PHIL252 was a sampling of certain strands of medieval thought up to the 1270s. Most of what we read was on topics of the "Philosophy of Religion". This was fair enough, because in fact most medieval philosophical thought was concerned with religion. However there are other strands: in the Arts faculties especially medieval academics were devoted to logic and what we would call philosophy of language, and to natural philosophy or science. These interests continued and perhaps intensified in the 14th century, but again we will follow mainly the "philosophy of religion" and metaphysics strand. Medieval philosophy of religion was not based so much on the Bible (as you might have expected), but more on a philosophical tradition coming down from Parmenides and Plato and Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. (For Parmenides see PHIL252 Supplement, p. 99, and see p. 100 on Parmenidean problems in Thomas Aquinas; for the beginnings of philosophical theology see Plato, Laws, book X; for neo-Platonism see PHIL252 Supplement, p. 1ff and 105ff). In this Greek tradition, the first principle (or God) was held to be one, simple, and unchanging, and this made it difficult and problematic to speak about or understand him/it in human concepts: the things we experience are not simply one but are unified complexes. Most of the thinkers in this tradition held that our words and concepts apply to God "analogically" or even "equivocally", in some different sense or manner than they apply to the things we normally know about. It was also difficult to reconcile the philosophical account of God with Christian belief: if God is unchanging and not affected by anything else, how can he involve himself in the flux of human history? These difficulties had already faced Muslim philosophers. When the works of Aristotle and the Muslim thinkers became widely available in Latin in the 13th century Christians had to do some hard thinking.
Scotus, who was a Scot, and Ockham, who was English, both studied and taught at Oxford, were both members of the Franciscan order, the order established at the beginning of the 13th century by Francis of Assissi. In philosophy and theology the Franciscans do not seem to have formed a united school of thought. Diversity and disagreement characterises the Franciscan tradition. One of the most obvious common characteristics of 14th century philosophy was that it was academic or "scholastic" (belonging to the Schools). In other words, it was written by university teachers for a university readership, students and other teachers; it was not addressed to the general public outside the universities. In this respect it contrasts with philosophy in the 17th and 18th (and, in English, in the 19th) centuries, which was generally deliberately non-academic, being addressed to lay readers, to the general reading public, written generally in the vernacular. Seventeenth century writers such as Descartes did not generally refer to anyone else's writings: there were no learned footnotes, no analyses of other people's arguments, quotations from Aristotle and Plato and so on. This has misled some 19th century historians into thinking that the 17th century writers made a completely new beginning, which is not true. They were often using, and implicitly arguing with, earlier writers' ideas.
But, as I said, Scotus and Ockham and their contemporaries are academics writing for academic readers. In this respect their works are often reminiscent of the writings of the Anglo-American analytic school of the 1960s and later, the centre of which was Oxford. Fourteenth century scholastics also made no concessions to the casual reader; they assumed readers who were willing to follow difficult arguments with close attention, prepared to pursue quite technical points a long way. Another similarity with modern analytic philosophy is the use made in the 14th century of logic. Ockham and Scotus, like analytic philosophers, presuppose a knowledge of logic and an interest in it, and they make constant use of it. In both the 14th and the 20th century Oxford philosophy was professional, in the sense that it was written by and for people who were philosophers full time for a good part of their lives. More exactly, the 14th century writers were professional theologians; but their approach to theology was philosophical. The cultural horizons of these professional theologians were somewhat narrower than those of the writers of the 13th century. Thomas Aquinas had a big project, to make Greek and Arabic philosophy useful to Christians, and this led him to criticise representatives of non-Christian thought (e.g. Averroes). Scotus and Ockham, on the other hand, seem to regard the main 13th century problems as settled. They are teachers in a Christian institution, carrying out the everyday task of teaching on the set books, taking up difficult technical questions as they arise, moving on steadily through the curriculum in what might be called a routine way. There is no sense when you read these people, as I think there was when you read Thomas Aquinas, that large cultural issues are at stake. They are concerned mostly with technical issues of philosophy.
Now besides being academic, or perhaps it's part of the same thing, their work is very critical, that is they are very much engaged in testing the current theories and trying to replace them with better ones. (Then as now, academics often advanced their careers by refuting someone.) This has led some historians to regard the spirit of their work as sceptical. This is said especially of Ockham. But no medieval philosopher was sceptical in the ancient sense; that is, none of them set out to force suspension of judgment or to show that nothing can be known. But it often happened that when they applied their critical powers to some accepted doctrine or set of doctrines they came to the conclusion that this or that traditional thesis could not, after all, be proved. For example, Duns Scotus says that it is not possible to prove that the human soul is immortal, Ockham says that you can't prove that just one God exists. This doesn't mean that Scotus did not believe that the soul is immortal or that Ockham did not believe that there is one God, but these beliefs were for them matters of faith, not of demonstration. It is perhaps a manifestation of the academic spirit of their work that it didn't bother them to refute traditional arguments for orthodox theses. It wasn't as if their students were going to turn away and cease to be Christians if this or that thesis of Christian belief couldn't be proved. So they were saying frankly, "We can't prove this, we can't prove that, we think we can prove this, or perhaps we can provide probable arguments toward that other thing", but it was taken for granted both by them and their readers or hearers that they were all Christians, and there was no question really of turning away from Christianity just because various things couldn't be proved.
Given that they approach philosophy as academics working in a minutely critical way though a pre-established curriculum, it becomes difficult to sum up their philosophies. Their philosophies consist in the many details, rather than in a few grand theses or master arguments. Still, I will suggest one theme, at least for Ockham, and by contrast for Scotus. Ockham is famous for his "razor", the principle, "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity". One of Ockham's characteristic concerns is to reduce the catalog of different sorts of beings or entities by showing that a term that seems to refer to some sort of entity is simply a way of referring to, or saying something about, one or more of the few basic sorts of entities. Duns Scotus, in contrast, seems quite happy to recognise a multiplicity of entities--as if in recognising each one he was discovering more about the constitution of the universe. For example, according to Scotus, when two things bear some relation to one another--let's say, if Socrates and Plato are related as similar, in that they are both white--then, besides Socrates and Plato and Socrates' whitness and Plato's, there is another entity, their relationship of similarity. Ockham, in contrast, says that if you say that Socrates and Plato are similar in being white, that's a way of saying that Socrates is white and Plato is white: the only kinds of entity involved are substance (Socrates and Plato) and quality (whiteness). There is not an additional entity in the category of relation. In Ockham's view Aristotle's 10 categories are not 10 kinds of beings, but 10 kinds of predicates. Ockham didn't invent the slogan that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity, but it does usefully sum up one of his aims as a philosopher, to reduce the catalogue of entities that Scotus and others recognised. In fact, Scotus would have agreed that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. When he postulates some kind of being, it is because it seems to be necessitated by some argument. Ockham's catalogue is shorter because he thinks he sees ways of turning the arguments that led Scotus to postulate another kind of entity. So the contrast between them is not so much in acceptance or rejection of this principle, but in the degree of ingenuity Ockham disposes of in avoiding the conclusion that such and such a kind of entity has to be postulated.
There is another comparison that might be helpful. Scotus shows the influence of Avicenna, and behind him of the ancient (neo-) Platonists (Plotinus, Proclus etc.); he is also influenced by Augustine, who was also influenced by Platonism. The Platonists saw the things we know as being highly complex, in contrast with the simplicity of higher things surpassing our experience. Complex beings consist of many principles or elements that have to be held together by some principle of unity. That is how Scotus sees the things of our experience: each of them is a complexity containing many realities or entities unified in some way. (The Latin word for thing is res, the word realitas is an abstract term formed from res. Being in Latin is ens, and entitas is an abstract term formed from ens: each res or ens is a complex of realities or entities held together by some principle of unity.) Compare Proclus, proposition 13, in PHIL252 Supplement, p.106.
One of these entities, according to Scotus, is the common nature, i.e. the nature (e.g. of humanity) that various individuals (e.g. men) have in common. This common nature according to Scotus is itself an entity, with what Scotus called quidditative or essential being, and this common nature really exists in all the individuals of that species. The individuals also contain an individuating entity, which makes them individuals. So the individual is a complex, including the common nature and the individual entity (and other realities). The notion of a common nature comes from Avicenna, ultimately from Plato. Like Aristotle, Ockham insists that there are no realities that are not individual: there is no real common nature of humanity, but there is a word or concept of humanity that can in appropriate statements stand for any of them--but the similarity of human beings with one another is not an entity. Thus Scotus and Ockham differ in their theories of the universal in a way that reflects Ockham's desire to reduce the catalogue of entities.
There you have something from the editors to orient you in reading. It will be useful to re-read their introduction after you've read the extracts. Now look at the beginning of the first extract, on p.560.
First, there is a question: whether God is naturally knowable by the wayfarer. "Naturally" contrasts with "supernaturally", by revelation. Apart from revelation, by using the natural human intellectual power, can human beings obtain knowledge of God? "The wayfarer" means the human being in the present life here on earth, on their way or pilgrimage toward heaven, the next life, after death. The second question refers to "this present condition"--again, this present life.
The extract is from what is called the Opus Oxoniense or "Oxford Work", Scotus's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which he wrote, or began, while he was a bachelor of theology in the university of Oxford. The Sentences of Peter Lombard was one of the text books lectured on in the theology faculty. The extract printed here is only part of Scotus's discussion of this question. There is a text and full translation in Duns Scotus Philosophical Writings, tr. A. Wolter, pp. 14-33. Well, after some opening arguments pro and con, as in the first part of a question of Thomas Aquinas's Summa, Scotus marks some observations on the meaning of the question. Put a mark on p.561 just in front of the second last paragraph, "I say first of all", and read to that point. Pause.
Some comments. The first paragraph refers to the doctrine of Dionysios the Pseudo-Areopagite, that our knowledge of God is negative: we can know what he is not, not what he is. Thomas Aquinas sometimes echoes Dionysios. For example in PHIL252 Readings, p.107, he said, "Now because we can't know what God is, but rather what he is not" etc. But Thomas, like Scotus in the question we've begun to read, rejects the thesis that everything we say of God must be construed as a negation. See PHIL252 Readings, p.114, article 2.
Another comment. In Scotus, on p.561, line 5, "Chimera" means a mythical and impossible beast.
The rejection of the distinction between whether a thing is, and what it is ("Nor should a distinction be made..."), might also be a reference to Thomas Aquinas. See PHIL252 Readings, p.104, two thirds of the way through the prologue. There he says: "concerning the divine essence we must consider (1) Whether God exists, (2) The manner of his existence, or rather what is not the manner of his existence" (an echo of Dionysios again). Scotus says that these two questions, whether and what, can't be separated and can't be answered in that order. You can't discuss whether something exists without some concept of what it would be if it did exist; and in fact in his five ways Thomas employed the meaning of the word God as part of the argument for God's existence--remember the repeated line, "And this everyone understands to be God".
Another comment, on the last distinction ("between knowledge of God in a creature and in himself..."). Scotus's point is that if it is said that we know God indirectly, e.g., by knowing his effect, this can be knowledge of God only if we already have some conception of God to which we can attribute something on account of the character of his effects. This is inferential knowledge. Inferential knowledge of A from B presupposes some conception of A. As Scotus puts it, discursive, i.e., inferential, cognition or knowledge must have a term or terminus, something to which what is inferred can be attributed.
So that's Henry's answer to the question. In this life we can attain a general, non-proper, knowledge of God by combining negation with analogy: we develop certain general concepts from our experience of creatures and apply these to God, negating the imperfections found in creatures. Against this, Scotus will say that if we are to have any genuine natural knowledge of God in this life, we must be able to form some concepts that apply univocally, i.e., in the same meaning, to both God and creatures.
A comment: The contrast here is between, on the one hand, "accidentally" or "incidentally" (in Latin per accidens), and on the other hand "intrinsically", "definitionally" (per se and quidditative). "Definitionally" means conveying something about the essence or the quiddity of something. "Quiddity" comes from the Latin question Quid est?, What is it? When you give any part of the answer to the question "What is it?" you are giving some part of its quiddity--e.g. it is an animal of some sort. Take wisdom, for example. This is here called a quasi-property or quasi-attribute because in God there is no distinction between subject and attribute--God is his wisdom. Well, we may know some person as "The Wise" or "The Good" (an adjective with "the" in front to make a kind of noun--awkward in English, idiomatic in Latin). If we know someone as "The Wise" we then know that person not as he is in himself, but only through this attribute. Scotus says that to have this indirect knowledge you must first have some direct quidditive knowledge (perhaps not much): in the present example, "person" conveys something about the essence or quiddity. We said, "suppose we know some person as the Wise". "Person" already gives you some clue about the subject that has the wisdom. So knowledge through an attribute can't be all the knowledge that we have, and it can't be the first knowledge that we have. We must already have some, perhaps only a little bit, of direct knowledge of the essence on quiddity of the subject of this attribute or quasi-attribute.
Go back to the text now, and in the margin write 1 at the second paragraph on p.562 ("And I prove"); write 2 beside the last paragraph on that page ("I argue the second principal proof"), and 3 at the beginning of the first new paragraph on p.563 ("Third").
Comment. In the introduction on p.558 the editors tell you that they are translating not the latest edition, but the Wadding edition, which dates from the 18th century. The older text contained interpolations, often designed to bring Scotus into line with later theological opinion. In what you've just read the parenthesis, "But not making an assertion, since it is not consonant with the common opinion", is such an interpolation. Delete it. That there are univocal concepts common to God and creatures is precisely what Scotus does mean to assert!
Now to remind you, the distinction between "univocal" and "equivocal" comes from Aristotle's, Categories Chapter 1. A word is used equivocally when it shifts from one sense to another: for example, "pen" as applied to a writing instrument and as something you keep animals in. A term is used univocally when it is used in the one sense--for example, horse and dog are both animals in the same sense of animal, "living material beings" (or whatever the sense is).
Aristotle says also that some words are used "according to priority and posteriority", with one primary sense and others related to that. His example is "healthy"; primarily an animal is healthy (a human being, for example); but a complexion can be healthy (a sign of health in the primary sense), a place or way of life can be healthy (conducive to health in the primary sense). When a word is used in different related senses the scholastics said it was used analogically, from the Greek word for proportion.
Equivocation ruins an argument. For example, if you construct an argument with "pen" as middle term, but shift from meaning writing instrument to meaning enclosure for animals, your argument fails. Also, equivocation ruins an attempted contradiction or refutation. For example, if one politician says that full employment is unattainable, and the other says it will be attained through his policies, you'd better check that they mean the same thing by "full employment".
So, as Scotus says, the unity or oneness of a univocal concept "suffices for contradiction and for use as middle term in a syllogism", i.e. a term is being used univocally if there is no shift of meaning that ruins contradiction or argument. This is his minimal definition of univocity--an attempt to define it without raising complicated issues about what concepts are, etc.
Notice toward the end of the paragraph that it is impossible to be certain in Scotus's sense of something that is false. "Certain" is not merely a subjective state of mind, but knowledge. Perhaps this undermines the proof of the minor. Perhaps the pre-Socratic philosophers that he's talking about were not certain that their first principles were being, if they were mistaken in thinking that fire or water were first principles.
Read to the last paragraph on p.562, beginning "I argue the second principal proof thus". Comment: in the last paragraph you read, "two neighboring concepts that seem to be one concept" is Henry of Ghent's notion of an analogical concept: an ambiguity so close as to be taken as a single sense. (I don't know of any other medieval writer who described analogical concepts that way.)
It is called "principal" ("I argue the second principal proof thus") because the argument two paragraphs previously is a confirmation of argument 1, not a second new argument.
The phantasm is the image or impression made by something that affects our senses. The agent intellect, or active part of the intellect, produces from the phantasm an intellectual knowledge of the thing sensed. So Scotus is saying, in effect, that without sensation we can't form an intellectual concept. But if a concept applicable both to God and to objects of sense experience is analogical in Henry of Ghent's sense--that is, really a pair of different concepts so close as to seem like one--then where did the other one come from, the one not derived from sensation? There seems to be no possible source, and Henry's theory seems untenable. So according to Scotus we can't have any concept applicable to God unless sense experience of creatures yields univocal concepts that apply to God as well as to objects of sense experience.
A comment on the wording. "Assumption" (p.563, 3rd line) does not have its modern meaning. The second or minor premiss was often called the assumption. In this case it is the premise "But a concept which would not be univocal", etc. At the end of this premise Scotus says, "as I shall prove", referring forward to the proof of the assumption.
The argument, then, is that Henry's theory of a pair of close concepts can't account for the formation of the member of the pair that applies to God.
Comment. Note the phrase, "From the fact that the characteristic does not include an imperfection or limitation". Recall from PHIL252 Anselm, Monologion ch.15: The concepts that can be predicated substantively (i.e. quidditatively, in Scotus's terminology) of God are those that are of characteristics that it is in every way better to be than not to be--i.e. concepts that imply no imperfection. Scotus is arguing here that unless we have such concepts (concepts that imply no imperfection and can therefore be attributed to God in the same sense as they have when we form them in experience of creatures), there can be no knowledge of God.
So although, as we first encounter it in creatures, wisdom exists imperfectly, there is no imperfection implied in the concept of wisdom. It is a concept of something not necessarily imperfect, although as we first experience it it exists imperfectly. Since it implies no imperfection we can apply the term wisdom in exactly the same sense--i.e. we can apply exactly the one concept--to both God and creatures.
You might compare this with Thomas Aquinas in PHIL 252 Readings p.117, article 3.
I'll leave the rest of this extract till the next cassette. It will be a useful exercise for the next tutorial to compare Scotus's theory with Thomas Aquinas's on the names of God, Summa, I, q.13.
Now read section Roman numeral III. Some comments.
The omission dots are for the omission of an argument that Scotus rejects.
By "except with respect to His intellect alone" means that God's own intellect is the only intellect that naturally knows God. "As this" means as this particular individual, i.e. as an individual.
The major premise of the argument given is that God is a "volitional and not a natural object". Scotus often distinguishes between the voluntary and the natural. As we will see later, Scotus is not a determinist: he does not believe that the will is determined in its choice by causes. By "natural" in contrast with voluntary he means determined by causes. When he says here that God is a "voluntary" object of human knowledge, he means that God is not knowable to us as an individual except when he chooses, freely, to reveal himself. Otherwise, we can know him only in general terms such as "being", or "wise" or "good", which apply to other individuals besides God.
Scotus leaves aside the question "whether there is another reason", namely that the human intellect in this life naturally knows only material beings. This was the opinion of Thomas Aquinas. See PHIL252 Readings, p.155. We will come to Scotus's discussion of this question on p.572.
Scotus says that the concept "infinite being" is simpler than "good being" or "time being" or "highest being". He does not say that it is absolutely simple: an absolutely simple concept applicable to God would not be univocally common to God and creatures. But it is simpler, in the sense that the concept of a grade or degree of some one attribute is simpler than a concept that combines something with something else--two attributes, or attribute and subject. Still, there is some complexity: the concept of intense white is not as simple as the concept white. (Do we accept this ranking of complexities--that perfect being is less complex than highest being? What are these intrinsic modes of being or whiteness?)
Another point to notice in the passage you've just read, in the first new paragraph of p.564, is the reference to truth, goodness, and being. In medieval philosophy being, truth, goodness and unity were called the "transcendentals", transcending the ten categories. (See one of the pieces distributed in the first mailing in this course, Thomas Aquinas, Truth. Read question 1, article 1, concerned with the transcendentals "being", "thing", "something", "one", "good", and "true".) Recall (from PHIL252) that according to Aristotle "being" is not a genus, not a category; there are ten supreme or highest genera or categories, and all ten are "kinds" of being, but not as species of a genus; "being" transcends the highest genera. According to medieval thinkers, "true", "good", and "one" are convertible with "being", and are therefore likewise above the categories: whatever is, is (as such) intelligible, desirable, and unified. This is in origin a Christian neo-Platonic doctrine. Scotus took it over and introduced an interesting modification: besides these concepts convertible with being, there are also certain others that are convertible with being in disjunctive pairs: every being is either finite or infinite, necessary or contingent, actual or potential.
According Scotus, then, the most satisfactory concept of God is "infinite being". His argument for the existence of God will be an argument for the existence of an infinite being.
Now read section Roman numeral V. Comment. Species here is not contrasted with genus. It means any form. If you perceive a cat, through its form which you apprehend you know a cat, an animal, a being--by knowing the less universal (cat) you also know the more universal (being): or, at least, the thing sitting there on the mat can cause in you knowledge of the less universal, or of the more universal. So in general any creature in any of the ten categories can impress on your mind a conception of being, of truth, goodness, unity etc.
"The topic a minori"; from the lesser. What can be done by the lesser power can be done by the greater. If the imagination can build up composite images, the intellect, which is a greater power than the imagination, can build complex concepts.
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