (ens rationis) proposed by the 17th century Jesuit philosopher Thomas Compton Carleton. The mental being, as opposed to the real being, is one of the cross-cutting themes of European philosophy. In the period of high and late scholasticism, it occupied a prominent place in the semantic, ontological and epistemological discourse. There was no absolutely unified and universally recognized concept of ens rationis in scholasticism, and at different times different authors put different content into this term. Compton Carleton explores the subject of mental existence, following four Aristotelian questions: “does it exist?”, “what is it?”, “what is it like?”, “what are the reasons for it?” Compton is convinced that the mental being “exists” as an impossible thing that cannot be reduced to any kind of real or possible being. To the question “what is it?” Compton answers that ens rationis in the most intrinsic sense is a chimerical being that exists only through an act of intelligence that produces it by thinking it. The very “essence” of the mental being is the impossible connection between the parts of the chimera, which makes impossible also its parts, which, when taken separately, are real. Finally, in response to the question about the producing cause of the mental being, Compton answers that it is produced either by intellectual acts only (simple apprehension and judgments) or by acts of intellect combined with acts of imagination. The ens rationis conception proposed by Compton Cartlon is one of the most developed and authoritative theories of mental being in post-medieval scholasticism. As an appendix to the article, a translated excerpt from the first edition of Thomas Compton Carleton’s course “Universal Philosophy” is published (Compton Carleton Th. Philosophia universa. Antverpiae: Apud Iacovum Mevrsium, 1649. P. 65–70).

Keywords

Thomas Compton Carlton, ens rationis, mental being, chimera, impossible being, connection between chimera parts, scholasticism, intellectual act, simple apprehension, judgment.

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© Galina Vdovina 2018