SaH0043 The Baroque scholastics of southern and central Europe live at the same time as the mechanical philosophers of northern and western Europe.  The latter give rise to the Age of Fiction, with Cervantes publishing Don Quixote in the early 1600s.  The former give rise to the Age of Ideas, with the birth of modern science.

Of course, it is not as neat as that.

Consequently, an examination of an article by Novotny serves as a capstone for Razie Mah’s online course on Baroque Scholasticism and as an introduction to an online course in Early Modernism.

Baroque Scholasticism consists of Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel (and appears in Razie Mah’s blog in May, 2026).

The capstone for Baroque Scholasticism and the introduction to …and Early Modernism consists of Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Article (2017) Izquierdo on Universals

Baroque Scholasticism and Early Modernism consist of a review of Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh.

SaH0044 Both are strands in the course: Semiotics and History.

See Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026.

0267 What are universals? Why are they important? 

In the Spring 2017 issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (vol. 91(2) pages 227-249), Daniel Novotny examines Disputation 17 of the Baroque scholastic treatise, The Lighthouse of the Sciences (1659).  The title of Novotny’s article is Sebastian Izquierdo on Universals: A Way Beyond Realism and Nominalism.  These comments intend to demonstrate the postmodern relevance of this work using the category-based nested form.

The student should obtain the article from online.

0268 Oh, back to the starting questions.

Some things are similar to one another.  Universals grow out of this impression.  Various things can share in certain universals, to the exclusion of other things.  In this very brief paper, Daniel Novotny reviews and summarizes the theory of universals proposed by the Spanish Baroque scholastic, Sebastian Izquierdo, SJ (1600-1681 AD).

Izquierdo’s life overlaps with the northern European authors who mark the dawn of the Age of Ideas, including Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650).  His life also overlaps with theorists marking the twilight of the Latin Age, including Francisco Suarexz (1548-1617) and John Poinsot (1589-1644).  Our current age is born at this time.  This is the moment to which we must return in order to come to terms with our era.

0269 Daniel Novotny is not unfamiliar with the Baroque philosophers.  I commented on his full-length book, Ens Rationis: From Suarez to Caramuel, published in 2013.  Novotny’s exposition is so clear that constructing (inevitably messy) category-based nested forms came easy.

My comments wove a story into his presentation, starting with the dichotomy of fact versus fiction and ending with an intimation of postmodern social construction.  This narrative adds value by connecting Baroque scholasticism and our present, postmodern, world.

0270 As for the article under examination, Novotny begins with a caveat.  Baroque philosophy and theology is a complex tapestry, filled with commentary and references.  One can easily get lost in this forest of questions and answers.  Typically, an entire text must be examined in order to configure an author’s opinion, if distinct from all others.  Since such effort is very difficult and time consuming, Novotny limits this publication to a careful examination of Disputation 17 of Izquierdo’s major philosophical work, The Lighthouse of the Sciences.

Disputation 17 presents Izquierdo’s theory of universals.

0271 The table of contents for The Lighthouse of the Sciences is organized in a novel way, portending substantial differences from traditional doctrines and methods.  In Disputation 17, Izquierdo considers three questions.  To me, these questions sound postmodern.

Q1. What are universals?

Q2. Are some universals independent of the intellect?

Q3. If universals are intellect dependent, what is their nature?

0272 To the first question, Izquierdo offers four meanings:

0273 Let me supply an example from Eric Santner’s (2016) book, The Weight of All Flesh. 

0274 During late medieval and early modern times, political theologians proposed that the king had two bodies.  One was mortal.  The other was glorious.

When a king died, his mortal body was quickly buried.  An effigy (representing the king’s glorious body) was manufactured and placed on the throne until the coronation of a new king.  Then, the effigy was buried in a separate funeral.

0275 The glorious body of the king is a universal with four meanings.

0276 The last meaning is particularly twisted.  The universal, in its proper sense, cannot be a particular.  Yet, here is a particular effigy that becomes a symbol of the king’s glorious body.

According to C. S. Peirce, a symbol is a sign based on tradition, convention, law, consensus and so on.  Here, a political and theological consensus connects a sign-object (the king’s glorious body) to a sign-vehicle (an effigy of the deceased king).

0277 In Peirce’s semiotic terminology, the scholastic term “objective concept” portrays the union of a sign-vehicle and sign-object.  The term “objective precision” reflects the operation of a sign-interpretant.

0278 In the terminology of the nested form, “objective concept” belongs to secondness, the realm of actuality.  “Objective precision” belongs thirdness and firstness, the realms of normal context and possibility, respectively.  An objective concept is a mind-dependent being.  Objective precision is a formal act of the intellect.

0279 For example, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a murderous uncle gains the throne and becomes king (objective concept).  Unfortunately, the ghost of Hamlet’s father (the glorious body of the deceased king) appears, calling Hamlet to reject his uncle’s claims (through objective precision).  Hamlet’s uncle has no nobility.  Therefore, his uncle is not king (and does not have a glorious body, since the glorious body of Hamlet’s father haunts the world).

0280 This dramatic call to judgment may be depicted as a relation between what is and what ought to be.  Indeed, I define the actuality of judgment as this triadic relation.

0281 Here is a diagram.

0350 Next, the fourth proposition (P4) comes up for consideration.

0351 What is the disposition of the universal to each of Aristotle’s definitions?

According to the working model, both definitions are in play in the primal triad.  They are not independent.  How can this be?  This model supports further philosophical inquiry.

0352 Propositions P2 and P3 pertain to the interscope of the individual in community.

0353 P3 points to the fact that the normal context for judgment_2c is reason_3c.

0354 P2 suggests that what is and what ought to be may not be labeled.  Instead, phantasms and impressions substitute for these intersubjective unities.  The resulting judgment is called an intrinsic abstraction.  This is the type of judgmentrendered in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0355 The Christian sacrament of the Eucharist serves as an example.

What is appears as a piece of bread_2a.  What ought to be is the phantasm of the body of Christ_2b.  Thomas Aquinas discovered the relation, twelve hundred years after the commissioning of the Last Supper.  Transubstantiation_2c (as the universal, relation) brings the appearance of bread_2a->2c (as the universal, what is) into relation with the body of Christ_2b->2c (as the universal, what ought to be).

0356 What is emerges from the potency of the material and physical.  What ought to be emerges from the potency of the formal and logical.  What brings these into relation is a mystical operation emerging from the potency of human understanding.

0357 Of course, I will never hear the word “transubstantiation” on television in this era of big government (il)liberalism.

Instead, I will see a commercial for a Czech beer, starting with the image of an amber bottle, glistening with condensate.  Music starts.  The word “you” appears as a hand grasps the bottle.  “Can”, another hand pops the cap.  “Be”, one hand lifts the bottle.  “The King”, the hand pours the beer.  “Of Bohemia”, the cascading brew fills an image of a throne.

The music swells as the honey-colored throne morphs into a glistening glass of beer.

The voice-over intones, “You can be the King of Bohemia.”

0358 Has the glorious body of the king transubstantiated into a commodity, a regal libation?

0359 I raise my glass to Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic, the home of the University of South Bohemia.

0360 Daniel Novotny lists the consequences of Baroque Scholastic Sebastian Izquierdo’s Disputation 17 in The Lighthouse of the Sciences.  He concludes with an impression: Izquierdo is close to modern empiricism.

0361 Izquierdo rejects the extra-mental features of universals and avoids the projection of universals into the realm of the mundane.  He avoids nominalism by insisting on objective concepts.

0362 Novotny suggests that Izquierdo’s rejection of Aristotle’s act-potency distinction draws him into the same errors that plague contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mathematics.  The middle way between nominalism and Platonism must be grounded in the metaphysical structure of reality.  But, Izquierdo cannot lock onto that relational structure.

0363 Charles S. Peirce gave me a gift.

0364 His three categories point to the ground that Izquierdo intimated.  Izquierdo’s third way may have failed, but with the category-based nested form, I can look across the turbulent seas of the Age of Ideas and say, “I see what you mean.”

0365 The Lighthouse of the Sciences still beacons.

SandH0366 This concludes this strand on Baroque Scholasticism in the rope of Semiotics and History.