Macquarie University
PHIL360 Later Medieval Philosophy

Week 3: Scotus on the primary object of the intellect

Let us turn now to the next section, Opus Oxoniense, book I, dist.3, q.3. First some comments on the terms of the question. The medieval Aristotelians distinguished various powers of the soul, and to each power they assigned a primary object. Thus the object of the power of hearing is sound. The object of vision, they said, is something coloured--you can't actually see colourless objects (glass, water, air, etc.), unless they reflect or refract coloured light, or (in the case of air) unless they contain particles that reflect coloured light. The colourless air as such is transparent--you don't see it, you see through it. Visible objects are visible by reason of colour--their own colour, or the colour of something else that they reflect etc. This illustrates the job done in this theory by the "primary object" of the power: It is somehow by reason of some relation to the primary object that other things become objects, e.g. a body becomes visible (an object of vision) by reason of its colour.

The primary object of a power is by nature "adequate" or equal to that power--if everything visible must in some way be coloured, then the coloured equals the visible (apparently it is assumed that there are no invisible coloured things). Consider another power, the will. The primary object of the will is the good. Other things become objects of volition because of some relation to goodness--for example, we may choose to undergo some painful medical treatment because we see it as a means to something good, health. According to these medieval thinkers we never desire evil as such: we may choose what really is evil, but if we do it is because we see in it some relation to something good, for example, the relation of means to end. A Latin expression that they used in this context was sub ratione, "under the ratio of". Ratio is a word of broad meaning. It can be translated reason, description, nature. We choose everything sub ratione boni, under the aspect of good, or under the description of "good", or by reason of some goodness.

What is the primary object of the intellect as a power? The agreed answer was: being (in Latin, ens, in some cases ent-). This goes back to Parmenides: what simply is not cannot be thought. Whatever our intellect attains in any way, it knows sub ratione entis, in some way by reason of being. This doesn't mean that what we think must actually exist, just that if we think it we must think it in some relation (perhaps negation) to being. If we think of an impossibility, either we mistakenly think of it as actually or possibly existing (just as we may choose an evil mistaking it for good), or we correctly think of it as not a possible being. But there must be some relation to "being".

Is God the primary object of the intellect?

The first being is God. The question in the Scotus extract we are about to read is whether God is the being that is the primary object of the intellect. Followers of Augustine were inclined to say Yes. The question is Aristotelian, but it is possible to extract from Platonism an answer. In Plato's theory the Good is like the sun: the sun makes things visible, similarly the Good makes things intelligible. Each of the lower ideas in the Platonic hierarchy makes intelligible some class of sensible objects. When I perceive something through the senses, I achieve knowledge of it only if it reminds me of the appropriate Idea, so that I recognise it as an embodiment of that Idea. In Augustine's Christian neo-Platonism the highest reality is Being, Being is God's most appropriate name, the Ideas are God's thoughts, and human knowledge attains truth and stability by divine illumination. We don't see the Ideas before birth into the body (as Plato taught), because the human soul has no pre-existence. But during this life God illuminates our minds so that we achieve a true and stable perception of the things we experience, analogous to that which we attain according to Plato by recollection of an Idea. Augustine does not say that in this life we see God or see God's ideas, but that we are helped by a divine illumination to see things steadily as they really are. In the 17th century Locke wrote a pamphlet criticising a version of Augustine's theory held by Malebrache. In the middle ages Aquinas and Scotus were both opposed to it.

In the late 13th century the leading exponent of a blend of Augustine and Aristotle was Henry of Ghent. According to Henry, God, the first being, is the being that is the primary object of our intellect. It is by reason of some relation to God that other things become objects of true and stable knowledge. Scotus rejects this theory. In Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings (tr. Wolter), pp.97-132, Scotus argues against Henry's theory of divine illumination. In the article we are about to read he argues in part against the related theory that the primary object of the intellect is the First Being.

Thomas Aquinas also rejected Augustine's Platonist theory of knowledge. Take time out to read again Summa theologiae I, q. 84 (PHIL252 Readings, pp.147-155). Notice the criticism of Plato (article 1, p.148), the criticism of Augustine (article 5, p.153), and in article 9 (p.155) Thomas's thesis the "the proper object of the human intellect, which is united to a body, is the quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter". "Which is united to a body" should be taken here as a non-defining relative clause. That is, he is not saying only that the proper object of that human intellect which is united to a body is the being of material things, leaving it an open question whether human intellects not united to bodies (in the next life) have some wider object. Rather, Thomas's position is that by nature the human intellect is united to a body. The disembodied state of the next life is according to him not natural; indeed, the resurrection of the body and the reuniting of soul and body is needed for human beings in the next life to achieve again their full humanity. His position, then, is that the primary object of the human intellect, not only in this life but in the next, is not being in general, but material being.

How, then, do human beings in heaven see God and the angels? By a special addition to the natural power of the human intellect, the "light of glory". Divine illumination is not needed in this life for knowing material beings, but it is needed in the next life for knowing immaterial beings. The special addition, the light of glory, is, in Thomas's Aristotelian terminology, a "habit". Habit has narrowed in meaning since then. In medieval philosophy some habits are formed by habituation, repeated action, but some are not. The light of glory is a habit formed all in one go, without repeated action, by God's action on the soul. The etymology of habit can be understood if you think of clothing: a monk's habit is his monkish clothing; "taking the habit" means being dressed for the first time in this clothing. Similarly in philosophy a habit means something extra added to a native power, as clothing is added to the original naked body. What we these days call a habit is a habit also in this sense--by repeated action you acquire an extra power to do similar actions easily. The habit "of the light of glory" adds something to the natural or native power of the human intellect that enables it to intuit immaterial beings: without this extra it can know only material beings, through the senses.

Scotus' answer: the primary object is being in general

Scotus will reject both Henry's doctrine that the primary object of the human intellect is the First Being, and also Thomas's doctrine that the primary object is material being. He will maintain that the primary object of the human intellect is being in general, being univocally common to God, material beings, and all other beings.

In the extract from Hyman and Walsh, on p.572, beside the first paragraph, beginning "In this question there is one opinion" write in a heading, "opinions", and immediately under it write "Thomas Aquinas". On p.574, in the middle, beside the paragraph beginning, "There is another opinion", write "Henry of Ghent". On p.575, at the first new paragraph, beginning "I reply to the question", write "solution". Beside the next paragraph, beginning "As to the first", write "Article 1", on p.576 in the middle, at the paragraph beginning "As to the second principle article", write "Article 2". On p.578, first new paragraph, at "These having been seen", write "A Doubt".

Criticisms of Thomas Aquinas's theory

Read p.572 down to the beginning of the first new paragraph on p.573. Some comments. In the third line, "The cognitive power", i.e. the knowing power, does not mean the human cognitive power, but cognitive powers generally, of all different sorts of knowing entities: God, the angels, human beings, animals that know through sensation, and so on. "The separate intellect" means intellects like those of God and the angels, that exist in separation from matter, immaterially.

In the next paragraph, line 3, a "beatified" soul means a soul in heaven, seeing God.

The rest should be clear from what I said earlier about the light of glory as a habit. Scotus says here that a habit adds to a power, not by enlarging its object, but by enabling it to do something that already comes within its object more easily or effectively. A habit formed by habituation makes you able to do more easily or effectively something that is already within your power. A habit formed by habitation makes you better at doing something you could already do--you formed the habit by laboriously doing the thing the habit eventually makes easy.

Read p.573 to the omission dots just before the paragraph that begins "Also, the congruence". The philosopher's opinion might be compared with Thomas Aquinas in PHIL252 Readings, p.155: the human intellect cannot understand except by turning to phantasms or images. Six lines down, "common sense", is a reference to the sense that enables you to put together information coming through the various particular senses--e.g. to perceive that the light, heat and crackling sound are all coming from that fire. The common sense is particularly concerned with spatial relations--feeling your way in the dark you can recognise a shape you saw in the light, because your "common sense" correlates sensations of touch and sight.

The next paragraph ("There are three arguments") assumes two premisses: First, that a natural desire must be capable of fulfilment, and second that material things are effects of immaterial causes. The second assumption presupposes the argument we were looking at earlier to prove that an infinite and therefore immaterial being is first in the order of efficient causality. The first assumption, that natural desire must be capable of fulfilment, rests on the premiss that nature does nothing in vain. Plato and Aristotle taught that the universe makes teleological sense--that its various parts have by nature ends they are in principle capable of attaining. Scotus is assuming this.

The second argument (in the next paragraph) should be clear enough. It assumes that every power has one primary object by reason of which it attains anything that is in any way its object. It follows that the primary object is "adequate" to, or equal to, or as universal as, the power. Thomas Aquinas admits that in some circumstances and in some ways human beings can know immaterial beings and can know something about beings in general, and if this is true then material being can not, after all, be the primary object of the human intellect. Metaphysics, according to Aristotle and Avicenna, is the science of being as such--of being and beings in general. (Though sometimes Aristotle says, and Averroes takes this up, that metaphysics is the science of the first being, God--Aristotle sometimes calls metaphysics theology.) Scotus says that metaphysics is concerned with God insofar as God is a being--God is one of the beings in general with which metaphysics is concerned.

Read the rest of Scotus's discussion of Thomas Aquinas's theory (to the middle of p. 574).

"The congruence" is the parallelism of the first paragraph of the extract, on p.572, three lines down: "The cognitive power, however, is three-fold... To these correspond proportionate objects". Scotus rejects this correspondence.

On p.574, 6 lines down. You are capable of understanding some proof of geometry. You are not at present actually doing so. Neither are you at present in "proximate disposition" to do so--i.e. disposed in such a way that you are quite ready to do so. But after you have heard a statement of what is to be proved, and have studied the diagram, and been reminded of various relevant theorems, then you are in proximate disposition to understand the proof. The reference to species five lines into this paragraph is not to species as opposed to genus, but to species in the sense of form.

Criticism of Henry of Ghent's theory

Read the first paragraph under the sub-heading "Henry of Ghent", p.574. The quotation from Augustine embodies the theory of divine illumination I mentioned earlier. "That form itself wherein we see what is a righteous mind" would be the Idea of Justice in Plato, in Augustine it would be the divine idea of righteousness. Now read the rest of Scotus's discussions of this theory.

Some comments: "Contains virtually in himself" means, is the cause of. A cause in some sense contains its effects, but it is not predicated of them, is not common to them in the sense of being predicable of them all.

Now of p. 575 read the first paragraph of Scotus's own solution.

"The first question of this distinction concerning the univocity of being" is the first extract you read, beginning in p.560.

Notice that Scotus seems tempted by the idea that there is no primary object of the intellectual power, but says that the doctrine that there is a primary object "can be preserved in some way". What he is going to say is that being as univocal to God and creatures is the primary object either by commonness or virtually. In other words, some of the objects of our thought are beings and can have being in the univocal sense predicated of them, i.e. being is "common" to them, but other objects of our thought are "virtually" contained in being--what that means will require elaborate explanation in the next cassette. Read in a cursory way on p.576 the paragraph that begins article 2, "As to the second principal argument". There isn't room on this cassette to go properly into Scotus's solution, so will leave that until cassette 4. This is the end of cassette 3.