## 1. Life and Works


### 1.1 The life of John Duns the Scot



'Scotus' identifies Scotus as a Scot. His family name was
Duns, which was also the name of the Scottish village in which he was
born, just a few miles from the English border. We do not know the
precise date of his birth, but we do know that Scotus was ordained to
the priesthood in the Order of Friars Minor--the
Franciscans--at Saint Andrew's Priory in Northampton,
England, on 17 March 1291. The minimum age for ordination was
twenty-five, so we can conclude that Scotus was born before 17 March
1266. But how much before? The conjecture, plausible but by no means
certain, is that Scotus would have been ordained as early as
canonically permitted. Since the Bishop of Lincoln (the diocese that
included Oxford, where Scotus was studying, as well as St
Andrew's Priory) had ordained priests in Wycombe on 23 December
1290, we can place Scotus's birth between 23 December 1265 and
17 March 1266.



Scotus studied philosophy and then theology at Oxford beginning some
time in the 1280s. In the academic year 1298-99 he commented on
the first two books of the *Sentences* of Peter Lombard. Scotus
left Oxford for Paris, probably in 1302, and began lecturing on the
*Sentences* again (we think in the order Book I, Book IV, Book
II, Book III). In June 1303 Scotus was expelled from France along with
eighty other friars for taking Pope Boniface VIII's side in a
dispute with King Philip IV of France. After Boniface died in October
1303 the king allowed the exiled students and masters to return, so
Scotus could have returned in the late fall of 1303 to resume his
lectures on the *Sentences*. Scotus became Doctor of Theology
in 1305 and was Franciscan regent master at Paris in 1306-07. He
was transferred to the Franciscan *studium* at Cologne,
probably beginning his duties as lector in October 1307. He died there
in 1308; the date of his death is traditionally given as 8
November.


### 1.2 Scotus's works



It is generally agreed that Scotus's earliest works were his
commentaries on the Old Logic: questions on Porphyry's
*Isagoge* and Aristotle's *Categories*, two sets
of questions on *Peri hermeneias*, and *De sophisticis
elenchis*. These probably date to around 1295; the *Quaestiones
super De anima* is also very likely an early work (the editors
date it to the late 1280s or early 1290s). Scotus's other
Aristotelian commentary, the *Quaestiones super libros
Metaphysicorum Aristotelis*, seems to have been started early; but
Books VI through IX are all late or were at least revised later in
Scotus's career. Scotus also wrote an *Expositio* on
Aristotle's *Metaphysics*. It had been unidentified for
centuries but was recently identified and edited by Giorgio Pini.



Things really get complicated when we come to Scotus's
commentaries on the four books of *Sentences* of Peter Lombard,
since he commented on the *Sentences* more than once and
revised his lectures over a long period; the relations among the
various versions that have come down to us are not always clear.
Certainly the *Lectura* presents us with Scotus's Oxford
lectures on Books I and II of the *Sentences* in 1298-99.
There is an *Ordinatio* (i.e., a version prepared for
publication by the author himself) of lectures at Oxford, based in
part on the *Lectura* and on material from his lectures in
Paris. The *Ordinatio*, which Scotus seems to have been
revising up to his death, is generally taken to be Scotus's
premier work; the critical edition was at last completed in 2013.
Finally, Scotus lectured on the *Sentences* at Paris, and there
are various *Reportationes* of these lectures. A critical
edition is in progress; at present we have a transcription of a
reasonably reliable manuscript of Book I. Although the Paris lectures
themselves were later than the Oxford lectures, it seems probable that
parts of the *Ordinatio*--Book IV and perhaps also Book
III--are later than the corresponding parts of the
*Reportatio*.



In addition to these works, we have 46 short disputations called
*Collationes* dating from 1300-1305, a late work in
natural theology called *De primo principio*, and
*Quaestiones Quodlibetales* from Scotus's days as regent
master (either Advent 1306 or Lent 1307). Finally, there is a work
called *Theoremata*. Though doubts have been raised about its
authenticity, the recent critical edition accepts it as a genuine work
of Scotus.


## 2. Natural Theology


### 2.1 Some methodological preliminaries



Natural theology is, roughly, the effort to establish the existence
and nature of God by arguments that in no way depend on the contents
of a purported revelation. But is it even *possible* for human
beings to come to know God apart from revelation? Scotus certainly
thinks so. Like any good Aristotelian, he thinks all our knowledge
begins in some way with our experience of sensible things. But he is
confident that even from such humble beginnings we can come to grasp
God.



Scotus agrees with Thomas Aquinas that all our knowledge of God starts
from creatures, and that as a result we can only prove the existence
and nature of God by what the medievals call an argument *quia*
(reasoning from effect to cause), not by an argument *propter
quid* (reasoning from essence to characteristic). Aquinas and
Scotus further agree that, for that same reason, we cannot know the
essence of God in this life. The main difference between the two
authors is that Scotus believes we can apply certain predicates
univocally--with exactly the same meaning--to God and
creatures, whereas Aquinas insists that this is impossible, and that
we can only use analogical predication, in which a word as applied to
God has a meaning different from, although related to, the meaning of
that same word as applied to creatures. (See
 medieval theories of analogy
 for details.)



Scotus has a number of arguments for univocal predication and against
the doctrine of analogy (*Ordinatio* 1, d. 3, pars 1, q.
1-2, nn. 26-55). One of the most compelling uses
Aquinas's own view against him. Aquinas had said that all our
concepts come from creatures. Scotus says, very well, where will that
analogous concept come from? It can't come from anywhere. If all
our concepts come from creatures (and Scotus doesn't deny this),
then the concepts we apply to God will also come from creatures. They
won't just be *like* the concepts that come from
creatures, as in analogous predication; they will have to be *the
very same* concepts that come from creatures, as in univocal
predication. Those are the only concepts we can have--the only
concepts we can possibly get. So if we can't use the concepts we
get from creatures, we can't use any concepts at all, and so we
can't talk about God--which is false.



Another argument for univocal predication is based on an argument from
Anselm. Consider all predicates, Anselm says. Now get rid of the ones
that are merely relatives, since no relative expresses the nature of a
thing as it is in itself. (So we're not talking about such
predicates as "supreme being" or "Creator,"
since even though those properly apply to God, they don't tell
us anything about what God is in himself, only about how he is related
to other things.) Now take the predicates that are left. Here's
the test. Let *F* be our predicate-variable. For any
*F*, either



(a) It is in every respect better to be *F* than not to be
*F*.
  

~or~
  

(b) It is in some respect better to be not-*F* than
*F*.



A predicate will fall into the second category if and only if it
implies some sort of limitation or deficiency. Anselm's argument
is that we can (indeed must) predicate of God every predicate that
falls into the first category, and that we cannot predicate of God any
predicate that falls into the second (except metaphorically, perhaps).
Scotus agrees with Anselm on this point (as did Aquinas: see
*SCG* I.30). Scotus has his own terminology for whatever it is
in every respect better to be than not to be. He calls such things
"pure perfections" (*perfectiones simpliciter*). A
pure perfection is any predicate that does not imply limitation.



So Scotus claims that pure perfections can be predicated of God. But
he takes this a step further than Anselm. He says that they have to be
predicated *univocally* of God; otherwise the whole business of
pure perfections won't make any sense. Here's the
argument. If we are going to use Anselm's test, we must first
come up with our concept--say, of good. Then we check out the
concept to see whether it is in every respect better to be good than
not-good. We realize that it is, and so we predicate
'good' of God. That test obviously won't work unless
it's the same concept that we're applying in both
cases.



One can see this more clearly by considering the two possible ways in
which one might deny that the same concept is applied to both God and
creatures. One might say that the concept of the pure perfection
applies only to creatures, and the concept we apply to God has to be
something different; or one might try it the other way around and say
that the concept of the pure perfection applies only to God, and the
concept we apply to creatures has to be something different. Take the
first possibility. If we come up with the idea of a pure perfection
from creatures and don't apply the same concept to God,
we're saying that we can come up with something that is in every
respect better to be than not to be, but it doesn't apply to
God. Such a view would destroy the idea that God is the greatest and
most perfect being. So then one might try the second possibility: the
concept of the pure perfection really applies only to God. Scotus
points out that that can't be right either. For then the
perfection we apply to creatures won't be the pure perfection
any more, and so the creature wouldn't be better off for having
this pseudo-perfection. But the whole way in which we came up with the
idea of the pure perfection in the first place was by considering
perfections in creatures--in other words, by considering what
features made creatures better in every respect. So this possibility
gets the test backwards: it says that we have to start with knowing
what features God has and thereby determining what is a pure
perfection, but in fact we first figure out what the pure perfections
are and thereby know what features God has.



Not only can we come up with concepts that apply univocally to God and
creatures, we can even come up with a *proper* (distinctive)
concept of God. Now in one sense we can't have a proper concept
of God in this life, since we can't know his essence as a
particular thing. We know God in the way that we know, say, a person
we have heard about but have never met. That is, we know him through
general concepts that can apply both to him and to other things. In
another sense, though, we can have a proper concept of God, that is,
one that applies only to God. If we take any of the pure perfections
to the highest degree, they will be predicable of God alone. Better
yet, we can describe God more completely by taking all the pure
perfections in the highest degree and attributing them all to him.



But these are all composite concepts; they all involve putting two
quite different notions together: 'highest' with
'good', 'first' with 'cause', and
so on. Scotus says that we can come up with a relatively
*simple* concept that is proper to God alone, the concept of
"infinite being." Now that concept might seem to be every
bit as composite as "highest good" or "first
cause," but it's really not. For "infinite
being" is a concept of something essentially one: a being that
has infinity (unlimitedness) as its intrinsic way of existing. I will
return to the crucial role of the concept of infinite being in
Scotus's natural theology after I examine his proof of the
existence of God.


### 2.2 Proof of the existence of God



Scotus's argument for the existence of God is rightly regarded
as one of the most outstanding contributions ever made to natural
theology. The argument is enormously complex, with several
sub-arguments for almost every important conclusion, and I can only
sketch it here. (Different versions of the proof are given at
*Lectura* 1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 38-135; *Ordinatio*
1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 39-190; *Reportatio* 1, d. 2, q. 1;
and *De primo principio*.)



Scotus begins by arguing that there is a first agent (a being that is
first in efficient causality). Consider first the distinction between
essentially ordered causes and accidentally ordered causes. In an
accidentally ordered series, the fact that a given member of that
series is itself caused is accidental to that member's own
causal activity. For example, Grandpa A generates a son, Dad B, who in
turn generates a son of his own, Grandson C. B's generating C in
no way depends on A--A could be long dead by the time B starts
having children. The fact that B was caused by A is irrelevant to
B's own causal activity. That's how an accidentally
ordered series of causes works.



In an essentially ordered series, by contrast, the causal activity of
later members of the series depends essentially on the causal activity
of earlier members. For example, my shoulders move my arms, which in
turn move my golf club. My arms are capable of moving the golf club
only because they are being moved by my shoulders.



With that distinction in mind, we can examine Scotus's argument
for the existence of a first efficient cause:




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (1) | No effect can produce itself. |
| (2) | No effect can be produced by just nothing at all. |
| (3) | A circle of causes is impossible. |
| (4) | Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from
1, 2, and 3) |
| (5) | There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of
causes. |




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (5a) | It is not necessarily the case that a being possessing a causal
power C possesses C in an imperfect way. |
| (5b) | Therefore, it is possible that C is possessed without
imperfection by some item. |
| (5c) | If it is not possible for any item to possess C without
dependence on some prior item, then it is not possible that there is
any item that possesses C without imperfection (since dependence is a
kind of imperfection). |
| (5d) | Therefore, it is possible that some item possesses C without
dependence on some prior item. (from 5b and 5c by modus tollens) |
| (5e) | Any item possessing C without dependence on some prior item is a
first agent (i.e., an agent that is not subsequent to any prior causes
in an essentially ordered series). |
| (5f) | Therefore, it is possible that something is a first agent. (from
5d and 5e) |
| (5g) | If it is possible that something is a first agent, something is
a first agent. (For, by definition, if there were no first agent,
there would be no cause that could bring it about, so it would not in
fact be possible for there to be a first agent.) |
| (5h) | Therefore, something is a first agent (i.e., an agent that is
not subsequent to any prior causes in an essentially ordered
series--Scotus still has to prove that there is an agent that is
not subsequent to any prior causes in an accidentally ordered series
either. That's what he does in step (6) below). (from 5f and
5g) |




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (6) | It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered
series of causes unless there is an essentially ordered series. |




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (6a) | In an accidentally ordered series, each member of the series
(except the first, if there is a first) comes into existence as a
result of the causal activity of a prior member of the series. |
| (6b) | That causal activity is exercised in virtue of a certain
form. |
| (6c) | Therefore, each member of the series depends on that form for
its causal activity. |
| (6d) | The form is not itself a member of the series. |
| (6e) | Therefore, the accidentally ordered series is essentially
dependent on a higher-order cause. |




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (7) | Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 4, 5, and 6) |



Scotus then goes on to argue that there is an ultimate goal of
activity (a being that is first in final causality), and a maximally
excellent being (a being that is first in what Scotus calls
"pre-eminence").



Thus he has proved what he calls the "triple primacy":
there is a being that is first in efficient causality, in final
causality, and in pre-eminence. Scotus next proves that the three
primacies are coextensive: that is, any being that is first in one of
these three ways will also be first in the other two ways. Scotus then
argues that a being enjoying the triple primacy is endowed with
intellect and will, and that any such being is infinite. Finally, he
argues that there can be only one such being.


### 2.3 Divine infinity and the doctrine of univocity



In laying out Scotus's proof of the existence of God, I passed
rather quickly over the claim that God is infinite. But the divine
infinity deserves more detailed treatment. As we have already seen,
the concept of "infinite being" has a privileged role in
Scotus's natural theology. As a first approximation, we can say
that divine infinity is for Scotus what divine simplicity is for
Aquinas. It's the central divine-attribute generator. But there
are some important differences between the role of simplicity in
Aquinas and the role of infinity in Scotus. The most important, I
think, is that in Aquinas simplicity acts as an ontological spoilsport
for theological semantics. Simplicity is in some sense the key thing
about God, metaphysically speaking, but it seriously complicates our
language about God. God is supposed to be a subsistent simple, but
because our language is all derived from creatures, which are all
either subsistent but complex or simple but non-subsistent, we
don't have any way to apply our language straightforwardly to
God. The divine nature systematically resists being captured in
language.



For Scotus, though, infinity is not only what's ontologically
central about God; it's the key component of our best available
concept of God and a guarantor of the success of theological language.
That is, our best ontology, far from fighting with our theological
semantics, both supports and is supported by our theological
semantics. The doctrine of univocity rests in part on the claim that
"[t]he difference between God and creatures, at least with
regard to God's possession of the pure perfections, is
ultimately one of degree" (Cross [1999], 39). Remember one of
Scotus's arguments for univocity. If we are to follow Anselm in
ascribing to God every pure perfection, we have to affirm that we are
ascribing to God *the very same thing* that we ascribe to
creatures: God has it infinitely, creatures in a limited way. One
could hardly ask for a more harmonious cooperation between ontology
(what God is) and semantics (how we can think and talk about him).



Scotus ascribes to Aquinas the following argument for the divine
infinity: If a form is limited by matter, it is finite. God, being
simple, is not limited by matter. Therefore, God is not finite. This,
as Scotus points out, is a fallacious argument. (It's an
instance of denying the antecedent.) But even apart from the fallacy,
simplicity is not going to get us infinity. As Scotus puts it:
"if an entity is finite or infinite, it is so not by reason of
something accidental to itself, but because it has its own intrinsic
degree of finite or infinite perfection" (*Ordinatio* 1,
d. 1, pars 1, q. 1-2, n. 142). So simplicity does not entail
infinity, because finitude is not the result of composition. To look
at it another way, Aquinas's conception of infinity is
*negative* and *relational*. The infinite is that which
is *not bounded by something else*. But Scotus thinks we can
have a positive conception of infinity, according to which infinity is
not a negative, relational property, but instead a positive, intrinsic
property. It is an "intrinsic degree of perfection."



How do we acquire that conception of positive, intrinsic infinity? The
story goes like this. We begin with "the potentially infinite in
quantity." According to Aristotle, you can never have an actual
quantitative infinity, since no matter how great a quantity you have,
you can always have more. What you can have (and in fact do have,
Aristotle thinks) is a quantitative infinity by successive parts. The
next step is to imagine that all the parts of that quantitative
infinity remained in existence simultaneously. That is, we imagine an
actual quantitative infinity. Scotus then asks us to shift from
thinking about an actual quantitative infinity to thinking about an
actual *qualitative* infinity. Think of some quality (say,
goodness) as existing infinitely: so that there is, as it were, no
more goodness that you could add to that goodness to make it any
greater. That's infinite goodness. But notice that you
can't think of infinite goodness as in some way composed of
little goodness-bits (just an infinite number of them). If I say that
an angel is better than a human being, I can't mean that a human
being has a certain number of goodness-bits while the angel has that
many plus some extras. Rather, the specific degree of goodness of a
thing is just an intrinsic, non-quantitative feature of that thing.
Infinite being is just like that. Scotus describes it as "a
measure of intrinsic excellence that is not finite." This is why
the concept of "infinite being" is the simplest concept
available to us for understanding God. Infinity is not some sort of
accidental addition to being, but an intrinsic mode of being. Of
course, if this is right, then the concepts of 'infinite
goodness', 'infinite power', and so forth, are every
bit as simple as the concept of 'infinite being'. So why
does Scotus make such a big deal about 'infinite being'?
Because 'infinite being' "virtually contains"
all the other infinite perfections of God. That is, we can deduce the
other infinite perfections from infinite being. So besides being the
next best thing to a simple concept, it's the most theoretically
fruitful concept we can have of God in this life.


## 3. Metaphysics


### 3.1 The subject matter of metaphysics



Metaphysics, according to Scotus, is a "real theoretical
science": it is real in that it treats things rather than
concepts, theoretical in that it is pursued for its own sake rather
than as a guide for doing or making things, and a science in that it
proceeds from self-evident principles to conclusions that follow
deductively from them. The various real theoretical sciences are
distinguished by their subject matter, and Scotus devotes considerable
attention to determining what the distinctive subject matter of
metaphysics is. His conclusion is that metaphysics concerns
"being *qua* being" (*ens inquantum ens*).
That is, the metaphysician studies being simply as such, rather than
studying, say, material being as material.



The study of being *qua* being includes, first of all, the
study of the transcendentals, so called because they transcend the
division of being into finite and infinite, and the further division
of finite being into the ten Aristotelian categories. Being itself is
a transcendental, and so are the "proper attributes" of
being--one, true, and good--which are coextensive with
being. Scotus also identifies an indefinite number of disjunctions
that are coextensive with being and therefore count as
transcendentals, such as infinite-or-finite and
necessary-or-contingent. Finally, all the pure perfections (see above)
are transcendentals, since they transcend the division of being into
finite and infinite. Unlike the proper attributes of being and the
disjunctive transcendentals, however, they are not coextensive with
being. For God is wise and Socrates is wise, but
earthworms--though they are certainly beings--are not
wise.



The study of the Aristotelian categories also belongs to metaphysics
insofar as the categories, or the things falling under them, are
studied as beings. (If they are studied as concepts, they belong
instead to the logician.) There are exactly ten categories, Scotus
argues. The first and most important is the category of substance.
Substances are beings in the most robust sense, since they have an
independent existence: that is, they do not exist *in*
something else. Beings in any of the other nine categories, called
accidents, exist in substances. The nine categories of accidents are
quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, place, time, position,
and state (*habitus*).


### 3.2 Matter and form, body and soul



Now imagine some particular substance, say, me. Suppose I go from
being pale to being tan. Now it is still I who exist both before and
after the sun has had its characteristic effect on me. This
illustrates an important feature of substances: they can successively
have contrary accidents and yet retain their numerical identity. This
sort of change is known, appropriately enough, as accidental change.
In an accidental change, a substance persists through the change,
having first one accident and then another. But clearly not all
changes are accidental changes. There was once a time when I did not
exist, and then I came into existence. We can't analyze this
change as an accidental change, since there doesn't seem to be
any substance that persists through the change. Instead, a substance
is precisely what comes into being; this is not an accidental but a
*substantial* change. And yet there must be something that
persists even through substantial change, since otherwise we
wouldn't have change at all; substances would come to exist from
nothing and disappear into nothing. Scotus follows Aristotle in
identifying *matter* as what persists through substantial
change and *substantial form* as what makes a given parcel of
matter the definite, unique, individual substance that it is. (There
are also accidental forms, which are a substance's accidental
qualities.)



Thus far Scotus is simply repeating Aristotelian orthodoxy, and none
of his contemporaries or immediate predecessors would have found any
of this at all strange. But as Scotus elaborates his views on form and
matter, he espouses three important theses that mark him off from some
other philosophers of his day: he holds that matter can exist without
any form whatsoever, that not all created substances are composites of
form and matter, and that one and the same substance can have more
than one substantial form. Let us examine each of these theses in
turn.



First, Scotus argues that God can create and conserve what was called
"prime matter": that is, matter that has no form
whatsoever. (For an analysis of the arguments, see Ward 2014.) Matter
and form are distinct things, as the case of substantial change makes
clear: matter persists when forms come and go. Now that fact by itself
might be taken to show only that matter can exist apart from any
*given* form (and Scotus thinks that too), but Scotus takes the
separability of matter and form even further. Divine omnipotence means
that God can cause immediately (that is, without a secondary cause)
whatever he ordinarily causes through a secondary cause. God
ordinarily causes matter through form; but given divine omnipotence,
he need not. He can create matter without any form. Moreover, given
that matter is a thing distinct from form, God creates matter directly
and immediately; and what God creates immediately, he can conserve
immediately. So God can conserve matter without conserving any of the
forms that characterize that matter.



Second, Scotus denies "universal hylomorphism," the view
that all created substances are composites of form and matter
(*Lectura* 2, d. 12, q. un., n. 55). Universal hylomorphism
(from the Greek *hyle*, meaning 'matter', and
*morphe*, meaning 'form') had been the predominant
view among Franciscans before Scotus. Saint Bonaventure, for example,
had argued that even angels could not be altogether immaterial; they
must be compounds of form and "spiritual matter." For
matter is potentiality and form is actuality, so if the angels were
altogether immaterial, they would be pure actuality without any
admixture of potentiality. But only God is pure actuality. But as we
have already seen in his affirmation of the existence of prime matter,
Scotus simply denies the unqualified equation of matter with
potentiality and form with actuality. Prime matter, though entirely
without form, could be actual; and a purely immaterial being is not
automatically bereft of potentiality.



Third, Scotus holds that some substances have more than one
substantial form (*Ordinatio* 4, d. 11, q. 3, n. 54). This
doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms was commonly held among
the Franciscans but vigorously disputed by others. We can very easily
see the motivation for the view by recalling that a substantial form
is supposed to be what makes a given parcel of matter the definite,
unique, individual substance that it is. Now suppose, as many medieval
thinkers (including Aquinas) did, that the soul is the one and only
substantial form of the human being. It would then follow that when a
human being dies, and the soul ceases to inform that parcel of matter,
what is left is not the same body that existed just before death;
there is an entirely new substance, with entirely new accidents (for
accidents depend for their being on the substance in which they
inhere). For what made it that very body was its substantial form,
which (*ex hypothesi*) is no longer there.



To Scotus and many of his fellow Franciscans it therefore seemed
obvious that we need to posit a plurality of substantial forms to
avoid these metaphysical incongruities. One standard form of such
pluralism postulated a "form of the body" (*forma
corporeitatis*) that makes a given parcel of matter to be a
definite, unique, individual organism, and the "animating
form" or soul, which makes that body alive. At death, the
animating soul ceases to vivify the body, but numerically the same
body remains, and the form of the body keeps the matter organized, at
least for a while. Since the form of the body is too weak on its own
to keep the body in existence indefinitely, however, it gradually
decomposes.



Scotus's view is more complicated still, for he treats each
organ of a living body as a substance (a composite of matter and
substantial form). Whether Scotus also acknowledges a *forma
corporeitatis* over and above the forms of the bodily organs is
disputed (see Ward 2014, 90-93). If he does not, he must accept
the unpalatable conclusion that a corpse is not the same body as the
body of the organism. He can, however, avoid the conclusion that no
accidents of that body remain: any accidents that inhere in the organs
can remain, because the organs are substances and continue to exist
(for a while, anyway) when the body of which they were parts ceases to
exist.



Note that the general tendency of Scotus's theories of form and
matter is to allow a high degree of independence to form and matter.
In positing the existence of prime matter, Scotus envisions matter as
existing without any form; in denying universal hylomorphism, he
envisions form as existing without any matter. And the doctrine of the
plurality of substantial forms strongly suggests that the human soul
is an identifiable individual in its own right. So everything Scotus
says in this connection seems to make room for the
*possibility* that the soul survives the death of the body and
continues to exist as an immaterial substance in its own right. But
Scotus canvases a number of philosophical arguments for the claim that
this possibility is in fact realized, and he finds none of them
compelling. That the human soul survives the death of the body is
something we can know only through faith.


### 3.3 Universals and individuation



The problem of universals may be thought of as the question of what,
if anything, is the metaphysical basis of our using the same predicate
for more than one distinct individual. Socrates is human and Plato is
human. Does this mean that there must be some one universal
reality--humanity--that is somehow *repeatable*, in
which Socrates and Plato both share? Or is there nothing
metaphysically common to them at all? Those who think there is some
actual universal existing outside the mind are called realists; those
who deny extra-mental universals are called nominalists. Scotus was a
realist about universals, and like all realists he had to give an
account of what exactly those universals are: what their status is,
what sort of existence they have outside the mind. So, in the case of
Socrates and Plato, the question is "What sort of item is this
humanity that both Socrates and Plato exemplify?" A related
question that realists have to face is the problem of individuation.
Given that there is some extra-mental reality common to Socrates and
Plato, we also need to know what it is in each of them that makes them
*distinct* exemplifications of that extra-mental reality.



Scotus calls the extra-mental universal the "common
nature" (*natura communis*) and the principle of
individuation the "haecceity" (*haecceitas*). The
common nature is common in that it is "indifferent" to
existing in any number of individuals. But it has extra-mental
existence only *in* the particular things in which it exists,
and in them it is always "contracted" by the haecceity. So
the common nature *humanity* exists in both Socrates and Plato,
although in Socrates it is made individual by Socrates's
*haecceitas* and in Plato by Plato's *haecceitas*.
The humanity-of-Socrates is individual and non-repeatable, as is the
humanity-of-Plato; yet humanity itself is common and repeatable, and
it is ontologically prior to any particular exemplification of it
(*Ordinatio* 2, d. 3, pars 1, qq. 1-6, translated in
Spade [1994], 57-113).


## 4. Theory of Knowledge


### 4.1 Sensation and abstraction



Scotus adopts the standard medieval Aristotelian view that human
beings, alone among the animals, have two different sorts of cognitive
powers: senses and intellect. The senses differ from the intellect in
that they have physical organs; the intellect is immaterial. In order
for the intellect to make use of sensory information, therefore, it
must somehow take the raw material provided by the senses in the form
of material images and make them into suitable objects for
understanding. This process is known as abstraction, from the Latin
*abstrahere*, which is literally "to drag out." The
intellect pulls out the universal, as it were, from the material
singular in which it is embedded. This activity is performed by the
active or agent intellect, which takes the "phantasms"
derived from sense experience and turns them into "intelligible
species." Those species are actualized in the possible or
receptive intellect, whose function is to receive and then store the
intelligible species provided by the active intellect. Scotus denies
that the active and passive intellect are really distinct. Rather,
there is one intellect that has these two distinct functions or
powers.



Phantasms do not, however, become irrelevant once the intelligible
species has been abstracted. Scotus holds (just as Aquinas had held)
that the human intellect never understands anything without turning
towards phantasms (*Lectura* 2, d. 3, pars 2, q. 1, n. 255).
That is, in order to deploy a concept that has already been acquired,
one must make some use of sensory data--although the phantasms
employed in using a concept already acquired need not be anything like
the phantasms from which that concept was abstracted in the first
place. I acquired the intelligible species of dog from phantasms of
dogs, but I can make use of that concept now not only by calling up an
image of a dog but also by (say) imagining the sound of the Latin word
for dog. Scotus's point is simply that there must be some
sensory context for any act of intellectual cognition.



And even that point is not quite as general as my unqualified
statement suggests. For one thing, Scotus believes that our
intellect's need for phantasms is a temporary state. It is only
in this present life that the intellect must turn to phantasms; in the
next life we will be able to do without them. For another thing,
Scotus argues in his later works that even in this life we enjoy a
kind of intellectual cognition that bypasses phantasms. He called it
"intuitive cognition."


### 4.2 Intuitive cognition



Scotus understands intuitive cognition by way of contrast with
abstractive cognition. The latter, as we have seen, involves the
universal; and a universal as such need not be exemplified. That is,
my intelligible species of dog only tells me what it is to be a dog;
it doesn't tell me whether any particular dog actually exists.
Intuitive cognition, by contrast, "yields information about how
things are right now" (Pasnau [2002]). Sensory cognition, as
Scotus explicitly acknowledges, counts as intuitive cognition on this
account. It is, after all, quite uncontroversial that my seeing or
hearing a dog gives me information about some particular dog as it
exists when I see or hear it. Scotus's much bolder claim
concerns *intellectual* intuitive cognition, by which the
intellect cognizes a particular thing as existing at that very moment.
Intellectual intuitive cognition does not require phantasms; nor does
it involve intelligible species (which, like phantasms, are
abstractive).



Intellectual intuitive cognition has two different kinds of objects:
extramental sensible objects and the soul's own acts. (Scotus
comes around to affirming the possibility of such cognition of
extramental objects in his later works, having denied it earlier in
his career; he is consistent about the possibility of intuitive
cognition of the soul's acts. See Cross 2014, 43-64, on
whom I draw thoughout this section.) We must have intuitive cognition
of extramental objects because we can cognize them intellectually
*as existing*; we can form propositions about them and use such
propositions in syllogisms. So, for example, if I form the proposition
"This flower is red," the contents of that proposition
must be in the intellect, not merely in the sense. This is
*intellectual* cognition because it is conceptual; it is
*intuitive* cognition because it concerns something *as
existing*. The information contained in the sensible
species--the shape and color of the flower--is "promoted" by
the agent intellect from material existence in an organ to immaterial
existence in the non-organic intellect, so that it is available for
intellectual cognition. The role of sensible species in intuitive
intellectual cognition explains why Scotus denies that we can have
such cognition of non-sensible objects, such as angels, in this
life.



We also have intuitive cognition of our mental acts. (As I discuss in
the next section, Scotus attaches considerable importance to our
intuitive self-knowledge). Abstractive cognition could provide me with
an abstract concept of *thinking about Scotus*, for example,
but I need intuitive cognition to know that I am in fact exemplifying
that concept right this minute. This kind of intuitive cognition
clearly dispenses even with sensible species, since the
intellect's acts, like the intellect itself, are immaterial and
therefore not the sorts of things that can be sensed.


### 4.3 The attack on skepticism and illuminationism



Scotus argues that the human intellect is capable of achieving
certainty in its knowledge of the truth simply by the exercise of its
own natural powers, with no special divine help. He therefore opposes
both skepticism, which denies the possibility of certain knowledge,
and illuminationism, which insists that we need special divine
illumination in order to attain certainty. He works out his attack on
both doctrines in the course of a reply to Henry of Ghent in
*Ordinatio* 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4. (For a translation, see van
den Bercken [2016], 114-143.)



According to Henry, truth involves a relation to an
"exemplar." (We can think of this relation as akin to the
relation of correspondence appealed to by certain theories of truth,
and the exemplar itself as the mental item that is one of the relata
of the correspondence-relation. The other relatum, of course, is
"the way things really are.") Now there are two exemplars:
the created exemplar, which is the species of the universal caused by
the thing known, and the uncreated exemplar, which is an idea in the
divine mind. Henry argues that the created exemplar cannot provide us
with certain and infallible knowledge of a thing. For, first, the
object from which the exemplar is abstracted is itself mutable and
therefore cannot be the cause of something immutable. And how can
there be certain knowledge apart from some immutable basis for that
knowledge? Second, the soul itself is mutable and subject to error,
and it can be preserved from error only by something less mutable than
itself. But the created exemplar is even more mutable than the soul.
Third, the created exemplar by itself does not allow us to distinguish
between reality and dreaming, since the content of the exemplar is the
same in either case. Henry therefore concludes that if we are to have
certainty, we must look to the uncreated exemplar. And since we cannot
look to the uncreated exemplar by our natural powers, certainty is
impossible apart from some special divine illumination.



Scotus argues that if Henry is right about the limitations of our
natural powers, even divine illumination is not enough to save us from
pervasive uncertainty. To Henry's first argument he replies that
there is no certainty to be had by knowing a mutable object as
immutable. To the second he replies that anything in the
soul--including the very act of understanding that Henry thinks
is achieved through illumination--is mutable. So by Henry's
argument it would be impossible for anything whatever to preserve the
soul from error. And to the third argument he replies that if the
created exemplar is such as to preclude certainty, adding extra
exemplars will not solve the problem: "When something
incompatible with certainty concurs, certainty cannot be
attained" (*Ordinatio* 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4, n.
221).



So Henry's arguments, far from showing that certainty is
possible through divine illumination, actually lead to a pervasive
skepticism. Scotus counters that we can show that skepticism is false.
We can in fact attain certainty, and we can do so by the unaided
exercise of our natural intellectual powers. There are four types of
knowledge in which infallible certainty is possible. First, knowledge
of first principles is certain because the intellect has only to form
such judgments to see that they are true. (And since the validity of
proper syllogistic inference can be known in just this way, it follows
that anything that is seen to be properly derived from first
principles by syllogistic inference is also known with certainty.)
Second, we have certainty with respect to quite a lot of causal
judgments derived from experience. Third, Scotus says that many of our
own acts are as certain as first principles. It is no objection to
point out that our acts are contingent, since some contingent
propositions must be known immediately (that is, without needing to be
derived from some other proposition). For otherwise, either some
contingent proposition would follow from a necessary proposition
(which is impossible), or there would be an infinite regress in
contingent propositions (in which case no contingent proposition would
ever be known). Fourth, certain propositions about present sense
experience are also known with certainty if they are properly vetted
by the intellect in light of the causal judgments derived from
experience.


## 5. Ethics and Moral Psychology


### 5.1 The natural law



For Scotus the natural law in the strict sense contains only those
moral propositions that are *per se notae ex terminis* along
with whatever propositions can be derived from them deductively
(*Ordinatio* 3, d. 37, q. un.). *Per se notae* means
that they are self-evident; *ex terminis* adds that they are
self-evident in virtue of being analytically true. Now one important
fact about propositions that are self-evident and analytically true is
that God himself can't make them false. They are necessary
truths. So the natural law in the strict sense does not depend on
God's will. This means that even if (as I believe) Scotus is
some sort of divine-command theorist, he is not whole-hog in his
divine command theory. Some moral truths are necessary truths, and
even God can't change those. They would be true no matter what
God willed.



Which ones are those? Scotus's basic answer is that they are the
commandments of the first tablet of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments).
The Decalogue has often been thought of as involving two tablets. The
first covers our obligations to God and consists of the first three
commandments: *You shall have no other gods before me*, *You
shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain*, and
*Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy*. (Note that many
Protestants divide them up differently.) The second tablet spells out
our obligations toward others: *Honor your father and mother*,
*You shall not kill*, *You shall not commit adultery*,
*You shall not steal*, *You shall not bear false witness
against your neighbor*, and two commandments against coveting. The
commandments of the first tablet are part of the natural law in the
strict sense because they have to do with God himself, and with the
way in which God is to be treated. For Scotus says that the following
proposition is *per se nota ex terminis*: "If God exists,
then he is to be loved as God, and nothing else is to be worshiped as
God, and no irreverence is to be done to him." Given the very
definition of God, it follows that if there is such a being, he is to
be loved and worshiped, and no irreverence should be shown to him.
Because these commandments are self-evident and analytic, they are
necessary truths. Not even God himself could make them false.



But even the first three commandments, once we start looking at them,
are not obviously part of the natural law in the strict sense. In
particular, the third commandment, the one about the Sabbath day, is a
little tricky. Obviously, the proposition "God is to be
worshiped on Saturday" is not self-evident or analytic. In fact,
Scotus says it's not even true any more, since Christians are to
worship on Sunday, not Saturday. So, Scotus asks, what about the
proposition "God is to be worshiped at some time or
other"? Even that is not self-evident or analytic. The best one
can do is "God is not to be hated." Now that's
self-evident and analytic, since by definition God is the being most
worthy of love and there is nothing in him worthy of hate. But
obviously that's far weaker than any positive commandment about
whether and when we should worship God.



So by the time Scotus completes his analysis, we are left with nothing
in the natural law in the strict sense except for negative
propositions: God is not to be hated, no other gods are to be
worshiped, no irreverence is to be done to God. Everything else in the
Decalogue belongs to the natural law in a weaker or looser sense.
These are propositions that are not *per se notae ex terminis*
and do not follow from such propositions, but are "highly
consonant" with such propositions. Now the important point for
Scotus is this: since these propositions are contingent, they are
completely up to God's discretion. Any contingent truth
whatsoever depends on God's will.



According to Scotus, God of course is aware of all contingent
propositions. Now God gets to assign the truth values to those
propositions. For example, "Unicorns exist" is a
contingent proposition. Therefore, it is up to God's will
whether that proposition will be true or false. The same goes for
contingent moral propositions. Take any such proposition and call it
*L*, and call the opposite of *L*, not-*L*. Both
*L* and not-*L* are contingent propositions. God can
make either of them true, but he can't make both of them true,
since they are contradictories. Suppose that God wills *L*.
*L* is now part of the moral law. How do we explain why God
willed *L* rather than not-*L*? Scotus says we
can't. God's will with respect to contingent propositions
is unqualifiedly free. So while there might be some reasons why God
chose the laws he chose, there is no fully adequate reason, no total
explanation. If there were a total explanation other than God's
will itself, those propositions wouldn't be contingent at all.
They would be necessary. So at bottom there is simply the sheer fact
that God willed one law rather than another.



Scotus intends this claim to be exactly parallel to the way we think
about contingent beings. Why are there elephants but no unicorns? As
everyone would agree, it's because God willed for there to be
elephants but no unicorns. And why did he will that? He just did.
That's part of what we mean by saying that God was free in
creating. There was nothing constraining him or forcing him to create
one thing rather than another. The same is true about the moral law.
Why is there an obligation to honor one's parents but no such
obligation toward cousins? Because God willed that there be an
obligation to honor one's parents, and he did not will that
there be any such obligation toward one's cousins. He could have
willed both of these obligations, and he could have willed neither.
What explains the way that he did in fact will? Nothing whatsoever
except the sheer fact that he did will that way.



(For recent criticisms of this strongly voluntaristic reading of
Scotus's account of the moral law, see Borland and Hillman 2017
and Ward 2019.)


### 5.2 The will, freedom, and morality



Scotus quite self-consciously puts forward his understanding of
freedom as an alternative to Aquinas's. According to Aquinas,
freedom comes in simply because the will is intellectual appetite
rather than mere sense appetite. Intellectual appetite is aimed at
objects as presented by the intellect and sense appetite at objects as
presented by the senses. Sense appetite is not free because the senses
provide only particulars as objects of appetite. But intellectual
appetite is free because the intellect deals with universals, not
particulars. Since universals by definition include many particulars,
intellectual appetite will have a variety of objects. Consider
goodness as an example. The will is not aimed at this good thing or
that good thing, but at goodness in general. Since that universal,
goodness, contains many different particular things, intellectual
appetite has many different options.



But Scotus insists that mere intellectual appetite is not enough to
guarantee freedom in the sense needed for morality. The basic
difference comes down to this. When Aquinas argues that intellectual
appetite has different options, he seems to be thinking of this over a
span of time. Right now the intellect presents *x* as good, so
I will *x*; but later on the intellect presents *y* as
good, so then I will *y*. But Scotus thinks of freedom as
involving multiple options at the very moment of choice. It's
not enough to say that now I will *x*, but later I can will
*y*. We have to say that at the very moment at which I will
*x*, I also am able to will *y*. Aquinas's
arguments don't show that intellectual appetite is free in this
stronger sense. So as far as Scotus is concerned, Aquinas hasn't
made room for the right kind of freedom.



This is where Scotus brings in his well-known doctrine of the two
affections of the will (see especially *Ordinatio* 2, d. 6, q.
2; 2, d. 39, q. 2; 3, d. 17, q. un.; and 3, d. 26, q. un.). The two
affections are fundamental inclinations in the will: the *affectio
commodi*, or affection for the advantageous, and the *affectio
iustitiae*, or affection for justice. Scotus identifies the
*affectio commodi* with intellectual appetite. Notice how
important that is. For Aquinas intellectual appetite is the same thing
as will, whereas for Scotus intellectual appetite is only part of what
the will is. Intellectual appetite is just one of the two fundamental
inclinations in the will. Why does Scotus make this crucial change?
For the reason we've already discussed. He doesn't see how
intellectual appetite could be genuinely free. Now he can't deny
that the will involves intellectual appetite. Intellectual appetite is
aimed at happiness, and surely happiness does have some role to play
in our moral psychology. But the will has to include something more
than intellectual appetite if it's going to be free. That
something more is the *affectio iustitiae*. But one can't
fully understand what the *affectio iustitiae* is until Aquinas
and Scotus are compared on a further point.



For Aquinas the norms of morality are defined in terms of their
relationship to human happiness. We have a natural inclination toward
our good, which is happiness, and it is that good that determines the
content of morality. So like Aristotle, Aquinas holds a eudaimonistic
theory of ethics: the point of the moral life is happiness.
That's why Aquinas can understand the will as an intellectual
appetite for happiness. All of our choosing is aimed at the human good
(or at least, it's aimed at the human good as we conceive it).
And choices are good--and, indeed, fully intelligible--only
when they are aimed at the ultimate end, which is happiness. So
Aquinas just defines the will as the capacity to choose in accordance
with a conception of the human good--in other words, as
intellectual appetite.



When Scotus rejects the idea that will is merely intellectual
appetite, he is saying that there is something fundamentally wrong
with eudaimonistic ethics. Morality is not tied to human flourishing
at all. For it is Scotus's fundamental conviction that morality
is impossible without libertarian freedom, and since he sees no way
for there to be libertarian freedom on Aquinas's eudaimonistic
understanding of ethics, Aquinas's understanding must be
rejected. And just as Aquinas's conception of the will was
tailor-made to suit his eudaimonistic conception of morality,
Scotus's conception of the will is tailor-made to suit his
anti-eudaimonistic conception of morality. It's not merely that
he thinks there can be no genuine freedom in mere intellectual
appetite. It's also that he rejects the idea that moral norms
are intimately bound up with human nature and human happiness. The
fact that God creates human beings with a certain kind of nature does
not require God to command or forbid the actions that he in fact
commanded or forbade. The actions he commands are not necessary for
our happiness, and the actions he forbids are not incompatible with
our happiness. Now if the will were merely intellectual
appetite--that is, if it were aimed solely at happiness--we
would not be able to choose in accordance with the moral law, since
the moral law itself is not determined by any considerations about
human happiness. So Scotus relegates concerns about happiness to the
*affectio commodi* and assigns whatever is properly moral to
the other affection, the *affectio iustitiae*.