When presenting one of a sequence of theories on individuation, Duns Scotus argues for a formal distinction in creatures between an individual essence and its existence. His reason is that, otherwise, an individual creature would be a necessary existent. Since Scotus maintains that essence is potential to existence, this paper shows how this discussion relates to his exhaustive analysis of actuality and metaphysical potency in the questions on the Metaphysics, book IX, qq. 1–2, concluding that Scotus’s views on (...) essence and existence do not commit him to a realm of real but unactualized possibilia. The paper tentatively suggests that existence, in creatures, consists in a relation to an efficient cause or causes. Scotus holds that God’s existence, identical with his essence, is nevertheless formally distinct from God, since essence/existence and the divine attributes are formally distinct from each other and all included in God. (shrink)

The chapter shows that Scotus defends the view that ‘God exists’ is both metaphysically and logically necessary. Thus, Scotus maintains that denying that God exists involves asserting a contradiction, and that this can be shown to be the case. But while Scotus believes that it can be shown that there is a concept in virtue of which ‘God exists’ is self-evident, he also believes that human beings in the current run of things can have no access to the content of (...) this concept. The chapter also relates the claims that God is both metaphysically and logically necessary to the kind of causally dependent modalities that Scotus employs in his attempt to prove God’s existence. (shrink)

An English translation of John Duns Scotus's The Questions on Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" including an extensive commentary on some of Scotus's more difficult ideas.

The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation._ CONTENTS: _ Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man’s Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper (...) Names. Index of Subjects. (shrink)

Scotus’ natural theology has distinctive claims: (i) that we can reason demonstratively to the necessary existence and nature of God from what is actually so; but not from imagined situations, or from conceivability-to-us; rather, only from the possibility logically required for what we know actually to be so; (ii) that there is a univocal transcendental notion of being; (iii) that there are disjunctive transcendental notions that apply exclusively to everything, like ‘contingent/necessary,’ and such that the inferior cannot have a case (...) unless the superior does; (iv) that an a priori demonstration of the existence of God is impossible because there is nothing explanatorily prior to the divine being, and so, reasoning must be a posteriori, from the real dependences among things we perceive to the possibility of an absolutely First Being (The First Principle); (v) that such a being cannot be possible without existing necessarily; and (vi) that the First Being (God) is simple, omni-intelligent, free (spontaneous), omnipotent and, positively infinite;[1] and moreover, (vii) that there is a formal distinction, that is more than a distinction within our concepts or definitions, among the divine attributes. He makes that first point obvious throughout his several treatments, that one cannot reliably reason from conceptual consistency for us to the real and formal possibility or necessity of something; one must reason only to those necessities that are conditions of the possibility of what is known to be actual. The schema of the reasoning is, in a word, that “only the existence of God can make an effect even possible”[2]. Thus, it is explicitly incorrect to classify him along with St Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz, among those who reason a priori to the being of God[3]. He characteristically and deftly argues by indirect proof. He supposes the opposite of his intended conclusion and deduces a contradiction between that supposition and certain self-evident, or previously proved propositions, thus, getting his own conclusion by using the principle that whatever entails the denial of what is already known to be so, is false and its opposite is true,[4] “si negatur negatio, ponitur affirmatio.”[5] He also uses the argument form, “ if ‘p’ is not necessary, then ‘not-p’ is possible”.. (shrink)

Can the Proslogion argument for God’s existence be parodied to demonstrate the existence of the worst evil? This is what Duns Scotus contends in one of his works, where he presents such a parody as evidence for the argument’s unsoundness. Elsewhere, however, Scotus defends a “touched-up” version (coloratio) of Anselm’s argument. In my reconstruction, Scotus’s touched-up argument includes three stages: first, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought is a possible object of thought; second, a (...) demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist and so can exist; third, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought actually exists. Contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, I argue that Scotus’s argument does not make any illegitimate shift from logical to real possibility. I also contend that one of the most characteristic aspects of Scotus’s touched-up argument is that the comparison between existing in the intellect and existing in reality (arguably the weakest point in standard reconstructions of Anselm’s argument) plays no role in it, and that accordingly Scotus’s argument is immune from his own parody of Anselm’s argument. (shrink)

In his 1916 _Habilitationsschrift Heidegger enriched Husserl's notion of categorial intuition with Scotus's theory of intellection. The individual is entirely intelligible, even if its intelligibility is never fully defined. The historically singularized thing (essence modified by _haecceitas) speaks a primal word to us, and this original verbum makes possible the inner word of understanding, the _verbum interius. Heidegger argues that if the thing is actually intelligible in its singularity, history cannot be disregarded as ineffable: it becomes a domain of fore-theoretical (...) experience, which exhibits its own proper understandability, one that eludes the objectifications of judgment. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the history of the concept of contingency as it has been developed by John Duns Scotus in his Quaestiones Super Libros Metaphysicorum in light of his reception of Avicenna’s metaphysics (al-Ila-hı-yya-t) from the Kita-b al-Šifa-’. As is known, an intermediary role was played by Henry of Ghent’s ontology. The focus is here the peculiarity of Scotus’s new way of thinking about the modalities of being in relation to metaphysics, in light of the speculations (...) of Avicenna and Henry of Ghent. Lastly, I consider the juxtaposition of Avicenna’s conception of essences and Duns Scotus’s model of potencies with Frege’s doctrine of the ‘Third Realm’ of truths. (shrink)

The final twenty-five years of the thirteenth century have received relatively little treatment by historians of medieval philosophy. Yet this period, which spans roughly from the death of Thomas Aquinas to the arrival of Duns Scotus at Oxford, is characterized by a remarkable philosophical vitality. One of the more neglected figures of this period is James of Viterbo. A member of the Augustinian Order, James was a Master in the Theology faculty at Paris from 1293-1300. Making use of his (...) recently edited Quodlibetal Questions and De divinis praedicamentis, the dissertation presents a historical reconstruction of James' metaphysics of finite being. Like most medieval thinkers, James is very concerned to distinguish between finite being and infinite being. While the divine being is absolutely simple, pure act, every finite being has within itself a composition of act and potency. This means that finite being has a structure that can be explicated by metaphysical analysis. There are three kinds of metaphysical composition found among finite beings: essence and existence; substance and accident; and matter and form. The dissertation analyzes James' understanding of these three compositions. Chapters I-III examine his position on issues involving essence and existence. Chapters IV and V deal with substance and accident. Chapters VI and VII are concerned with problems arising from the composition of matter and form. In presenting James' thought the dissertation gives some attention to determining his place in the doctrinal milieu of the late thirteenth century. James develops his own metaphysical positions only after deep reflection on the views of his contemporaries. He knows quite well the texts of Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines, and he is familiar with the work of Thomas Aquinas. Although he strives often to harmonize opposed positions, James possesses a highly personal metaphysics that cannot be reduced to that of other thinkers. The dissertation finds evidence for including James within the Neo-Augustinian movement of his day. (shrink)

By all accounts one of the most influential philosophical contributions of Duns Scotus is his distinction between intuitive cognition, in which a thing is known as present and existing, and abstractive cognition, which abstracts from actual presence and existence. Recent scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the role given intuitive cognition in the justification of contingent propositions and on the debates over certitude which arose from the critiques of Scotus's distinction by Peter Aureoli and William of Ockham.

The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation. CONTENTS: Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man's Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper Names. (...) Index of Subjects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154 BOOK REVIEWS Woznicki highlights his own interpretation of St. Thomas's view of being and order by comparing and contrasting it with the views of other thinkers, such as Duns Scotus and Ockham. Woznicki points out that Duns Scotus's insistance on the primacy of essence over exist· ence led to a metaphysics quite different from that of Saint Thomas, in which existence had priority over essence, Woznicki (...) emphasizes that Ockham's denial of the validity of analogy has bequeathed to us an instrumentalistic understanding of being as being; the real unity of being is replaced by a unity that is the product of our minds. What actually happens in Ockham is that metaphysics is subordinated to the demands of logic. Ockham's metaphysics also resembles the Heraclitean philosophy of becoming, and Woznicki points to Nietzsche as evidence that such a philosophy of becoming necessarily leads to nihilism. In his criticism of Ockham as well as in his criticism of Descartes, Kant, and Whitehead, Woznicki not only makes Thomas seem more attrac· tive but also, at least implicitly, reveals the deleterious effect that influential false philosophies can have on the human adventure. Woznicki 's explanation of Thomas's doctrine of esse does involve abstract thinking, but the result, the rooting of order in esse, is anything but irrelevant. Metaphysics does bury its undertakers; bad metaphysics creates victims. Father Woznicki has produced a fine work as the author of this first volume in the series Catholic Thought from Lublin. I hope that in his role as editor he will be able to present in the near future other volumes as good as Being and Order. Saint John's University Jamaica, New York ROBERT E. LAUDER An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge. By YVES R. SIMON. Translated by Vukan Kuic and Richard J. Thompson. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 180. Almost sixty years have passed between the first appearance of Jn. troduction al'ontologie du connaitre and its English translation. But even though we have had to wait so long, we now have this treasure in hand. An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge leaves no doubt that here is a thinker of the first water. Simon's writings never fail to exemplify the medieval fusion of the concepts " teacher " and " master " in the Latin " magister." As I observed when reviewing one of his posthumously published books, Work, Society, and Culture, BOOK REVIEWS 155 Simon had the knack for using concrete words and vivid imagery drawn from everyday life to carry the reader to the very heart of pro· found thoughts. That testifies to more than just a good prose style; the freedom from reliance on jargon and formalized academic language shows that Simon was neither a " scholastic" (in the pejorative sense of the word) nor a pedant or mere academician. His ready access to everyday language is simply one more indication that he was an independent philosophical thinker for whom reflective personal experience, not the text, was the ultimate court of appeal for arriving at the truth. A case in point is the book's structure. Flipping through its pages, one notices the frequent extended discussions in the footnotes and the abundant citation of classical texts, often leaving room for no more than three or four lines of Simon's own prose on a given page. This may well remind the reader of the musty pedantry of so many doctoral dissertations. But although Simon frequently cites the texts of Aristotle, St. Thomas, Cajetan, and John of St. Thomas, the arguments he advances clearly do not depend on any appeal to the authority of these authors. Although a Thomist, he assumes complete responsibility for his critique of knowledge; he is a thinker whose arguments stand on their own merit. All the references to the aforementioned authorities are truly footnotes; they are never an essential part of Simon's own text. (This bears mention for the benefit of the august members of "The Guardianship of the Undefiled Text of St. Thomas Aquinas," who can be counted upon to insist that commentators, such as John of St. Thomas, are unreliable interpreters of the master's texts.) The book sparkles as a... (shrink)

When Gilson died in 1978, a great deal of his work on the history of philosophy, and specifically God, the primacy of existence or esse over essence, and the impact of Christianity on philosophy had been translated. A significant amount of material, however, has not yet appeared into English. The publication of Medieval studies represents a vital step in bringing these important works into the English-speaking world. The opening piece revisits a battle now won (and won in great measure by (...) Gilson’s efforts), namely the fight to acknowledge the very existence of medieval philosophy and win its place in the academic world. But the article also makes the effort--which becomes a connecting thread throughout the nine articles--to pinpoint the uniqueness of what Gilson calls Christian philosophy. All the articles give an insight into the great synthetic visions articulated by the better-known works of Gilson like The Spirit of Medieval philosophy. "The Middle Ages and ancient naturalism" contrasts Renaissance humanists and Reformers with the medievals on the defining issue of their attitude toward nature to understand who actually stands closer to the Greeks. In his examination of the Latin Averroist Boethius of Dacia’s book on the eternity of the world, Gilson finds that Boethius never expresses the view attributed to Latin Averroism that there are contradictory truths in religion and philosophy. The closing article studies the profound influence of the great Muslim thinker Avicenna on Latin Europe drawing a parallel between Avicenna’s work and that of the great Christian medievals like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. (shrink)

It was this kind of priority Aristotle had in mind in his proof that act is prior to potency in the ninth book of the Metaphysics where he calls act prior ...

A lengthy argument for the existence of a being possessing most of the attributes ascribed to God in traditional philosophical theology is set forth by John Duns Scotus in the final two chapters of his Tractatus De Primo Principio.1 In 3.1-19, Scotus tries to establish the core of his proof, viz., that "an absolutely first effective is actually existent." It is an ingenious blend of elements that figure in standard versions of the cosmological and ontological arguments. However, while the (...) reader of De Primo is apt to be deeply intrigued by the suggestiveness and originality of Scotus' discussion, attempting to organize and interpret the various threads of argument is a challenging task. This no doubt partially explains the relative neglect of Scotus' argument in contemporary discussion of theistic proofs. In what follows, I offer a reading of the argument as well as my critical assessment of it. I will contend that Scotus is unable to achieve all that he wants, in that a critical aspect of his official version of the argument is centrally flawed. However, the text also seems to suggest a modified version of the proof which relies on intuitive support for a possibility claim. I maintain that this form of the proof is sound. Furthermore, owing to the comparative weakness of its underived premises, Scotus' proof can be seen to offer a novel and appealing alternative to the more widely advertised versions of the cosmological and ontological arguments. If I am right, then, Scotus' De Primo has an important contribution to make to the contemporary discussion of an issue of perennial philosophical concern. (shrink)

The text is divided into four chapters: 1.0 Metaphysics, transcendental philosophy and analytic philosophy; 2.0 The senses of being ; 3.0 Being and existence ; and 4.0 Modalities. After a defense of contemporary analytic philosophy against the usual charge of its supposedly superficial character and its lack of philosophical significance, Llano offers a thoughtful reading of Wittgenstein against his ancient, medieval and Kantian scholastic background. Following Gilson's historical analysis, Llano diagnoses a "tendency to reflect upon concepts with the risk of (...) forgetting the real things whose natures these concepts represent.... While the scholasticism most directly bound to Aristotle kept the consideration of real, concrete being firmly in view, Duns Scotus--in a direction already pointed out by Avicenna--was completely occupied with the concept of pure being ; a concept which, by being abstract, was understood as univocal. This perspective led him to 'prescind' from the actual reality of things, i.e., from their real existence; because, although existence itself is a notion or ratio knowable in the object, it is nevertheless required as actually belonging to the object in so far as it is knowable: 'existentia non est per se ratio obiecti, ut scibile est'". Against this background, being is taken as intelligibility, involving a relationship to the understanding that logicizes the meaning of being itself so that "the formal-essential dimension takes unto itself the whole weight of reality" and "esse is reduced to a quasi-accidental mode of the essence", which comes to be thematized in its own right as "the real modality, until a linguistic analysis, which can accept only the logical modality, passing through the logico-transcendental mediation of the gnoseological modality". Being is accordingly progressively "reabsorbed into human thought and later into various anthropological dimensions ". Section 1.3, "Toward a realist semantics," starts from Frege's attack on psychologism in the Foundations of Arithmetic and leads to a reinstatement of Aristotelian semantics in section 1.4, "Word and concept." Chapter 2 deals with the standard topics: 2.1, Predication, identity, existence; 2.2, being in propositions and being in reality; 2.3, accidental being ; and 2.4, being as it pertains to truth. Chapter 3 on being and existence suggests the thought-provoking comparison: as natura is to suppositum in Aquinas, so is Begriff to Gegenstand in Frege. Chapter 4, on the modalities of being, gets to the heart of the metaphysical issue of what happens when one of the modalities of being is substituted for being as the foundation of metaphysics. In Section 4.1, on actuality and facticity, Llano deftly centers attention on Heidegger's Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, where Heidegger maintains that the Thomistic notion of actus essendi is merely another instance of the forgetfulness of being. Llano rightly judges that Heidegger's understanding of an opposition between essence as one thing and existence as another is derived from a position of Giles of Rome and has nothing to do with the position of Aquinas himself. Llano cites Avicenna roughly five times as often as he does Giles of Rome; Heidegger, apparently relying on hearsay reports, mentions Avicenna only once in the Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, without citing any text, and mentions Giles of Rome three times, citing only one text. Heidegger uses a late scholastic as his authority for discrediting Aquinas. Llano quotes some of the explicit Thomistic criticisms against Avicenna including one that Heidegger partially omits ; the passage Heidegger suppresses begins "Opinio Avicennae fuit...." Though rhetorically subtle, Llano's clearly and forcefully written book is loaded with philosophical insights, bridges conversational gaps between analysts and phenomenologists, and offers a glimpse at some of the most important medieval notions sedimented within contemporary philosophy.--E. M. Macierowski, Washington, D.C. (shrink)

I argue that the essence that is actualized by existence is the essence that is a determinate nature in an individual and not the essence absolutely considered. This essence in individuals has a potential being that is actualized by existence. This thesis has important consequences for the essence/existence distinction in Thomas Aquinas.

According to authoritative Christian teaching, Jesus Christ is a single person existing in two natures, divinity and humanity. In attempting to understand this claim, the high-scholastic theologians often asked whether there was more than one existence in Christ. John Duns Scotus answers the question with a clear and strongly-formulated yes, and Thomists have sometimes suspected that his answer leads in a heretical direction. But before we can ask whether Scotus‘s answer is acceptable or not, we have to come to (...) a clear understanding of what his answer is. And before we can ask what his answer is, we have to come to a clear understanding of what question or questions he is trying to answer. In this paper I begin by explaining that the question about Christ‘s existence is ambiguous, i.e., that there are actually two questions hidden behind one formulation. Next I look at Scotus‘s writings on the topic in order to determine which question he is really trying to answer, and I argue that he is trying to answer both of them, even though he does not make this clear. Third, I provide an initial look at the answers that he gives. Fourth, I explain why these answers might seem problematic, especially from a Thomistic perspective. Fifth, I explain Scotus‘s answers in more detail and show that they are not problematic in the way that some Thomists have held. Indeed, at least some of Scotus‘s ideas are the very same ideas that Thomas spells out in one of his works. (shrink)

RESUMENLa distinción entre conocimiento intuitivo y abstractivo, extendida por Duns Escoto, y la consiguiente distinción entre conceptos distintos y confusos, implica una nueva gnoseología en la que la inteligencia asiste pasivamente, como un espejo, a la representación de las esencias, que se manifiestan al margen de su existencia. PALABRAS CLAVECERTEZA–EVIDENCIA–INTUICIÓN–CONOCIMIENTO ABSTRACTIVO–IDEAS CLARAS Y DISTINTAS.ABSTRACTThe distinction between intuitive and abstractive knowledge, spread by Duns Scotus, and the consequent distinction between different and confused concepts, it involves a new gnoseology in (...) which intelligence assists passively, like a mirror, to the presentation of essences, manifested apart from its existence.KEY WORDSCERTAINTY–EVIDENCE–INTUITION–ABSTRACTION–CLEAR AND DISTINCT IDEAS. (shrink)

This book offers a translation of two short commentaries by John Duns Scotus on Aristotle’s On Interpretation. It comes with an introduction, notes, and a commentary. I think that this book would be difficult for a novice; perhaps the intended audience is someone with a general familiarity with medieval philosophy, although not necessarily with medieval logic. I do not think that someone just interested in general logical issues, such as existential import or future contingents, will find much to interest (...) her here, despite some remarks in the commentary.In the introduction, Buckner and Zupko discuss these commentaries and their place in Scotus’s corpus. It seems that they were written by Scotus himself.. (shrink)

This study compares the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus on the issue of being and individuality. Its primary aim is to contrast Scotus’s individuating principle, haecceitas, with Aquinas’s actualizing principle, esse, attending both to their rather striking similarities as well as to their significant differences. The article’s conclusion is that, while Scotus’s crowning principle, haecceitas, is the unique entity internal to each thing, rendering the nature complete and singular as nature, Aquinas’s crowning principle, esse, actualizes the (...) nature without individualizing it. This is not to imply that Scotus overlooked the importance of a thing’s being, any more than Aquinas overlooked the importance of a being’s singularity. It does mean, however, that the primal integrating focus and the resulting philosophical synthesis of these two seminal thinkers of the Middle Ages did significantly differ. The conclusion of the paper might be stated thus: what most distinguishes their respective philosophies is that, while Scotus’s primary concern was with the existing individual, Aquinas’s was with the existing individual. (shrink)

Socrates, for example, has an essence that includes more than his human nature, which is his specific essence; he has an essence proper to himself alone, an essence that cannot be had by anyone else. Although Socrates does have singular (individualized) forms, his singular essence is not a form—there is no form Socrateity for the singular essence parallelling the form humanity for the specific essence. Instead, Socrates has his singular essence in consequence of being an individual, that is, in consequence (...) of having an ‘individual differentia’. Scotus further rejects the distinction between identity and individuality, maintaining that what it is for Socrates to be Socrates is the same as what it is for him to be an individual. Socrates, in the end, is his singular essence. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Before Descartes, middle age philosophers like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Duns Scotus (1266-1308), and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) used to discuss the distinction between essence and existence in three ways (of course, Ibn-Sina was the first who made this distinction to rehabilitate Aristotelian philosophy in the Islamic heritage). Descartes was aware of that, but discussed it according to the relation between mind and body. Yet, he told us many times that he was used to separate essence from existence in (...) metaphysical issues. The objective of this paper is first to rephrase his untold opinion about the relation between essence and existence on the basis of his conception of the problem of distinction according to mind and body, and second, to disclose that Descartes's conception of existence is twofold. At the end, it is claimed that his twofold notion of existence and his inability to overcome it, is the principal factor in his failure to explicate everything according to first principles, and so in his failure to defeat skepticism. (shrink)

Abstract Does Duns Scotus identify the natural will with the affectio commodi ? This identification has become the standard view. In this paper, I will challenge this view through an analysis of some key texts. The main thesis of the paper is that Scotus allows for two scenarios related to the will's dual affections. The first is the real situation of the created will: the will is a free potency and possesses two affections. The second is a hypothetical case; (...) Scotus suggests the fictive case of a will that only possesses the affectio commodi . Accordingly, it can be concluded that: ( i ) when considering the will in its real condition, both affections belong to the will's free appetite; ( ii ) in the hypothetical case the natural will, the intellectual appetite and the affectio commodi are all identified; ( iii ) in the real condition of the will, the natural will is a passive inclination to receive perfection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The more I love someone, the more firmly or steadily I love her – the more ready I am to act for her good; accordingly, the more I love someone the more prepared I am to suffer evil for her sake. My desire for her good makes me want to act for her good. I appeal to this love when deciding what I should do; and in acting I (...) try to make the world around me conform to what I desire for her. But one might argue that I could be virtuous and order every good that I seek ultimately to my own good.This essay examines John Duns Scotus's efforts in Ordinatio 3.27, where he treats the natural and infused virtues of charity, to escape such an inference, an inference that he associates, I argue, with Aristotle. For Scotus we never act morally when the end that structures what we do and think is ultimately our own good. Against Aristotle, Scotus believes that the distinctive motive of virtuous agency is not the kalon of the virtuous act – its moral beauty – as aimed at the actualization of the agent's good. Rather, the distinctive motive of virtuous agency is the kalon of the virtuous act as aimed at the actualization or preservation of another's good. The virtuous agent does not seek the good of others instrumentally. His principal motives are not ulterior motives. The virtuous father, for example, seeks his child's good principally and his own good secondarily. For Scotus the moral act is an essentially ordered act in which the agent's self-interest is subordinated to the good of the other.I will argue that if careful attention is paid to Scotus's treatments of friendship and heroic self-sacrifice in Ordinatio 3.27, as well as the medieval debates in which they find a place, then the text warrants just this reading of Scotus's moral psychology. I will contrast Scotus's treatments of friendship and heroic self-sacrifice principally with Aristotle's, but also with those of Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines. In Ordinatio 3.27 Scotus shifts the virtuous agent's center of gravity from the self to the concrete individuals existing outside of him. This shift rests on a precisely defined theory of desirability that is enshrined in the distinction that Scotus draws between two grades of lovability of an object – a distinction that has received little scholarly attention. For Scotus the principal basis of friendship is not found, as Aristotle would have it, in a metaphysics of identity and resemblance. Rather human experience teaches us both that the most basic ratio of friendship is the ratio of lovability, a friend's amabilitas, and that the ratio of lovability is the moral beauty or uprightness of a friend, his honestas.A close reading of heroic self-sacrifice in Ordinatio 3.27 will bring further clarity to Scotus's moral psychology. Scotus's treatments of both friendship and heroic self-sacrifice are driven by the principle that God has made the human will so that it is free to tend toward every object in the manner dictated by reason. From this principle it follows that apart from grace we must be able to love more than the self whatever is better than the self, which effectively means that we must have a natural capacity to love God and the common good over the self. It also follows that if the distinctive motive of virtuous agency does not vary, as Scotus believes, then moral motives must properly be other-regarding motives. In Ordinatio 3.27 Scotus considers the example of the soldier who does not believe that the soul is immortal and who yet risks death for the common good because he loves it more than he loves himself. Thomas Osborne has recently argued that this soldier's choice and act exemplifies our ability to act freely on selfless motives against what.. (shrink)

Duns Scotus’ authorship of the commentary on Aristotle’s Topics transmitted in ms. Vatican, Ottoboni lat. 318 is demonstrated by no less than twelve references to his commentaries on the Isagoge and the Categories. In addition, new information is provided about the relative chronology of Scotus’ philosophical commentaries and the existence of a lost commentary on the Prior Analytics.

Duns Scotus's place of prominence in the intellectual history of medieval Europe rests on his work in theology and metaphysics rather than in logic and philosophy of language. This is justified; do...

In order to make sense of Scotus’s claim that rationality is perfected only by the will, a Scotistic doctrine of truth is developed in a speculative way. It is claimed that synthetic a priori truths are truths of the will, which are existential truths. This insight holds profound theological implications and is used on the one hand to criticize Kant's conception of existence, and on the other hand, to offer another explanation of the sense according to which the existence of (...) things is grasped. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as one of the most original thinkers of medieval philosophy. His influence on subsequent philosophers and theologians is enormous and extends well beyond the limits of the Middle Ages. His thought, however, might be intimidating for the non-initiated, because of the sheer number of topics he touched on and the difficulty of his style. The eleven essays collected here, especially written for this volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, take (...) the reader through various topics, including Duns Scotus's intellectual environment, his argument for the existence of God, and his conceptions of modality, order, causality, freedom, and human nature. This volume provides a reliable point of entrance to the thought of Duns Scotus while giving a snapshot of some of the best research that is now being done on this difficult but intellectually rewarding thinker. (shrink)

Does Duns Scotus identify the natural will with the affectio commodi ? This identifica- tion has become the standard view. In this paper, I will challenge this view through an analysis of some key texts. The main thesis of the paper is that Scotus allows for two scenarios related to the will’s dual affections. The first is the real situation of the created will: the will is a free potency and possesses two affections. The second is a hypothetical case; (...) Scotus suggests the fictive case of a will that only possesses the affectio commodi. Accordingly, it can be concluded that: (i ) when considering the will in its real condi- tion, both affections belong to the will’s free appetite; (ii) in the hypothetical case the natural will, the intellectual appetite and the affectio commodi are all identified; (iii ) in the real condition of the will, the natural will is a passive inclination to receive perfection. (shrink)

For Duns Scotus, facts about moral psychology are ultimately reducible to facts about ontology. The created agent has a soul which includes as formal “parts” the intellect and will; the intellect and will, of course, are the seat of qualities (e.g. thoughts and volitions, respectively) and habits (e.g. virtues) that are related to one another in various ways. One of these ways is the conformity relation. From a metaphysical base of categorical being – whether Substance, Quality/Habit, or Relation – (...) Scotus constructs an ethical theory which complements, though in some interesting ways departs from, the Aristotelian tradition of which he is a part. In this essay, our aim is twofold: first, to reconstruct the ontological status of virtue within Scotus's overall metaphysical framework. Second, we attend to the ways in which this metaphysic of virtue places constraints on how one is to understand the conformity relation that, according to Scotus, must exist between an agent's will and right reason whenever a morally good action results. (shrink)

THE MAJOR PREMISE OF DUNS SCOTUS'S IMPRESSIVE PROOF FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. THAT PREMISE, "THE MOST PERFECT BEING IS INFINITE," IS ESTABLISHED IN TWO WAYS. THE KEY PREMISE IN EACH WAY IS THE PROPOSITION, "POSSIBLY, SOME BEING IS INFINITE." THIS PROPOSITION CANNOT BE PROVEN TO BE TRUE, NOT BECAUSE IT IS IN ANY WAY DUBIOUS OR LACKING IN EVIDENCE, BUT BECAUSE ITS TERMS ARE SIMPLE AND NOT SUBJECT TO PROOF OR FURTHER ANALYSIS. BEING IS THE (...) SIMPLEST AND MOST IMMEDIATE OF CONCEPTS; AND BEING INFINITE IS SIMPLY THE NEGATION OF BEING FINITE. INSTEAD OF PROOF, SCOTUS PRESENTS "PERSUASIONES", SKETCHES OF LANGUAGE-GAMES TO SHOW THAT THE PROPOSITION IS TRUE. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, analytical philosophers of religion have confronted the problem of evil in the guise of the atheistic argument from evil against the existence of God. Many have met it from the posture of defense, constructing logically possible morally sufficient reasons for divine permission of evils from the materials of religion-neutral value-theory. At best, such defenses vindicate divine goodness along the dimension “producer of global goods,” while neglecting the religiously more relevant dimension of His goodness to individual (...) suffering creatures. My methodological recommendation is that we Christian philosophers shift away from defense and concentrate on formulating what we really believe about the goodness of God and how He is solving the problem of evil. If successful, our accounts would not only exhibit how divine permission of evils is logically consistent with His goodness to creatures, but also advertise Him as a character worthy of worship. Failures would pinpoint more precisely where and how evil is a problem for us. I illustrate this method by examining Duns Scotus’ many-faceted conception of divine goodness and measure its power to explain the compossibility of God and evil. (shrink)

ACCORDING TO DUNS SCOTUS, what makes a material substance an individual is a positive entity which falls within the category of substance and contracts the specific nature to this or that. That entity, called haecceitas, together with the formal distinction, constitutes the core of Scotus' theory of individuation. But what is haecceitas? Haecceitas is not definable. Nor can we be acquainted with it. Then how could we understand it? Both negatively and positively, Scotus himself tried to give an answer (...) to this question. Before presenting his haecceitas theory, Scotus criticized six different types of rival theories available in his day: the position of the nominalists, the double negation theory, the theory of individuation by actual existence, the theory of individuation by quantity or other accidents, the theory of individuation by matter, and the theory attributed to Godfrey of Fontaines. In other words, he was explaining "what haecceitas is not" when he criticized these theories. More importantly, he tried to give us a positive characterization of haecceitas. Since he used "individual difference" as a synonym for "haecceitas," he resorted to an analogy between the specific difference and the individual difference in order to explain the notion of haecceitas. The problem is that twentieth-century ontologists may not be patient enough to study the triple analogy, which again presupposes Scotus' doctrines of the formal distinction and the ultimate difference. In order to draw their attention to Scotus' theory of individuation, one would need to discuss the following questions: How can we translate the term "haecceitas" into modern terminology? Is there any counterpart of haecceitas in contemporary ontology? For what reasons should we reintroduce haecceitas into the current discussion of individuation, if it has a good counterpart? Is there still anything significant left to add to our understanding of haecceitas? (shrink)

The subject of causality appears in many of the solutions proposed by Duns Scotus on various philosophical problems, such as voluntary act, and theological problems, as the divine dispensation of grace in the sacraments. This paper shows the kinds of causes and causality which are involved in the actual act of intellection. It focuses on the concept of essential order as the source of the different kinds of causal concurrence, and applies this concept to the act of actual intellection, (...) interpreting it according to the idea of unitas ordinis. (shrink)

The paper explores the status of the proposition "God exists" in late scholastic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some key authors of the era. A proposition is said to be self-evident if its truth is known solely from the meaning of the terms and is not inferred from other propositions. It does not appear to be immediately evident from the terms that God exists, for the concept expressed by "God" is based on the relation to creatures and (...) negation of imperfection and does not reach to the divine essence. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are two types of self-evident propositions: those self-evident in themselves but not to us and those self-evident in themselves as well as to us. "God exists" is of the fi rst type. For Scotus a self-evident proposition is such that if its terms are conceived by any intellect, the truth of the proposition becomes known from the terms, non-inferentially. In his view there is no distinction between a self-evident proposition in itself and that in relation to us, because any proposition self-evident in itself is known to be such to any intellect, even though it might not be actually known; it would be known, provided that the terms are conceived. So for Scotus the sentence "God exists" expresses diff erent propositions for the blessed in heaven, the angels and God on the one hand and humans on the other. The former is self-evident, the latter is not. While later scholastics accept either the solution of Thomas or that of Scotus, according to which "God exists" is not self-evident for humans, Thomas de Argentina diff ers in that for him "God exists" is self-evident for humans too. The position of Thomas Aquinas was defended by Domingo Ban¯ez, Francisco Zumel and Gregorio de Valentia. In contrast, Johannes Poncius was a famous adherent of Scotus. There is a fair number of scholastics harmonizing the doctrine of Thomas and Scotus: Bernard Sannig, Luis de Molina, Gabriel Vázquez, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Jean Lalemandet. According to these authors, when Thomas says that "God exists" is self-evident in itself, he speaks about the extensional proposition, i.e. the state of affairs being conceptualized, which does not contradict Scotus’s teaching. © FILOSOFIA, 2013. (shrink)