SOURCE: Kenny, Anthony. “The Realism of the De Universalibus.” In Wyclif in His Times, edited by Anthony Kenny, pp. 17-29. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Kenny explicates Wyclif's theory of universals as well as the notion of predication that underlies it.

Wyclif has long been famous as a realist, but the precise content of his philosophical realism has never been exactly determined. The publication by Ivan Mueller of an edition of the De Universalibus (Oxford, 1985) gives the general reader, for the first time, an opportunity to take the measure of Wyclif's theory. The present article aims to single out some of the main themes of Wyclif's realism and to make them intelligible to those more familiar with contemporary than with scholastic philosophy. Passages from the De Universalibus will be identified by the abbreviation ‘U’ followed by chapter and line number. (The numbering is common...