Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus
Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus
Stephen Dumont
LIFE AND WORKS
Henry of Ghent
Henry of Ghent was arguably the most influential Latin theologian
between Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, regent as a leading master
of theology at the University of Paris for the better part of the last
quarter of the thirteenth century. Henry’s true importance for the period
has been increasingly recognized, owing first to the edition of the works
of Scotus, for whom Henry was by far the leading contemporary source,
and more recently to the critical editions of his own works, which
establish his relation to such important figures as Giles of Rome,
Godfrey of Fontaines, and Aquinas himself.
Reckoned to have been born in Ghent sometime before 1240, Henry
undertook early studies at the cathedral school in Tournai, where he
maintained lifelong and influential connections. He studied theology
at Paris, where he became master in 1275 and actively taught and
disputed for nearly twenty years. As a young master, Henry participated
in Bishop Stephen Tempier’s sweeping actions against Aristotelianism
at Paris in March of 1277 involving the arts faculty, Giles of Rome,
and certain doctrines of Aquinas. In fact, personal remarks by Henry
about these closely connected events provide otherwise unknown
details. Henry himself says that he sat on Tempier’s episcopal
commission (assessores episcopi) of sixteen masters that produced the
syllabus of 219 propositions condemned by Tempier on 7 March 1277.
The syllabus comprised in large measure the more extreme Aristotelian
and Arabic philosophical positions taught in the arts faculty. Henry
certainly represented a critical attitude to Aristotelianism on the
commission, and indeed several articles on Tempier’s syllabus appear
traceable to him. Henry was also present at the immediately ensuing
meetings of the theology faculty that resulted in the censure of the
younger theologian, Giles of Rome, and in the masters’ own
condemnation (damnatio per sententiam magistrorum) of Aquinas’s
doctrine of unicity of substantial form. Henry’s Augustinian orientation,
so evident in Tempier’s actions, continued throughout his career,
encountering new Aristotelian foes within the faculty after 1285, when
Giles of Rome was rehabilitated at the order of Honorius IV and
Godfrey of Fontaines became master. A secular, Henry was also known
as a strident critic of the mendicant privileges granted by Martin IV in
1281. His opposition was such that he was reprimanded and suspended
in 1290 by the future Boniface VIII. Henry’s death is usually given as
29 June 1293.
Henry’s two major works are the direct products of his long teaching
career at Paris. The first is his Summa of Ordinary Questions and the
second his fifteen series of Quodlibetal Questions. Cross-references
establish that both works were disputed and written concurrently over
the length of his career. His regular or ‘ordinary’ questions derived
from his disputations held as master during the normal course of term.
Revised for publication as a massive Summa, these ordinary questions
represent Henry’s systematic investigation of the nature of theology
(articles 1–20), the divine nature and attributes (articles 21–52), and
the Trinity (articles 53–75). Henry intended his Summa to include a
part on creatures, but he never completed it. As such, Henry’s Summa
corresponds roughly in plan to the first forty-three questions of the
first part of Aquinas’s own Summa theologiae, yet approaches Aquinas’s
entire work in length. Unlike ordinary questions, which were disputed
by the master at regular class hours throughout the academic year,
quodlibetal questions were special university disputations only held
before Christmas and Easter. Here the questions were not posed by the
master himself on controlled topics, but by the audience, on any issue
of interest. Hence they were designated quodlibetales or ‘on anything
whatever’. Accordingly, while ordinary questions allowed for systematic
investigation, quodlibetal questions forced the master to address the
current controversies in the university community that at times involved
the master himself. Henry’s fifteen quodlibetal disputes represent one
for nearly every academic year from 1276 to 1292. Each dispute itself
contains up to forty separate questions, which were considerably
expanded and revised by Henry for publication, including lengthy
insertions, cancellations and digressions. Henry brought the quodlibetal
question to its apex as a literary form of scholastic theology and was
the first to make the quodlibet a principal vehicle for his thought.
Duns Scotus
It is perhaps no exaggeration to claim that less is known with certainty
about the life, career and works of Duns Scotus than about any
scholastic thinker of his rank. Aside from his own writings, only six
slight documents provide what scattered facts are known of his life.
Of Scottish origin, Scotus is thought to have been born about 1266,
on the basis of the established date of his ordination to the priesthood
on 17 March 1291. The once widely accepted details of Scotus’s place
of birth, family, early education and entry into the Franciscan order
are now considered unreliable owing their source to the discredited
chronicle Monasticon Scoticanum of Marian Brockie. From about
1288, Scotus studied theology at Oxford, although it is disputed
whether this was interrupted after his ordination in 1291 by several
years of study at Paris. In either case, Scotus was certainly studying
theology at the Oxford convent by 1300. On 6 July 1300, he was one
of twenty-two Franciscans from the Oxford diocese presented to John
Dalderby, bishop of Lincoln, for permission to hear confessions. About
this same time, he was beginning to revise his lectures on the Sentences,
given as a bachelor at Oxford. This revised commentary on the
Sentences, known as the Ordinatio (see below), was under way in
1300, because in the prologue Scotus himself says that he is writing
in that year. Further evidence of his activities as bachelor at Oxford
during this same period is given by his participation in a disputation
of the Franciscan master Philip Bridlington, who was also in the same
group presented to Dalderby. Scotus, however, never incepted as
master at Oxford. He was instead sent in the autumn of 1302 to
study theology at Paris, where he began a new set of lectures on the
Sentences. These were interrupted in June 1303 when, together with
some eighty other Franciscans, he was expelled from France for
declaring allegiance to Pope Boniface VIII against Philip the Fair in
their escalating dispute over taxation of church property. Where Scotus
went during his exile from Paris is unknown, but it is commonly
assumed that he either returned to Oxford or went to Cambridge,
where he is believed to have lectured at some point in his career.
Scotus was back in Paris at the latest by the autumn of 1304 to finish
lecturing on the Sentences. It is inferred that Scotus must have incepted
as master at Paris by early 1305, because in a letter dated 18 November
1304, Gonsalvus of Spain, the newly elected Minister General of the
Franciscans and the Franciscan regent master when Scotus first arrived
at Paris, recommended Scotus as next in line for promotion to master.
In his letter, Gonsalvus testifies to Scotus’s reputation, which he says
had ‘already spread everywhere’. During his regency at Paris, Scotus
held one quodlibetal disputation and debated with the Dominican
William Peter Godinus on the principle of individuation. For reasons
unknown, Scotus was replaced as the Franciscan regent at Paris by
Alexander of Alexandria in the autumn of 1307 and abruptly
transferred to the Franciscan convent in Cologne, where he is listed as
a lector in early 1308. Nothing is known of his activities during his
Cologne period. Before his career could reach full maturity and with
his major work the Ordinatio still in a state of revision, Scotus died
in Cologne later that year, where he remains buried today. The date
of his death is traditionally given as 8 November 1308.
As with the details of his life and career, uncertainty about Scotus’s
writings is unparalleled for a medieval thinker of his stature. While
much progress has been made in establishing Scotus’s genuine corpus,
important questions of chronology and canon still remain. Scotus’s
genuine works can be divided into philosophical and theological
writings, and roughly speaking the former are regarded as earlier.
Scotus’s logical works are generally considered to be his earliest. These
include sets of questions on Porphyry and the Categories, two works
on De interpretatione, and questions on the Sophistical Refutations.
The important Questions on the Metaphysics have traditionally been
considered an earlier work as well, though somewhat later than the
logical treatises, but this has been disputed by commentators since the
sixteenth century. Current evidence suggests that the latter books, VII–
IX (only the first nine books are authentic), show revision from later
in Scotus’s career, perhaps even very late. Finally, there are two
philosophical works that fall outside this main group owing to
uncertainty over their dating and degree of authenticity: questions on
On the Soul and the Theoremata. While On the Soul is surely Scotistic,
manuscripts attest that it has been edited by a follower of Scotus
(scotellus), perhaps Antonius Andreas (d. c. 1320). Both manuscripts
and contemporaries assign the Theoremata to Scotus, but their
authenticity has been debated owing to a section entitled Treatise on
Articles of Faith (Tractatus de creditis), which denies the philosophical
demonstrability of the existence of God.
The bulk of Scotus’s reputation rests, however, on his more mature
and longer theological writings. These are essentially four: various
versions of his commentaries on the Sentences, two sets of disputes
known as Collationes, a set of twenty Quodlibetal Questions, and the
Treatise on God as First Principle (De primo principio). The textual
situation of Scotus’s commentaries on the Sentences is one of the most
complicated in medieval scholarship. First of all, Scotus lectured on
the text at Oxford, again at Paris and, at an undetermined time, at
Cambridge. Second, his secretaries and students conflated these
different versions in an effort to fill in places apparently left incomplete
at his death. Finally, Scotus revised by means of numerous additions
and annotations to the primitive text, so that these had to be
distinguished from the intrusions inserted by his students and
secretaries. The better part of modern textual criticism on Scotus has
been devoted to teasing apart these various versions and layers of his
Sentences. This research has established that there are two versions of
his Oxford Sentences, an earlier Lectura, which was then considerably
expanded to form the Ordinatio, previously termed the Opus
oxoniense. As indicated, Scotus read the Sentences again when he went
to Paris in the autumn of 1302, which commentary survives as neither
a lectura nor an ordinatio but as what students’ reports called
reportationes. A major point of dispute is the chronological relation of
these Parisian Reports (Reportationes parisienses) to the Oxford
Ordinatio. The long-held view was that Scotus constructed the
Ordinatio from both the early Oxford Lectura and the Parisian
Sentences, rendering the Ordinatio later than the Parisian commentary
and according it a status as the most definitive of Scotus’s works.
Recent studies have tended to revise this view, placing at least the first
book of the Ordinatio before rather than after the corresponding part
of the Parisian Sentences. This revised chronology seems required not
only by Scotus’s own statement dating the prologue of the Ordinatio
to 1300, two years prior to his theological studies in Paris, but also by
the Parisian commentary’s noticeable independence in organization,
topic and treatment relative to both of its Oxford counterparts.
Scotus’s two series of Collationes, one held at Oxford and the other at
Paris, are known from the eye-witness testimony of his secretary,
William of Alnwick, to represent the proceedings of oral disputation.
It has been suggested that these Collationes were exercises carried out
by Scotus within the Franciscan houses while still a bachelor, but this
is not certain. His Quodlibetal Questions are assigned to his regency
at Paris, perhaps in the academic year 1306/7. As the product of a
formal university disputation by a regent master in theology, they must
certainly be regarded as Scotus’s mature thought. Finally, the De primo
principio is a systematic treatise on the transcendentals, containing
Scotus’s proof for the existence and infinity of God. While the
authenticity of the De primo is uncontested, it none the less betrays
the influence of an editor. More than half of the De primo has been
supplied verbatim from the Ordinatio, indicating that it is to some
extent a compilation of material. Despite this, it has received more
contemporary attention by way of translation and commentary than
any other single work in Scotus’s corpus.
RELATION OF HENRY OF GHENT TO DUNS SCOTUS
Henry’s significance, both historically and philosophically, stems from
his position in the thirteenth century of having an important and
immediate relationship to both Aquinas and Scotus. On the one side,
Henry mounted the most sustained and sophisticated Augustinian
response in the later thirteenth century to the Aristotelianism of Aquinas.
Adopting a critical attitude towards Aristotle on fundamental points,
Henry returned to more Augustinian principles, which he infused with
certain elements of Avicenna. In comparison with Aquinas, Henry can
fairly be said to exhibit a doctrinal tendency called Avicennizing
Augustinianism’, a label coined by Etienne Gilson to describe the
exploitation by certain scholastic thinkers of similarities between
Augustine and Avicenna, such as their mutual denial of knowledge by
abstraction. Thus, where Aquinas argues ‘according to Aristotle and the
truth’ (secundum Aristotelem et veritatem rei), Henry will instead argue
‘according to Augustine, Avicenna, and the truth’ (secundum Avicennam
et veritatem rei; secundum Augustinum et Avicennam).1 In particular,
Henry reverted to certain positions considered Augustinian by thirteenthcentury
standards, such as the compatibility of faith and demonstration,
a need for a special divine illumination in natural knowledge, a heavy
emphasis on the reality of the divine ideas and their role in both
knowledge and creation, and above all a strong voluntarism against the
intellectualism of Aristotle. Henry specifically criticized Aquinas on
numerous points, including the concept of theology as a subalternated
science, the exclusivity of faith and demonstrative reasoning, the definition
of self-evidence and related criticism of Anselm’s ontological argument,
the pre-eminence given to Aristotle’s argument for the unmoved mover,
the denial of any positive knowledge of God’s essence (quid est) in the
present life, the limitation of each Aristotelian separate form or angel to
a species in itself, the real distinction of essence and existence (at least as
defended by Giles of Rome), the indemonstrability of the temporal
beginning of the world, and a variety of theses connected to the
relationship of the intellect to the will. In the words of one of Henry’s
editors, ‘No theologian immediately after the death of Aquinas so sharply
criticized the philosophical basis of his theology as Henry of Ghent.’2
On the other side, Henry’s own revised Augustinian outlook was itself
subjected to an extensive, critical evaluation by Duns Scotus. What led
Scotus to focus on Henry is not known. Perhaps in view of the restrictions
placed by the Franciscans in 1282 on reading Aquinas’s Summa, the
Order turned to Henry’s Summa to supply the systematic training in
current theology during Scotus’s formation. A high regard for Henry is
evident in Oxford Franciscans just prior to Scotus, such as Roger Marston,
who in 1283 described Henry as ‘a recent, solemn doctor, renowned and
studious in philosophy from infancy’.3 Whatever the explanation, Henry
constitutes not just a source, but the source, for Scotus’s thought. This is
in fact so true that Scotus appears to be the first major scholastic thinker
to base his principal work explicitly on the systematic examination of a
contemporary. On many important questions, Scotus develops his own
position as a critical reaction to that of Henry, often after extensive
reporting, analysis and refutation of Henry’s reasoning. This is the case,
for example, on such fundamental issues as the relation of faith and reason,
natural knowledge of God, the nature of transcendental concepts, the
primary object of the intellect, necessity and contingency, the divine ideas,
creation, illumination, causality of the will, connection of the virtues and
on numerous points of Trinitarian theology. All the same, however, it
would be a distortion to see Scotus as simply rejecting Henry’s positions.
Even when clearly repudiating a view of Henry, Scotus will none the less
presuppose much of Henry’s underlying philosophical framework and
formulate his own position in terms of Henry’s basic concepts, distinctions
and technical vocabulary. This is not to say that Scotus was unoriginal
and derivative but only that his originality cannot be fully understood
apart from his relationship to Henry. Nowhere is the relationship between
Scotus and Henry better illustrated than in their dispute over the nature
of the transcendental concepts.
UNIVOCITY AND ANALOGY
One of the most striking results of the metaphysics of Duns Scotus was
that the concepts of being and the other transcendentals applied
univocally to God and creatures, substance and accidents. Scotus broke
with the unanimous and traditional view that being, conceived in its
utmost generality, could only be predicated analogously and not
univocally of substance and accident, much less of God and creatures.
Scotus made his innovative move to univocity in specific and explicit
response to the peculiar version of analogy advanced by Henry of Ghent.
Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that Scotus’s path to univocity
was paved by Henry’s prior and equally innovative interpretation of
the traditional view of analogy itself. Here, perhaps more than in any
other area of disagreement between them, it would be a distortion to
portray Scotus as simply rejecting, rather than building upon, an
antecedent position of Henry. None the less, in advancing beyond
Henry’s own version of analogy to univocity, Scotus had to solve
fundamental difficulties connected with univocity that had always been
compelling motivations for the traditional view of analogy, difficulties
which Henry evidently saw but could not resolve.
Scotus advances his theory of univocity as part of a critical and
exhaustive revision of Henry’s account of our natural knowledge of
God. At issue was an abiding concern of the period: how to reconcile
the possibility of attaining some knowledge of the divine nature from
creatures with God’s total transcendence of creatures. The difficulty
involved was long recognized, having a formulation as far back as
Gaunilo’s reply to Anselm that the argument of the Proslogion appeared
to put God in a genus or species. In order for God to be totally
transcendent, the divine nature can have no reality in common with
creatures. But if God and creatures agree in nothing real, then a creature
can never yield a positive notion of the divine nature that conveys any
of its reality. One standard solution was to stress the negative character
of natural knowledge of God. For instance, Aquinas attempted to
reconcile divine transcendence with our natural knowledge of God by
way of the Aristotelian distinction between knowing that something is
(quia est; si est) versus knowing its essence or nature (quid est). According
to Aquinas, our intellect in its present, natural state can only know
through sensible creatures that God is or exists (si est). As for the divine
essence, we cannot know what it is (quid est) but only what it is not.4
This solution was attacked in the condemnations issued by Stephen
Tempier on 7 March 1277. Article 215 on Tempier’s syllabus repudiated
such attempts to protect the transcendence of God at the expense of
restricting natural knowledge of the divine nature to the bare fact of its
existence. As censured the article read, ‘That it can only be known that
God is, or that God exists.’ (Quod de Deo non potest cognosci nisi
quia ipse est, sive ipsum esse.) Both Henry and Scotus agreed that some
positive knowledge of the divine nature and attributes was naturally
attainable from creatures, thereby fully reinstating the tension between
the transcendence and knowledge of God. Henry, for his part, attempted
to account for this positive knowledge while maintaining the traditional
view that being and the other transcendentals were only analogously
common to God and creatures. Henry none the less saw that he had to
revise the traditional doctrine of analogy, and in so doing extended that
traditional view as far as it could go without actually becoming a doctrine
of univocity. Scotus rejected Henry’s revised theory as unworkable and
argued that only univocity could ensure a naturally attainable concept
of the divine essence.
Henry of Ghent on Analogy
Henry of Ghent followed the common opinion in holding that being is
predicated of God and creatures neither univocally, nor purely
equivocally, but analogously.5 The traditional understanding of the terms
was based on Aristotle. The definitions of univocity and equivocity
derived from the opening chapter of the Categories, while the notion of
analogy was taken chiefly from the treatment of being as an equivocal
by reference ({{}}ad unum) in the Metaphysics.6 Thus, a term is
univocal if it has a single meaning or concept (ratio, intentio, intellectus,
conceptus) when applied, such as ‘animal’ when predicated of a horse
and a human being. It is a pure or chance equivocal (aequivocum in
casu) if it is applied according to completely discrete and unrelated
meanings, such as the ‘bark’ of a dog and a tree. Analogy, however, is
intermediate between these two extremes of univocity and equivocity.
An analogous term has different but connected meanings, so that one is
primary and the other is related to it, usually either as a cause or an
effect. Aristotle’s own example of ‘healthy’ served as the standard
illustration. The primary meaning of ‘healthy’ is the state of a wellfunctioning,
living organism, yet clearly things are said to be healthy
which do not possess health in this sense. Both medicine and urine, for
example, are called ‘healthy’ not because they possess health in the
primary sense, for they are not living at all, but because they bear some
relationship to it. Medicine is a cause of health and urine a sign or effect
of it. The scholastics adapted Aristotle’s conception of analogy as a
middle way between the extreme positions of univocity and equivocity,
to account for some knowledge of God based on creatures while ensuring
divine transcendence. Being was not univocal to God and creatures,
but rather analogous, so that it applied to God primarily and to creatures
in a secondary but related sense, although appropriate distinctions had
to be made to avoid equating the relation of divine and created being
with that of substance and accident. In this regard, Henry was in
conformity with the common view.
Being therefore does not belong to God univocally…nor
purely equivocally…but in a middle way, namely, by analogy,
because it signifies one thing primarily and principally and the
other as in some way ordered, related, or proportional to
what is primary… And in this way, being in the most common
sense primarily signifies God, secondarily creature, just as
created being primarily signifies substance and secondarily
accidents, although the relation in each case is different.
(Summa a.21 q.2 (ed. 1520, I, f.124r))
Aristotle, however, was not the only authority on the transcendentals.
Even more important for the scholastics was Avicenna, who had not
only made being, in explicit contradistinction to God, the subject of
metaphysics, but also one of the primary conceptions of the mind.
These claims of Avicenna for the primacy of being had to be addressed,
for together they implied that there was a concept of being antecedent
to either God or creatures. Henry’s formulation of the Avicennian
objection is important, not only because it states sharply the impediment
to univocity, but also because in Henry’s reply Scotus clearly saw that
the denial of univocity involved highly unacceptable consequences.
What is predicated of several things, but has an essential
concept different from the concepts of those things [of which
it is predicated], is something really common to them, for
every concept is based upon some thing. Being is this sort,
because according to Avicenna, ‘Being is imprinted on the
mind by a first impression,’ even before the concept of God
or creature are impressed on it. [Therefore, being is
something really common to God and creatures.]
(Summa a.21 q.2 (ed. 1520, I, f.123v))
The argument is that being must have a concept different from those
of God or creature, because it is known prior to either one. Since being
is predicated of both God and creature, that concept must also be
common. Thus, the noetic primacy of being entails that it have a concept
distinct from and common to those proper to God and creatures.
Because any such common concept must be based on some common
reality, being must be something really common to God and creature.
It is the major premiss which constitutes the underlying impediment
to making any concept univocally common to God and creatures: every
concept must be based on some reality (omnis conceptus fundatur in
re aliqua). Accordingly, a common concept must be of some common
reality. But, obviously, no reality can be admitted as common to God
and creatures. This will prove to be the most formidable difficulty for
Scotus’s doctrine of univocity: how to sustain a real concept univocally
common to God and creatures without positing any reality common
to them. The minor premiss, based on Avicenna’s famous text on the
primary intelligibles, is meant to establish that being has a concept
outside of those of God and creatures owing to its position as a primary
notion. The burden of Henry’s reply will be to deny that there is any
concept of being apart from those of God and creatures. It is in this
reply that Scotus will find his argument that, on the contrary, being
must be a distinct concept, and hence univocal.
In reply to Avicenna’s text, Henry is emphatic that there can be no
concept of being absolutely taken apart from the concepts of God and
creature, as if there were some single, simple concept of being common
to them (aliquis unicus intellects simplex communes), for there can be
no such concept. Rather, any real concept of being is either of the
being proper to God or of the being proper to creatures, but not of
anything common to them. Henry’s position is governed by the
requirement in the major premiss that a real community must
underwrite a real, common concept. Since there can be no such real
community between God and creatures, there can be no real common
concept. Demanding therefore a strict correspondence in unity between
a real concept and its foundation in reality, Henry concludes that at
the transcendental level being forms two proper and distinct concepts
corresponding to the two separate and diverse realities of divine and
created being. These concepts, while proper and diverse, none the less
have a community of analogy, the real foundation for which is the
causal dependence of the creature on God. This agreement in being by
virtue of the connection cause and effect, while real, is not sufficient to
support a single, common notion of being but only two proper concepts
related as primary and secondary.
Had Henry gone no further than this in his reply to Avicenna, his
account would have conformed to what Peter Aureoli later identified
as the common opinion. Being conceived at its most general level does
not form a single, simple ratio common to God and creatures, but two
proper rationes related in attribution as primary and secondary. Henry,
however, did go further in his reply, motivated by a need not only to
explain Avicenna’s text on the primary intelligibles, upon which he
would depend heavily in his proof for the existence of God, but also to
account for how the mind could move from a concept proper to
creatures to one proper to God.
Henry explains that if there appears to be some common concept of
being, this is only because the divine being or created beings have been
conceived in an indistinct or indeterminate way. But to conceive of
either the being proper to God or proper to creatures in an indistinct
way is not to have some third, distinct concept of being as absolutely
undetermined and common to both. That is, there is no separate concept
of being as absolutely undetermined that can be abstracted from the
proper concepts of God and creature, as if each proper concept
comprised a common notion of being as undetermined and a
determining concept, such as finite and infinite or created and uncreated.
Rather, the proper concepts of God and creatures are in each case
already concepts of being as undetermined. Any concept of being as
absolutely undetermined, which appears to be single, simple, and prior
to the proper concepts of God and creature, is merely the result of
confusing the two different ways in which the being proper to God
and creatures is in each instance undetermined.
Divine being is undetermined in the sense that it cannot be determined
by any advening perfection or entity. This is what it means to say that
the divine being is infinite, for it cannot be determined or limited.
Created being, however, when taken in its utmost generality as common
to all creatures, is undetermined in the sense that it has been abstracted
from all determinations with which it is found in reality, such as ‘existing
in itself’ and ‘existing in another’, which determine or limit created
being to substance and accident. Henry’s technical terminology for
this distinction is that divine being is undetermined negatively, for it is
to be denied all determination, and created being privatively, for it can
be conceived without the determinations with which it is found. As
Henry explains in slightly different terms elsewhere, to conceive of
being absolutely, that is, without any determination or qualification,
can mean two different things. It can mean either being in its singular,
most perfect instance (in quadam singularitate) or in its widest generality
(in quadam universalitate). Being taken absolutely in the first way is
God, in the second way is the notion of being common to the categories.
There is no sense in which being can be conceived as undetermined
apart from these two.7
Having made this distinction, Henry replies to the objection that
what appears to be an absolutely undetermined concept of being
univocally common to God and creatures is in fact a confusion of the
two different ways in which being is undetermined. The divine being is
undetermined by negation, because it lacks all determination in both
act and potency; created being is undetermined by privation, because
it is conceived as lacking determination in act but not in potency. The
confusion between the two arises because both are concepts of being
without determination, and to this extent they are similar. The mistake
is to think that from this similarity one can extract a single notion of
being as absolutely undetermined common to both God and creatures.
Rather, what appears to be a simple, common notion of undetermined
being is in fact a conflation of two proper notions of being, which
resemble each other in their removal of determination.
Against the challenge presented by Avicenna’s text that there is a
concept of being common to God and creatures because, as a primary
notion of the mind, the concept of being is prior to both, Henry upholds
the traditional position of analogy. Being, conceived in its utmost
generality, cannot be reduced to a single notion but only to two distinct
concepts, one proper to God and the other to creatures, which are
none the less related through attribution or analogy. Yet, in his answer
to Avicenna Henry went considerably beyond this traditional view by
explaining that being could be conceived with sufficient indeterminacy
so as to appear univocal. While insisting that there was in truth no
univocal notion of being, Henry none the less allowed that the being
of either God or creatures could be conceived so indistinctly that the
concept proper to the one actually was known in a confused way along
with the concept of the other, because both were concepts of being
without determination. This was a critical move past the traditional
view of analogy and was clearly but a step away from Scotus’s univocity,
where a simple common concept would replace a confusion of two
proper but similar concepts. After Henry went so far as to admit an
apparently univocal concept of being, Scotus would conclude that such
a concept must in fact be univocal.
Thus Henry revised the common opinion on analogy, according to
which the concepts of being proper to God and creatures were united
through attribution, by adding that they were also united by confusion
in an indistinct notion that appeared univocal. Henry’s underlying
motivation for this extension of the traditional view was to provide
some cognitive bridge between the two proper notions of being which
allowed the human mind to pass from its knowledge of creatures to
one of the divine nature. This bridge could not be provided by any
concept common to both, so Henry supplied it by allowing the two
concepts to be conceived together as though they were one. That is,
Henry permitted the being of a creature to be conceived in such an
indeterminate fashion that it in fact comprised, in an indistinct and
confused fashion, the concept of being proper to God. In this way,
Henry was attempting to explain, where the traditional view of analogy
had not, how one could arrive at a proper concept of the divine nature
from creatures. This is clear from Henry’s account of the mind’s ascent
from creatures to God.
In the context of Tempier’s condemnation of the position that we
can only know that God exists (si est), but not what God’s nature is
(quid est), Henry undertook an extensive examination in nine
questions of the categories of si est and quid est as they applied to
our knowledge of God, paying particular attention to the extent to
which knowledge of the divine nature had to be negative (quid est
non). In express opposition to the assertion of Aquinas, Henry denied
that in the present life we cannot know what God is but only what
God is not. If our knowledge of the divine nature were limited only
to negations about creatures, then we would know no more about
the nature of God from creatures than we would about Socrates by
saying that he is not a rock. That is, to have purely negative knowledge
of the divine essence is to have no knowledge of it at all. The reason
is that negation is always negation of something, so that all meaningful
knowledge of what something is not presupposes, to some degree,
knowledge of what it is. Furthermore, a purely negative knowledge
of the divine nature could not account for our love and desire of God
in the present life, for, as Augustine says, we can love what is unseen
but not what is unknown. Accordingly, against the assertion of
Aquinas, Henry concludes that there must be some positive knowledge
of the divine quid est naturally available in the present life from
creatures.
In effect, Henry sees a complete reduction of our knowledge of the
divine nature to negations about creatures as inconsistent with analogy,
because it is tantamount to making all predication about God purely
equivocal. On the other hand, the positive knowledge of the divine
nature provided by analogy does not compromise the transcendence
of God to the human mind, because it is not of God’s essence in its
own particularity and individuality. Analogy can only yield a knowledge
of God’s quid est which is general, indistinct and, as it were, incidental
to the substance of the divine nature itself. Yet, even this imperfect
knowledge of the divine nature provided by analogy requires a
sophisticated manoeuvre by Henry, utilizing his special understanding
of the doctrine of analogy itself.8
Henry’s account of the mind’s ascent to the divine quid est from
creatures involves three main stages, designed to conform broadly to
the traditional understanding of the pseudo-Dionysian ways of causality,
eminence and negation. At each stage the divine essence is known in a
progressively less general fashion, so that ascent is made by degrees to
an increasingly distinct knowledge of God, which none the less always
remains in some way general and universal. In these three stages Henry
says that God is known most generally (generalissime), less generally
(generalius), and least generally (generaliter), which involve, respectively,
abstraction, eminence and negation. The first or generalissime stage is
both the most elaborate and important, for it is here that the initial
move is made from creatures to God. This first stage itself comprises
three degrees of knowledge based on two types of ‘abstraction’
(abstractio).
According to Henry, a formal perfection can be abstracted from its
instances in two ways: either as a universal or as something separate.
In the first type of abstraction, for example, goodness can be
abstracted from this or that particular good as a common and
universal form in which they share (commune quoddam et universale).
Here, while the form is abstracted from its instances, it is none the less
still seen in relation to them as that in which they all participate, for
the universal is ‘one in many’. In the second type, the form is
considered in absolute separation from any material instance, for it is
seen not as something common divided among many particulars but
as transcendent and subsistent in itself (in se subsistens). Quite clearly,
these two types of ‘abstraction’ are for Henry the noetic procedures
that result in the concepts of being, goodness or any other perfection
as indeterminate by privation and negation. These two kinds of
abstraction produce the three steps of the generalissime way of
knowing the divine nature.
In the first step of most general knowledge of God, any perfection
in a creature already reveals, at least in a very confused and indistinct
fashion, something of the divine nature. For instance, in knowing this
or that particular, created good, Henry says that we know two things:
the ‘this’ and ‘that’, which are proper to creatures, and ‘good’ which is
something common to God and creatures. Thus, even in ‘this created
good’ we know something of the divine good, even if it is not known
as distinct from the creature. If, however, by the first type of abstraction
we remove the ‘this’ proper to the creature, we attain a notion of the
good that is less determined to the creature than before, and this is the
second step of the generalissime stage. Here the good is not seen as
proper to creatures or God but as something analogously common to
both (commune analogum ad Deum et creaturam). Although in fact
the good of God and of the creature form two diverse and distinct
concepts (diversos intellectus distinctos faciunt), just as is the case with
being, nevertheless these notions are so similar that our intellect at this
point conceives both together in a confused way as one (quia tamen
proximi sunt, intellectus noster concipit modo confuso utrumque ut
unum).9 By performing a second abstraction, we can distinguish within
this confused, analogous notion those two proper concepts, so that we
differentiate between what is abstract in the sense of universal and in
the sense of separate. This is the third and final step of most general
knowledge of the divine nature, where some perfection, such as
goodness or being, is viewed as subsistent in itself. Such a concept is
proper to God alone.
Once Henry has reached this point, he can easily apply the Dionysian
techniques of eminence (prae-eminentia) and negation (remotio) to this
proper concept to ascend to respectively the generalius and generaliter
levels of knowing the divine essence. In eminence, the note of excellence
is added to that of subsistence to result in the notion of God as a most
perfect nature. In negation, all composition and diversity are removed
from this most perfect nature, so that its goodness, wisdom and so
forth are taken to be identical with its being. In this way, Henry
concludes, we can know what God is, not just what God is not, from
creatures in the present life, although ‘by comparison to the beatific
vision of God’s nature, this knowledge is almost nothing’.
Henry’s claim for a natural knowledge of the divine quid est from
creatures would appear to face an insuperable obstacle in his denial of
any conceptual community between God and creatures. By restricting
our knowledge of God and creatures solely to two wholly proper,
simple, and diverse notions, Henry seems to have completely
undermined any epistemological basis for claiming that we can derive
any concept of the one from the other. Henry clearly saw this obstacle
and used considerable ingenuity to overcome it. He conceded that God
and creature could be brought together in a common concept, yet found
a way to deny that such a notion was univocal.
Henry’s strategy, naturally enough, is to explain the derivation of
knowledge of God from creatures by means of abstraction. Thus, as
outlined above, we begin with some perfection of a creature, such as
being or goodness, and detach the particularizing and determining
elements with which that perfection is found in its material existence
to reach a universal and general notion of it. In Henry’s above scheme
this abstraction marks the transition from the first level of most general
knowledge, in which being and goodness are conceived as most proper
to creatures, to the second. Henry is clear that in this step he has in
mind the familiar and broadly Aristotelian kind of abstraction that
yields common and universal concepts. When taken to its end, however,
this process of abstraction does not result merely in a universal concept
of being or goodness applicable to creatures alone, which is to say one
proper to them, but in one that is common to both creator and creature
(quod dicitur ‘bonum’, hoc est commune creatori et creaturae.)10 To
be sure, this notion is not univocally common, for it is not a distinct
concept included in both those of God and creature. It is rather
‘analogously common’, for it includes both the concepts of God and
creature in a confused way as one. Thus, for Henry, a perfection can
be abstracted from a creature and conceived with such indeterminacy
that it is not just the universal knowledge of a creature but a confused
knowledge of both God and creature. This exceedingly abstract notion,
which Henry calls ‘analogously common’, provides the necessary
epistemological bridge from creature to God by constituting a concept
of both at once.
Henry attempts to span the cognitive gulf between God and creatures,
the knowledge of which he has otherwise limited to proper, simple and
diverse notions, by means of his ‘analogously common’ concept. He
has constructed it to perform the required epistemological functions
of a truly common concept, for it is universal and applicable to both of
its instances, but in such a way that it cannot be called univocal. None
the less, Henry’s solution is remarkable for how close it comes to an
admission of univocity. Indeed, his analogous common concept so
nearly functions as a univocal one that even Henry himself at times
slips into seeing it as such. In describing how we abstract the general
notions of being and the other transcendentals from creatures, so that
we do not distinguish in such a notion what is proper to God from
what is proper to creatures, Henry adds, ‘just as also in univocal things
we abstract a common nature’ (sicut etiam in univocis abstrahitur natura
communis). Elsewhere, Henry describes the universal concept of being
abstracted from creatures as ‘indifferently common to what belongs to
God and creature’ (conceptus generalis ut entis…qui indifferenter
communis est ad id quod est creatoris et ad id quod est creaturae).11 It
is little wonder that Scotus will argue that Henry cannot consistently
deny univocity, if for no other reason than he appears to have all but
admitted it.
As will be clear, the distance between Henry’s revised analogous concept
and Scotus’s univocal one is accordingly not as great as the opposition in
their positions might suggest. They both agree that being and the other
transcendental perfections can be thought of without determination to
either God or creature and that this is the result of abstraction from
creatures. They diverge sharply, however, on the exact nature of this
indeterminate conception. Henry denies that it is in fact a separate and
distinct concept but holds rather that it is a confusion of two proper notions
of being which are themselves simple, ultimate and irreducible. Scotus
argues against Henry that to admit such an indeterminate apprehension
of being and then to deny that it forms a bona fide, distinct, simple and
univocal concept is a contradiction. However, in seeking to avoid the
inconsistencies that he sees lurking within Henry’s analogously common
concept, Scotus must show that a truly univocal notion does not violate
the real transcendence of God, which Henry’s revised doctrine of analogy,
whatever its faults, tried to preserve.
Duns Scotus on Univocity
In his commentaries on the Sentences, Scotus addresses the issue of the
univocal concept of being in three separate but related contexts: the
natural knowledge of God, the primary object of the human intellect
and divine simplicity. All three discussions are closely connected, as
Scotus’s own numerous cross-references indicate. The first, on natural
knowledge of God, is a lengthy, critical examination of Henry’s position
and contains Scotus’s most sustained arguments for univocity.12 After a
detailed and systematic summary of Henry’s account of our knowledge
of God, Scotus replies that, while agreeing with Henry that such
knowledge is possible, he departs from his position on five points. In the
second of these five points, Scotus maintains against Henry that God is
known not only in a concept analogous with, but also in one univocal
to, creatures. It is an important but at times overlooked point that Scotus
is not here rejecting the traditional view, upheld by Henry, that we have
proper notions of God and creatures united by analogy or attribution.
Rather, he is rejecting Henry’s view that there can be only such proper
concepts united only in that way. Scotus’s point against Henry is that
when perfections such as being and goodness are conceived in their utmost
generality, they must be univocal not analogous notions. The precise
target of Scotus’s attack, then, is not Henry’s commitment to a traditional
doctrine of analogy, a version of which they both concede, but his
conclusion that such excludes any univocal conception of being.
In an annotation to his criticism of Henry, Scotus at one point itemizes
as many as ten arguments in favour of univocity, but gives five main
proofs in the body of his discussion. Three of these are generally singled
out as most important. The first of the five, the so-called arguments
from ‘certain and doubtful concepts’, Scotus’s own contemporaries
labelled the ‘Achilles’ of his position. It runs as follows:
Major: An intellect certain about one concept, but doubtful about
others, has a concept about which it is certain that is
different from the concepts about which it is doubtful.
Minor: We can be certain that God is a being, but doubt whether
God is infinite or finite being.
∴The concept of being is different from the concept of infinite
or finite being, and hence univocal, since asserted of both.
Scotus takes the major premiss to be evident, for one cannot be both
certain and doubtful of the same concept. That is, one and the same
concept predicated of the same subject cannot result in a proposition
whose truth is both certain and doubtful. The minor premiss is de
facto true, because past thinkers, such as the pre-Socratics, never
doubted that the first principle was a being, but disagreed as to whether
it was even material or immaterial, much less finite or infinite. Since
the concept of being is different from those of infinite and finite being,
but obviously predicated of both, it must be univocal.
Scotus’s point, which he establishes more explicitly in the ensuing
arguments, is that some univocal notion of being is presupposed in
any natural knowledge of God. Ultimately, however much one doubts
whether the concepts of infinite being or uncaused cause apply truly to
God, such concepts are doubtful with respect to something that is
certain. To be doubtful in all respects of some notion of God is simply
to concede that one has no meaningful concept at all.
While Scotus has formulated his argument in sufficiently general
terms to give it a universal force and appeal, he has none the less
engineered it to expose what he sees as a fundamental absurdity lurking
in Henry’s analogously common concept of being. In effect, Scotus
has crafted the minor premiss around Henry’s analogous concept,
substituting his own terminology of infinite and finite being for Henry’s
corresponding notions of negatively and privatively undetermined
being. According to Henry, this analogously common notion of being
is so abstract that we are in doubt as to whether it is a concept of
negatively or privatively undetermined being. At the same time, Henry
denies that there is any concept of being apart from these two proper
concepts about which we are in doubt. Scotus’s argument points out
the inconsistency of these two claims: Henry must either concede that
we have no certain knowledge of being at all in this analogous concept,
for he allows only the two proper concepts of which we are admittedly
doubtful, or that we are both certain and doubtful of the same concept.
Thus, Henry’s abstract, indeterminate notion of being is either vacuous
or else it must be distinct from, and hence common to, either of the
concepts proper to God and creature.
Recall that Henry’s explanation was that there is no concept of being
distinct from these two proper ones, but only a confused notion of
both which appears univocal owing to their similarity. Accordingly,
Henry would reply to Scotus that we are not certain of some distinct,
common concept, as Scotus concludes, but only of a confused notion
that seemed common. Scotus perceives Henry’s manoeuvre as
introducing scepticism at the most fundamental level of human
knowledge. According to Scotus, it would destroy all univocity, for
any allegedly univocal concept could always be denied on the grounds
it was not one but two very similar notions which merely seemed to be
one. Scotus’s evident point is that if univocity cannot be ascertained
with certainty at the level of our most abstract concepts, which are
therefore primary, simple and irreducible, then it can never be
determined. Furthermore, according to Henry, these two proper
concepts of being must be ultimate and hence wholly simple—otherwise
they would be resolvable into more primitive notions—and are therefore
known in their totality and distinctly or not at all. Therefore, either
they will always be seen as one or never will be, for, being wholly
simple, no distinguishing element can be discovered in them which
was not evident in the first place. Finally, either they were initially seen
as wholly different concepts of being proper to God and creatures,
and then it seems impossible in view of their disparity that they could
have ever been confused as one, or they were seen in a relation of
similarity owing to analogy. In the latter case they could not be initially
known as one, for any two things seen as united in some relation must
first be known as distinct. Therefore, these two notions would never
appear to be one, simple concept, but only as distinct under a relation
of similarity.
Scotus’s first argument, then, attempts to draw out the apparent
inconsistency in Henry’s open admission, on the one side, that the
intellect can conceive of being without determining it to God or creature,
and his emphatic denial, on the other, that there is any concept of
being distinct from those proper to God and creature. Scotus argues
that Henry cannot claim that this indeterminate conception contains
any certain knowledge of being at all unless he admits that it is a concept
distinct from the concepts of being proper to God and creature. The
reason is that, by Henry’s own admission, the intellect is not certain at
this point that it has either proper concept, for it has not yet
distinguished between the two. It thus is either certain of no concept of
being or is certain and doubtful of the same concept. Henry’s device of
making this analogous concept an apparently common and univocal
concept, which is then later discerned to be two proper notions,
collapses under scrutiny. Even if the simplicity of these two proper
concepts of being did not make it impossible for them to be confused
at one time and distinguished at another, they can only be seen as
similar, and hence one, after first having been known as distinct and
proper. As an epistemological explanation for the natural origin of our
proper concept of God, Henry’s analogously common notion simply
begs the question. It presupposes the very proper concept of God that
it is supposed to explain.
In his second argument, Scotus is explicit that denial of a univocal
concept renders natural knowledge of God impossible. Specifically,
Scotus attacks Henry’s position on the grounds that no creature can be
the immediate cause of a concept which is both simple and wholly
proper to God. Yet this is Henry’s only available account for the natural
origins of our knowledge of God, given that he admits only two proper
and simple concepts of being and excludes any which is common. Scotus
maintains that it is patently absurd to hold that a creature can directly
cause a simple and wholly proper concept of God, simply because such
cannot be the concept of anything contained within the creature. Scotus
argues that an object can only cause a concept of that which it contains
either as an essential part (e.g. its differentia or genus) or virtually (e.g.
an essential property). Obviously, the creature contains nothing proper
to God as an essential part. Similarly, a creature cannot virtually contain
anything proper to God, for one thing virtually contains another as
the naturally prior contains the posterior or the cause its effect. For
instance, premisses virtually contain their conclusions in the sense that
their greater truth and certitude has the ‘power’ (virtus) to produce or
cause certitude of the conclusion. The creature, however, is naturally
posterior and inferior to divine nature as its effect and therefore cannot
virtually contain anything proper to God. Rather, just the reverse is
true; God virtually contains the creature. Thus, if a creature can produce
any concept of God at all, it must be one that is common to both,
which Henry denies.
Scotus pursues a similar line of reasoning in his fourth proof, which
examines the commonly admitted basis for natural knowledge of God,
the so-called ‘pure perfections’ (perfectiones simpliciter), such as
intellect, will or wisdom. Scotus argues that either these perfections
have some meaning common to God and creature or not. If not, this is
either because they are wholly proper to creatures, which no one admits,
or they are wholly proper to God. If they are wholly proper to God,
then they are not attributed to God because they are pure perfections,
but are rather pure perfections because they are attributed to God.
This, however, would violate the traditional and universally accepted
procedure given by Anselm for determining what can be assigned to
the divine nature. According to Anselm, we attribute to God those
perfections which are pure in the sense that they contain of themselves
no imperfection. As defined by Anselm, such a perfection is ‘what
absolutely taken is better to be than not’.13 (For instance, colours are
not pure perfections, since it is not absolutely better to be coloured
than not.) But on Anselm’s definition, one can determine what is a
pure perfection without any reference to God. That is, on the received
and accepted account of natural knowledge of God, something is first
determined to constitute a pure perfection and then on that basis
attributed to God, not the reverse. Consequently, something is not a
pure perfection precisely because it is attributed to God but is such
prior to that attribution. Pure perfections must therefore have some
meaning that is common apart from the meaning it has as attributed
and proper to God alone.
Once again Scotus argues that some common and hence univocal
notion is presupposed by our analogous, proper concepts of God. In
this case, the traditional doctrine of ‘pure perfections’ is seen to entail
just such a common notion. If there were no common but only proper
concepts of these perfections, then they could not be known apart from
their attribution to God. Yet, exactly the opposite is prescribed by the
traditional concept of pure perfections, for they are known
independently of and prior to any relation to God.
Scotus makes the same point in a confirmation of this argument,
this time using the equally traditional Dionysian procedures of removal
and eminence. According to Scotus, all metaphysical enquiry about
God proceeds by taking some formal notion (ratio formalis) and
removing from it all imperfections with which it is found in a creature.
For example, we take the formal notion of the will—a power for
opposites—and remove any limitations connected with its existence in
a creature, such as variability in its act of willing over time. We then
attribute will to God by conceiving of it not just as lacking imperfection,
but as possessing the greatest degree of perfection, such that it is
infinitely powerful. This process presumes that the formal notion of
the will which has been stripped of creaturely limitations is the same
notion of will as is assigned the highest degree of perfection. If this is
not the case, so that nothing of the notion of will abstracted from
creatures remains when we attribute will to God, then perfections found
in creatures tell us nothing about the perfection of God. As Scotus puts
it, we could then no more say that the divine nature was an intellect, a
will or wise than it was a rock. That is, the distinction traditionally
made within creatures between pure perfections, which can be applied
to God, and their other formal features, which cannot, would be
meaningless on denial of any common notion of such perfections. If to
be a ‘perfection’ has absolutely no common meaning as applied to
God and creature, then perfection in creatures becomes tantamount to
imperfection. Thus, ‘wisdom’ would be no more applicable to God
than ‘rock’.
The point of Scotus’s fourth proof and its confirmation is that the
traditional concepts and methods that are the accepted basis for
natural knowledge of God presuppose a common notion of being and
other such perfections. Elsewhere Scotus is more pointed: ‘All masters
and theologians seem to use a concept common to God and creature,
although they deny this verbally when they apply it’.14 There can be
little doubt, however, that Scotus has Henry specifically in view. This
is particularly evident in Scotus’s corroborative argument based on
the Dionysian procedure, from which, as shown, Henry constructed
his own three-stage ascent to God. Scotus has pared this procedure to
the two minimal steps of removal and eminence, which correspond
respectively to what Henry calls knowing God generalissime and
generalius. (In his third point of disagreement with Henry, Scotus
discards Henry’s final stage of conceiving God as wholly simple
through negation and limits our highest simple concept of God to
that of a pre-eminent or infinite being.) Scotus’s point is that the
Dionysian procedure requires that the notion or meaning (ratio)
yielded by removal be the same notion to which eminence is applied,
otherwise the first step would simply have no relevance to the second.
Removal and eminence would not, as all theologians assume, form
two stages of a continuous process of reasoning leading from a
knowledge of creatures to God. As Scotus says, ‘There would be no
such process, but inquiry of this kind would have to be avoided’
(nullus esset talis processus, sed vitanda esset talis inquisitio).15 But
this is exactly the situation in Henry’s interpretation of the Dionysian
process, for he holds that the ratio of a perfection arrived at by the
abstraction and removal of created limitations is wholly other than
that to which eminence is applied (illud est alterius et alterius rationis).
Distinguishing between the epistemological functions of the ways of
causality and eminence, Scotus denies that these two diverse rationes
can be sufficiently connected by means of causal dependence, as Henry
maintains. Something is not formally or essentially predicated of God,
in the manner of a pure perfection, simply because it is an effect. A
rock is an effect of God as exemplary cause in so far as it has an idea
in the divine mind, yet the formal notion of ‘rock’ cannot be
predicated of God in the same way as that of goodness, justice, truth
or any other such perfection. Rather, perfections found in creatures
must have some univocally common concept if they are to be
predicated essentially of God as divine attributes, whereas things
predicated of God as their cause need not have such a common notion.
Henry cannot therefore use the way of causality to underwrite the
way of eminence, for the epistemological requirements for the latter
are greater than for the former. Thus, he must admit that his first
stage issues in some notion common to God and creature.
The force of all this argumentation is that Henry cannot consistently
uphold natural knowledge of the divine nature and then deny that
being has some concept common to creatures and God. If being and
the other perfections have only two simple and wholly diverse rationes
or notions, one proper to creatures and the other to God, then creatures
simply cannot yield any concepts relevant to the divine nature. The
causal dependence of the creature on God is irrelevant here, because
being, goodness and such are seen as divine attributes revelatory of
God’s nature, not because they are effects, but because they are
perfections of a certain sort. Henry himself seems to have appreciated
the limitations of the way of causality and attempted to supply the
required conceptual unity by means of an ‘analogously common notion’,
in which the two proper and diverse rationes were conceived in a
confused way so as to appear univocal. Scotus saw this as an
unworkable contrivance vulnerable to the most obvious of absurdities,
such as that the intellect could lack certitude about its most fundamental
concepts. In the face of Henry’s strained and artificial attempts to sustain
natural knowledge of God while denying any bona fide common
concept, Scotus replaced Henry’s ‘analogous’, confused notion of two
proper rationes that appeared univocal with a distinct concept of a
single, simple ratio that in fact was univocal. Accordingly, where for
Henry being conceived in its utmost generality and community was a
complex and confused concept, and the concepts proper to God and
creatures were simple and distinct, for Scotus just the reverse became
the case. The most general and indeterminate concept of being was
irreducibly simple and common, and thus known in a distinct rather
than a confused way, while the concepts of being proper to God and
creature were complex, or at least not irreducibly simple. By admitting
a simple and univocal concept of being, Scotus provided a true
conceptual community between God and creature and placed the project
of natural knowledge of the divine nature on a firm epistemological
footing.
Scotus’s univocal concept of being clearly had great epistemological
advantages over Henry’s revised version of analogy. It eliminated
Henry’s unsatisfactory attempt to make an unstable conflation of
equivocal notions do the epistemological work of a genuinely univocal
concept merely because such a conflation appeared univocal. Univocity
not only provided a true conceptual community between God and
creature, but made being suitable as a primary object of the mind by
rendering its conception certain, simple and prior. In granting univocity,
Scotus replaced Henry’s two concepts of being with a single one, his
doubtful concepts with a certain one, his relational concepts with an
absolute one, and his confused concepts with a distinct one. Yet these
epistemological advantages of univocity came at a very high
metaphysical cost, which is precisely why Henry went to such extreme
lengths to deny that there was in truth any such concept. The cost of
Scotus’s univocal concept of being, as one objector put it, was nothing
less than ‘to destroy the whole of philosophy’.16
While Scotus portrayed univocity as contained with the tradition of
natural theology, so that it could be found in ‘arguments frequently
made or implied by doctors and the saints’, he had to reconcile it with
a daunting array of philosophical authorities to the contrary. Scotus
himself did not fail to raise and confront the various conflicts that a
univocal concept of being appeared to present to the philosophical
tradition, particularly that of Aristotle. Thus, for instance, univocity
would remove a pillar of Aristotle’s metaphysics, namely, that ‘being is
said in many ways’, which meant that being was not univocal but a
type of equivocal. It would destroy the categories as ultimate
classifications or genera, for they would become species under the higher
class of being. Similarly, it would render the five predicables of Porphyry
inadequate, for being would form a sixth universal. Worst of all, God
would enter a community of being with creatures. The divine nature
would not be a wholly simple and pure act, but a composite of being
and difference.
All of these impossible conclusions really expressed one and the
same difficulty in different ways. Scotus’s univocal concept of being
appeared to his contemporaries to destroy all of philosophy—
Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the categories, the predicables,
and even the distinction between God and creatures—because it
appeared to destroy being itself as a transcendental. On the common
view, a ‘univocal transcendental’ was a contradiction in terms,
precisely because the categories or supreme genera were regarded as
the highest classes of univocal predicates. Since a transcendental was
by definition beyond the categories, it could not be univocal. This
conviction was clearly stated by Peter Olivi, a theologian writing in
the generation before Scotus: ‘The nature of being, one, and true is so
common to all things that it transcends the nature of a genus and
everything univocal.’17 In other words, on the common view, univocity
destroyed being as a transcendental because it reduced being to a
genus. Indicative of this common view was the use of Aristotle’s claim
that being and one could not fall under a genus as a standard authority
against univocity.
This conventional identification of univocal and generic concepts
resulted from the requirement, explicitly invoked by Henry in this
connection, that there must be a strict correspondence between real
and conceptual community. Any real, univocal concept, as opposed
to a purely logical or mind-dependent notion, had to be based on
some type of corresponding real community or agreement. Since the
categories by definition constituted the highest classes of reality, they
formed the outer boundaries of real agreement. Accordingly, there
could be no univocal concept of anything more universal than these
categories or genera, for to such a notion would correspond no real
community. If this was true of the categories, so much more of God
and creatures, whose real diversity was immeasurably greater than
that between any two genera. The challenge facing Scotus was thus
clear if his doctrine of univocity was not to destroy all of philosophy
by reducing being to a genus. He had to explain how there could be
a truly univocal notion of being to which there corresponded no real
agreement. Scotus himself was completely aware that this was the
universally perceived impasse to making being and the other
transcendentals univocal. The central difficulty to be overcome was
that ‘God and creatures are wholly diverse in reality, agreeing in no
reality…and nevertheless agree in one concept’ (Deus et creatura
realiter sunt primo diversa, in nulla realitate convenientia…et tamen
conveniunt in uno conceptu).18
This is the problem Henry saw but could not solve. He could not
see how to unite God and creatures under some common concept of
being without also uniting them in some common reality, that is,
without bringing them under being as a genus. For Henry the one
required the other, as exemplified by Plato, who held being was
univocal because it was a genus (Plato ponens ens esse genus, tanquam
sit nominis entis unum aliquid commune conceptum).19 Because
Henry could not resolve this difficulty, he tried to construct a type of
conceptual community by conflating proper concepts rather than
admit a single, common one. Scotus was the first to find a way around
this impasse, and his solution involved some of the most innovative
aspects of his metaphysics.
Scotus’s solution is found in his question on divine simplicity, which
he specifically formulated to draw out just his difficulty: ‘Is it compatible
with divine simplicity that God, or anything formally predicated of
God, be in a genus?’20 As the lead objection to the question makes
clear, the issue is whether Scotus’s position of univocity, previously
established in distinction 3, entails that God is in a genus.
It seems that [God is in a genus], because God is formally a
being. Being, however, signifies a concept predicated of God
quidditatively (in quid). This concept of being is not proper
to God, but common to God and creature, as was said in
distinction 3. Therefore, in order for this common concept to
become proper [to God] it must be determined by some
determining concept. That determining concept is related to
the concept of being just as a qualitative concept (quale) to a
quidditative concept (quid), and consequently as the concept
of a differentia to a genus.
(Ord. 1 d.8 n.39 (Vat. 4.169))
The above line of argument is precisely why Henry so adamantly refused
to admit both a common and proper concept of divine being and
allowed only a proper one. It is impossible to admit both concepts of
God without conceding that the proper one itself is a composite of
common and distinguishing notions which must be related in effect as
potency and act, or as the objection puts it, as determined and
determining. This is simply to admit that the common notion is a genus
and the distinguishing one a differentia. This conclusion follows
especially from Scotus’s position, because he admits that the common
concept of being applies to God quidditatively, which means that it is
the concept of a ‘what’ (quid). The distinguishing concept will
accordingly specify or qualify being as a kind (quale), so that the two
will conform exactly to the classical relation of genus to differentia as
quid to quale.
In his lengthy reply to the objection, Scotus concedes that there is
a common concept of being and that it is ‘contracted’ or determined
by the notions of infinite and finite to result in concepts proper to
God and creatures. He even concedes that the common and
contracting or determining concepts are related as quid and quale. He
denies, however, that they are respectively concepts of a genus and its
differentiae. As for the first point, Scotus argues that the univocal
concept of being cannot be that of a genus. The reason is that being
so conceived is common to both the finite (creatures) and the infinite
(God), and this community exceeds that of any genus. No generic
concept can be so common, for by definition the concept of a genus
is that of a reality potential to some further, perfecting reality added
by the differentia. What is infinite in being, however, cannot be
potential to any further reality. Accordingly, since a genus by definition
involves potentiality, the concept of being common to God and
creatures cannot be that of a genus, for the infinite being of God can
never be conceived, however commonly or indeterminately, as some
reality potential to further perfection. The second part of Scotus’s
response is that the determining concepts of infinite and finite do not
correspond to those of specific differentiae. Here the reason is that
infinity and finitude do not indicate the addition of some reality
outside that given in the common concept of being, but only degrees
or grades of perfection intrinsic to the reality of being. The concept of
a differentia, however, is always of some reality outside of and added
to that of the genus.
Scotus’s response relies on his technical conception of a formal,
extramental distinction of two realities, on the one hand, and his socalled
‘modal’ distinction between a reality and its intrinsic grades or
modes of perfection, on the other. As for the first, Scotus recognizes
within one and the same thing (res) a distinction of realities, formalities
or entities (realitates, formalitates, entitates), as he variously calls them,
corresponding to our different concepts of that thing. Such realities
are said to be ‘formally distinct’, but really identical or united within
one and the same thing.21 Such a ‘formal distinction’ is for Scotus not
merely conceptual but real in the sense that it obtains prior to any
consideration of the intellect. Scotus holds that at minimum this formal
distinction between two realities is required to provide a real basis for
the concepts of genus and differentia. According to Scotus, this degree
of distinction is minimally needed to sustain any real relationship of
potency to act required for genus and difference. The concept of a
genus is taken from the one reality, which is perfected by and potential
to, the formally distinct reality from which the difference is taken. Scotus
argues that unless genus and differentia are at least formally distinct
realities, the concept of the genus would coincide with the entire reality
of the species, rendering the addition of specific differentia in a definition
redundant.
In addition to this formal distinction of realities in one and the same
thing, Scotus recognizes a lesser distinction between a reality and its
degree of perfection, or in Scotus’s terminology, its intrinsic mode. This
is the distinction, for instance, between an accidental form, such as
white, and the degrees of intensity with which it is actually found. For
example, white can be differentiated into degrees or shades, yet these
degrees do not form different species of colour. Or again, a species of
precious stone, such as diamond, can be distinguished according to
the various degrees of perfection that make up the gemmologist’s scale,
from imperfect to flawless, yet these gradations do not each one
constitute a different species of gem. Such grades or modes are said to
be ‘intrinsic’ because they do not add, as a specific differentia does to a
genus, a new reality extrinsic to the form of which they are the grades.
They rather indicate different quantitative degrees, as it were, of one
and the same reality or form. Scotus’s model here is the medieval theory
of intension and remission of accidental forms. According to this theory,
accidental forms, such as colours, heat, and cognitive and moral habits,
are said to have a certain extension or ‘latitude’ (latitudo) within which
they can be increased (intensio) or decreased (remissio) without a change
in the essence or species of the form itself.22
In light of these technical refinements, Scotus’s answer to the above
objection is that the relationship of the common concept of being to
its contracting or determining notions of infinity and finitude does
not correspond to that of genus and differentia, for this requires two
formally distinct realities related as potency and act. The common
concept of being cannot involve the element of potentiality found in
a genus, for this would render it inapplicable in any way to the divine
being, and hence not common to God and creatures. Rather, being
and its qualifying concepts of infinity and finitude correspond to the
relation of a reality and its intrinsic modes of perfection. The
categorical analogue for the common concept of transcendental being
is not therefore a genus and its specific differences, but rather a specific
form and its grades of intension and remission. Clearly, Scotus thinks
he has found in this categorical analogue of intension and remission
a model for common and differentiating concepts which escapes the
real relation of potency and act required in genus and differentia. The
various degrees of intensity are real but not specific differentiae of a
form. As it actually exists, white is found in different degrees of
brilliance or intensity, and these are real differentiae of that form. Yet
this diversity within the form of whiteness is not one produced by
specific differentiae, otherwise every shade of white would constitute
a different species of colour. Rather, the intensive grades of a form
result from differentiae less than specific, albeit real, because they are
intrinsic to the nature of the form itself. Specific differentiae by
contrast always add a new reality in kind. By appealing to a recognized
distinction within the categories between a form and its degrees, which
is less than that of genus and differentia, Scotus thinks he can explain
how the common concept of being can be ‘contracted’ by the finite
and infinite without reducing being to a genus.
Yet Scotus realizes that this reply does not fully resolve the
difficulty of the real basis for this common concept of being, so that
univocity still poses a threat to divine simplicity. The problem is that
Scotus holds that the concept of being univocally common to God
and creatures is both real and distinct from the concept of infinite
being proper to God. Since this common concept is real, it must be
taken from some corresponding reality in God that is common. The
original objection now reappears, because Scotus still has to admit
that there will be two realities in God, one which is common to
account for the real, common concept of being and another to
account for the proper concept of God. These realities will be related
as potency to act and hence as genus and differentia. The problem
thus seems inescapable. If the common concept of being is real, it
must be of something real in God. But to admit a common reality in
God is nothing less than to place God under a genus. Scotus himself
sharply focuses the difficulty: ‘Here is doubted how a real concept
common to God and creature is possible unless it is taken from some
reality of the same genus.’23
Scotus replies that both the common concept of being univocal to
God and creatures and the concept proper to God are taken from one
and the same reality of infinite being. The implicit assumption of the
objection denied by Scotus is that in order for a common concept to
be real, it must always be an adequate or perfect concept of the reality
conceived. Rather, the common and proper concepts of God are
related as imperfect and perfect conceptions of one and the same
reality, not as perfect or adequate concepts of two distinct realities.
Scotus’s response exploits his distinction between a reality and its
intrinsic mode or grade of perfection to account for how one and the
same reality can cause both a perfect concept, which is proper, and an
imperfect concept, which is common. For example, some particular
instance of white existing at the tenth grade of intensity can be
conceived perfectly, and then it is known according to the degree of
perfection with which it is actually found. That same instance of
white can be conceived imperfectly, and then only the nature of
‘whiteness’ as such, apart from the real condition of its grade of
intensity, is known. The former is a proper concept of whiteness in
some determinate grade, the latter a concept common to the various
instances of white differing in degrees. No concept common as a
genus, however, can ever result simply from conceiving a reality in an
imperfect way. Rather, as just seen, to the concepts of genus and
differentia there must correspond two different realities, and, in each
case, there can be a perfect and adequate concept of the corresponding
reality.
As applied to the renewed form of the initial objection, Scotus’s
distinction means that our univocally common concept of being does
not entail a corresponding common reality in God, because that
common concept is not a perfect or adequate concept of any reality.
Rather, it is an imperfect concept of the reality of infinite being proper
to God or of finite being proper to creatures. To put it another way,
that concept of being is common to God and creatures because in it
the two wholly diverse realities of infinite and finite being are conceived
in an imperfect way. In an annotation to this reply, Scotus expresses in
technical language his answer to the difficulty of the real basis for the
univocal concept of being:
Note [in this answer] how there can be a primary intention
[i.e. a real as opposed to a secondary or merely logical
concept] of ‘a’ and ‘b’ that is common and nothing of a
single nature corresponds in reality, but two wholly diverse
formal objects [i.e. God and creature] are understood in one
first intention, although either imperfectly.
(Ordinatio 1 d.8 n.136 (Vat. 4.221))
This constitutes Scotus’s ultimate resolution of the metaphysical
impasse to a univocal concept of being. It consists of recognizing a
distinction that is real but less than that of two different realities.
Only given such a lesser distinction is it possible to provide an
ontological foundation for common and proper concepts that not are
related as genus and differentia. Scotus himself is clear that the
solution to the objective basis for a univocal concept of being requires
such a lesser distinction, namely, that of a reality and its intrinsic
mode: ‘Therefore, a distinction is required between that from which
the common concept [of being] is taken and that from which the
proper concept is taken, not a distinction of reality and reality, but of
reality and the proper and intrinsic mode of the same reality’ (Ord. 1
d.8 n.139 [13.29] 4, 222). In Scotus’s view, Henry and his
contemporaries were led to deny univocity because they demanded
that every distinction in real concepts be based upon a corresponding
distinction of realities. They failed to see that the boundaries between
our concepts can be more refined, so that they do not always answer
to a distinction of realities but can be based on one between a reality
and its degree of perfection. Such is sufficient for perfect and imperfect
conceptions of the same reality, which are related as proper and
common concepts of it. A concept of being which is common by
virtue of its imperfection is all that is required for it to be univocal to
God and creature.
Having solved this problem, however, Scotus faced a final hurdle to
univocity in the authority of Aristotle, who repeatedly states that being
is a type of equivocal. From this it is concluded that being cannot be
univocal. Scotus replies that this reasoning assumes that analogy and
univocity are incompatible, which he denies. First, according to Aristotle
himself, there is a first in every genus, which is the measure of all in
that class (Metaphysics 10.1 (1052b18)), such as is the case with human
being in the genus of animal. Despite this relationship of attribution,
in which human being constitutes the primary instance of animal to
which all others are referred, Scotus argues that all still admit a single
notion of animal univocal to all in the genus. Similarly, the order and
attribution existing between the proper and analogous concepts of being
is consistent with some univocal notion common to both. Second, the
real or natural philosopher (i.e. the physicist, who deals with material
beings) takes as equivocal the diverse genera which the logician sees as
univocal, for in reality only the form of the ultimate species is truly
univocal. So, Scotus concludes, all of the citations of Aristotle where
being is claimed to be analogous should be read as referring to a real
diversity of beings among which there is attribution, which is none the
less consistent with some univocally common concept abstracted from
them.24 Scotus’s second response will form the basis for ensuing attempts
by Scotists to reconcile his doctrine of univocity with Aquinas’s position
on analogy. In reconciling the two views, Aquinas is portrayed as
maintaining real analogy among beings, while Scotus is seen as holding
a purely conceptual unity.
CONCLUSION
There can be no question that in maintaining a concept of being
univocally common to God and creatures, Scotus moved beyond the
common view of the transcendentals in a dramatic and important way.
The doctrine of univocity counts as one of the genuinely original results
of Latin medieval philosophy, and its impact was felt well into the
modern period. At the same time, Scotus’s achievement depended in
an intimate way on prior developments by Henry of Ghent. As has
been repeatedly stressed, this is in fact so true that Scotus’s doctrine of
univocity should properly be seen not as a complete rejection but as a
revision of Henry’s own unique understanding of analogy. Specifically,
Scotus’s simple, univocal concept was a modification of Henry’s revised
‘analogously common’ notion of being. Henry’s extended sense of an
‘analogous concept’ had many features in common with Scotus’s
univocal one: it was a conception of being as completely undetermined,
the result of abstraction from creatures, and the epistemological
foundation for natural knowledge of the divine nature. Scotus accepted
these aspects of Henry’s indeterminate conception of being, and then
argued that Henry could not consistently deny that such a conception
formed a truly unified, distinct, and common notion unto itself. Scotus
accordingly abandoned Henry’s analogous notion of being, but did so
by making it into the very univocal concept Henry claimed it appeared
to be, but in truth was not. In other words, the univocal concept of
being for which Scotus argues is, in many important respects, the very
one that Henry described but rejected as merely apparent: a single,
simple concept common to God and creature and different from
concepts of both (aliquis unicus intellectus simplex communis ad Deum
et creaturam, alius praeter intellectum Dei aut creaturae).25 These words
of Henry answer quite closely to the concept demonstrated by Scotus,
particularly in his first argument for univocity. To be sure, in upholding
the univocal notion which Henry had rejected Scotus had to move
beyond Henry’s understanding of univocity in an important and creative
way, most notably by detaching univocal community from the
ontological limitations of a genus. On the other hand, it is not true
that Scotus advanced a univocal concept of being which Henry had
simply failed to see altogether; Henry saw a good part of it, but could
not see how to sustain it.
The close connection between Scotus and Henry examined here in
their disagreement over the nature of transcendental concepts is found
to various degrees in many other areas of their thought. For example,
Scotus rejects more and appropriates less in his attacks on Henry’s
version of Augustinian illumination and his theory of exemplar
causality, according to which creatures have a necessary and eternal
‘essential being’ (esse essentiae) as divine ideas. In other areas, Scotus
appropriates more and rejects less, such as in his proofs for the existence
of God. In nearly all cases, however, a proper understanding of Scotus
will depend on appreciating his relationship to Henry.
NOTES
1 Henry, Summa a.22 q.5 ([13.2] I f. 134v).
2 L.Hödl, ‘Introduction à l’edition de la Summa d’Henry de Gand’, in Macken’s
edition of Henry’s Summa articles 31–4 [13.3] xiii–xiv.
3 Roger Marston, Quaestiones disputatae De emanatione divine, De statu naturae
lapsae, De anima, Grottaferrata, 1932, p. 412.
4 Aquinas’s own position is more nuanced, but this is the aspect of it stressed by
Henry. See J.Wippel [13.27] 215–42.
5 Henry’s express treatment of analogy is given in Summa a.21 q.2 ([13.2] I f.
123v–125v).
6 See Aristotle, Categories 1 (1a1–15) and especially Metaphysics 4.1 (1003a32–
b5). For Aristotle’s notion of equivocity, which the scholastics called analogy, see
J. Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, 3rd edn, Toronto,
1978, pp. 107–36.
7 Cf. Henry, Quodlibeta 13 q.10 ([13.3] (1985) 65–7).
8 Henry’s account of natural knowledge of the divine quid est occupies Summa a.24,
especially qq. 4, 7 and 9. See the second article by Pegis in [13.23].
9 Summa a.24 q.6 ([13.2] I f. 142v).
10 Summa a.24 q.6 ([13.2] I f. 142v).
11 For these two quotations, see Henry Summa a.24 q.7 ([13.2] I f. 144v).
12 This part of Scotus’s discussion, which is the basis of what follows, is found
translated according to the Vivès edition in Wolter [13.35] 13–33.
13 Scotus cites Anselm, Monologion c. 15 (ed. Schmitt [6.11] I: 28–9) in this
connection, but the association of this doctrine with Anselm was a commonplace.
14 Duns Scotus 1 Lectura d.3 n.29 ([13.29] 16.235).
15 1 Lectura d.8 n.79 ([13.29] 17.27).
16 1 Lectura d.3 n.105 ([13.29] 16.264).
17 S.Brown, ‘Petrus Joannis Olivi, Quaestiones logicales: critical text’, Traditio 52
(1986): 36–7.
18 1 Lectura d.8 n.129 ([13.29] 17.46).
19 Summa a.21 q.2 ([13.2] I f. 124v).
20 Scotus, 1 Ordinatio d.8 p. 1 q.3 ([13.29] 4.169–230).
21 See the entries under ‘Formal Distinction’ in the bibliography. Scotus varied both
his terminology and definition of the formal distinction between Oxford and
Paris, but this does not affect the present point.
22 On this theory, see for example J.Wippel, ‘Godfrey of Fontaines on intension and
remission of accidental forms’, Franciscan Studies 39 (1979): 343–55.
23 1 Ordinatio d.8 n.137 ([13.29] 4.221).
24 1 Ordinatio d.8 n.48, 83 ([13.29] 4.172, 191–2).
25 Summa a.21 q.2 ([13.2] I f. 124v).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Henry of Ghent
Original language editions
13.1 Quodlibeta Magistri Henrici Goethals a Gandavo Doctoris Solemnis, Paris,
I. Badius, 1518; repr. in 2 vols, Louvain, Bibliothèque, SJ, 1961. (Referred
to as the Badius edition, after its printer.)
13.2 Summae quaestionum ordinariarum, Paris, 1520; repr. in 2 vols, St.
Bonaventure, NY, Franciscan Institute, 1953 (Summa).
13.3 Henrici de Gandavo opera omnia, general editor R.Macken, Leuven, University
Press, 1979–. (The planned critical edition is expected to run to some 40
volumes including several on the manuscripts of Henry’s works and his
life. To date eight Quodlibeta have appeared: I (ed. R.Macken, 1979), II
(ed. R.Wielockx, 1983), VI (ed. G.Wilson, 1987), VII (ed. G. Wilson, 1991),
IX (ed. R.Macken, 1983), X (ed. R.Macken, 1981), XII qq. 1–30 (ed.
J.Decorte, 1987), XII q. 31=Tractatus super facto praelatorum et fratrum
(ed. L.Hödl, 1989) and XIII (ed. J.Decorte, 1985). The edition of the Summa
is also under way, and two volumes have appeared: articles 31–4 (ed.
R.Macken, 1991) and articles 35–40 (ed. G.Wilson, 1994).)
English translations
13.4 Wippel, J.F. and Wolter, A.B. (eds) Medieval Philosophy, New York, Free
Press, 1969, pp. 378–89. (Translation of Henry of Ghent’s proof for die
existence of God in Summa a.22 q.4).
13.5 Quodlibetal Questions on Free Will, trans. R.J.Teske, Milwaukee, Wis.,
Marquette University Press, 1993.
Bibliographies
13.6 Laarmann, M. ‘Bibliographia auxiliaris de vita, operibus et doctrina Henrici
de Gandavo’, Franzikanische Studien 73 (1991): 324–66.
13.7 Macken, R. Bibliographie d’Henri de Gand, Leuven, 1994. (More a
bibliography of late thirteenth-century philosophy. Inaccurate in
places.)
Studies
13.8 Brown, J.V. ‘Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent’s arguments for divine
illumination: the statement of the case’, Vivarium 14 (1976): 94–113.
13.9 ——‘Duns Scotus on the possibility of knowing genuine truth: the reply to
Henry of Ghent in the Lectura prima, and in the Ordinatio’, Recherches
de théologie ancienne et médiévale 51 (1984): 136–82.
13.10 Brown, S. ‘Avicenna and the unity of the concept of being: the interpretations
of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli’,
Franciscan Studies 25 (1965): 117–50.
13.11 ——‘Henry of Ghent’, in Individuation in Scholasticism: the Later Middle
Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150–1650, ed. J.J.E.Gracia, Albany,
NY, State University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 195–220.
13.12 Dumont, S.D. ‘The quaestio si est and the metaphysical proof for the existence
of God according to Henry of Ghent and J.Duns Scotus’, Franziskanische
Studien 66 (1984): 335–67.
13.13 ——‘Time, contradiction and free will in the late thirteenth century’,
Documenti e studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 3.2(1992):
199–235.
13.14 Macken, R. ‘La temporalité radicale de la créature selon Henri de Gand’,
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 38 (1971): 211–72.
13.15 ——‘La théorie de l’illumination divine dans la philosophie d’Henri de Gand’,
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 39 (1972): 82–112.
13.16 ——‘La volonté humaine, faculté plus élevée que l’intelligence selon Henri
de Gand’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 42 (1975):
5–51.
13.17 ——‘The metaphysical proof for the existence of God in the philosophy of
Henry of Ghent’, Franziskanische Studien 68 (1986): 247–60.
13.18 Marrone, S.P. Truth and Scientific Knowledge in the Thought of Henry of
Ghent, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1985.
13.19 ——‘Matthew of Aquasparta, Henry of Ghent and Augustinian epistemology
after Bonaventure’, Franziskanische Studien 65 (1983): 252–90.
13.20 ——‘Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the knowledge of being’, Speculum
63 (1988): 22–57.
13.21 Mediaevalia: Textos e Estudos (Porto), ed. M.Pachecho, 3 (1993). (Special
issue devoted to Henry of Ghent.)
13.22 Paulus, J. Henri de Gand: Essai sur les tendances de sa métaphysique, Paris,
Vrin, 1938.
13.23 Pegis, A. ‘Toward a new way to God: Henry of Ghent’, Mediaeval Studies 30
(1968): 226–47; 31 (1969): 93–116; 33 (1971): 158–79.
13.24 Porro, P. Enrico di Gand: La via delle proposizioni universali, Bari, 1993.
(Contains complete bibliography on Henry, arranged chronologically.)
13.25 Wielockx, R. (ed.) Aegidii Romani Opera Omnia III.1: Apologia, Florence,
Olschki, 1985. (Contains much material on Henry of Ghent, especially
concerning his role in the condemnations of 1277 and the censure of Giles
of Rome.)
13.26 Wippel, J.F. ‘The relationship between essence and existence in late
thirteenth-century thought: Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey
of Fontaines, James of Viterbo’, in Philosophies of Existence: Ancient
and Medieval, ed. P.Morewedge, New York, Fordham University Press,
1982, pp. 131–64.
13.27 ——‘Divine knowledge, divine power and human freedom in Thomas
Aquinas and Henry of Ghent’, in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas
Aquinas, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1984,
pp. 243–70.
Duns Scotus
Original language editions
13.28 Opera omnia. Editio nova iuxta editionem Waddingi XII tomos continentem
a patribus Franciscanis de observantia accurante recognita, 26 vols, Paris,
Vivès, 1891–5. (Vivès edition. Modernized reprint of the Wadding edition
(Lyons, 1639). Contains many spurious works. For the certainly authentic
works, see C.Balic, John Duns Scotus: Some Reflections on the Occasion
of the Seventh Centenary of his Birth, Rome, 1966, pp. 29–44. Since the
critical, Vatican edition is far from complete, this is still the only text for
many of Scotus’s writings. Even for those texts which have been critically
edited, the edition remains valuable for the scholia, parallel citations and
commentaries by later Scotists.)
13.29 Opera omnia studio et cura Commissions Scotisticae ad fidem codicum edita,
Vatican City, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950–. (Vatican edition. Planned
critical edition of Scotus’s writings. To date: vols 1–7=Ordinatio (to 2 d.
3); vols 16–19=Lectura.)
13.30 John Duns Scotus: a Treatise on God as First Principle, ed. A.B.Wolter,
Chicago, Franciscan Herald Press, 1966; 2nd rev. edn, 1983. (The revised
edition adds an extensive commentary.)
13.31 Obras del Doctor Sutil, Juan Duns Escoto: Cuestiones Cuodlibetales, ed. F.
Alluntis, Madrid, Biblioteca De Autores Cristianos, 1968. (Revision of
Vivès text of the Quodlibetal Questions.)
English translations
13.32 A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, ed. E.Fairweather, Philadelphia,
Pa., Westminster Press, 1956, pp. 428–39. (Translation of Ordinatio
question on whether God’s existence is self-evident.)
13.33 Contingency and Freedom: John Duns Scotus, Lectura I 39, trans. A.Vos,
Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1994. (Translation of Lectura questions on divine
foreknowledge.)
13.34 Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, ed. and trans. A.B.Wolter, Washington,
DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1987.
13.35 Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings, trans. A.B.Wolter, Indianapolis, Ind.
and Cambridge, Hackett, 1987. (Translation of selections from the
Ordinatio with facing Latin text of the Vivès edition.)
13.36 Five Texts on the Medieval Problem of Universals, trans. P.V.Spade,
Indianapolis, Ind. and Cambridge, Hackett, 1994, 57–113. (Translation
of Ordinatio questions on the principle of individuation.)
13.37 God and Creatures: the Quodlibetal Questions, trans. F.Alluntis and A.B.
Wolter, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1975; repr. Washington,
DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1987. (Includes helpful glossary
of Scotistic vocabulary.)
13.38 Wippel, J.F. and Wolter, A. (eds) [13.4] 402–19. (Lectura or early version of
Scotus’s proof for the existence of God.)
13.39 Wolter, A. ‘Duns Scotus on the necessity of revealed knowledge’, Franciscan
Studies 11 (1951): 231–71. (Translation of the prologue to the Ordinatio.)
13.40 Wolter, A. and Adams, M. ‘Duns Scotus’ Parisian proof for the existence of
God’, Franciscan Studies 42 (1982): 248–321.
13.41 Wolter, A.B. and Frank, W.A. Duns Scotus, metaphysician, West Lafayette,
Ind., Purdue University Press, 1995. (Selected texts with facing Latin and
commentary.)
Bibliographies
13.42 Schaefer, O. Bibliographia de vita operibus et doctrina Ioannis Duns Scott,
Saec. XIX–XX, Rome, Orbis Catholicus-Herder, 1955.
13.43 ——‘Resenha abreviada da bibliographia escotista mais recente (1954–1966)’,
Revistas Portuguesa de Filosofia 23 (1967): 338–63.
13.44 Cress, D. ‘Toward a bibliography on Duns Scotus on the existence of God’,
Franciscan Studies 35 (1975): 45–65.
Collections of articles
(The first five items below are proceedings of the International Scotistic Congress
(Congressus Scotisticus Internationalis) and contain many articles on all aspects of
Scotus’s thought.)
13.45 De doctrina Ioannis Duns Scott, 4 vols, Rome, Cura Commissionis Scotisticae,
1968.
13.46 Deus et homo ad mentem I.Duns Scoti, Rome, Societas Internationalis
Scotisticae, 1972.
13.47 Regnum hominis et regnum Dei, 2 vols, ed. C.Bérubé, Rome, Societas
Internationalis Scotistica, 1978.
13.48 Homo et Mundus, ed. C.Bérubé, Rome, Societas Internationalis Scotistica,
1981.
13.49 Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, 2 vols, ed. L.Sileo,
Rome, Edizioni Antonianum, 1995.
13.50 Duns Scotus, ed. A.B.Wolter, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 67
(1993).
13.51 John Duns Scotus, 1265–1965, in J.K.Ryan and B.Bonansea (eds) Studies in
Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 3, Washington, DC, Catholic
University of America, 1965.
13.52 Metaphysik und Ethik bei Johannes Duns Scotus: Neue Forschungsperspektiven,
ed. M.Dreyer and R.Wood, Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1996.
13.53 Philosophy of John Duns Scotus in Commemoration of the 700th Anniversary
of his Birth, Monist 49 (1965).
13.54 Wolter, A.B. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ed. M.Adams,
Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1990. (Collection of many of Wolter’s
articles on Scotus.)
General studies
13.55 Gilson, E. Jean Duns Scot: Introduction à ses positions fondamentales, Paris,
Vrin, 1952. (A comprehensive book on Scotus’s philosophy, but of limited
value owing to its failure to take account of Henry of Ghent.)
13.56 Honnefelder, L. Ens inquantum ens. Der Begriff des Seienden als solchen als
Gegenstand der Metaphysik nach der Lehre des Johannes Duns Scotus
(BGPTMA, n.f. 16), Münster, Aschendorff, 1979. (Extensive work on
Scotus’s conception of the science of metaphysics.)
13.57 Wolter, A.B. The Transcendentals and their Function in the Philosophy of
Duns Scotus, St Bonaventure, NY, Franciscan Institute, 1946. (A study
still regarded as the best introduction to Scotus’s metaphysics.)
Univocity
13.58 Boulnois, O. Jean Duns Scot: Sur la connaissance de Dieu et l’univocié de
l’étant, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1988.
13.59 Dumont, S.D. ‘The univocity of being in the fourteenth century’, Mediaeval Studies
49 (1987): 1–75; 50 (1988): 186–256; (with S. Brown) 51 (1989): 1–129.
13.60 ——‘Transcendental being: Scotus and Scotists’, Topoi 11 (1992): 135–48.
13.61 Marrone, S.P. ‘The notion of univocity in Duns Scotus’s early works’,
Franciscan Studies 43 (1983): 347–95.
Individuation
13.62 Dumont, S.D. ‘The question on individuation in Scotus’s Quaestiones in
Metaphysicam’, in [13.49] I, 193–227.
13.63 King, P. ‘Duns Scotus on the common nature and the individual difference’,
Philosophical Topics 20, 2 (1992): 51–76.
13.64 Rudavsky, T. ‘The doctrine of individuation in Duns Scotus’, Franziskanische
Studien 59 (1977): 320–77 and 62 (1980): 62–83.
13.65 Wolter, A.B. ‘Scotus’s individuation theory’, in [13.54] 98–124.
Formal distinction
13.66 Adams, M.M. ‘Universals in the fourteenth century’, in CHLMP pp. 411–39.
13.67 Wolter, A.B. ‘The formal distinction’, in [13.54] 45–60.
Epistemology
13.68 Dumont, S.D. ‘The scientific character of theology and the origin of Duns
Scotus’s distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition’, Speculum
64 (1989): 579–99.
13.69 Marenbon, J. Later Medieval Philosophy (1150–1350), London, Routledge,
1987, pp. 154–68.
13.70 Wolter, A.B. ‘Duns Scotus on intuition, memory and our knowledge of
individuals’, in [13.54] 98–124.
Virtues, will and freedom
13.71 Boler, J. ‘Transcending the natural: Duns Scotus on the two affections of the
will’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1993): 109–22.
13.72 Dumont, S.D. ‘The necessary connection of prudence to the moral virtues
according to John Duns Scotus—revisited’, Recherches de théologie
ancienne et médiévale 55 (1988): 184–206.
13.73 ——‘The origin of Scotus’s theory of synchronic contingency’, The Modern
Schoolman (1995): 149–68.
13.74 Frank, W.A. ‘Duns Scotus on autonomous freedom and divine co-causality’,
Medieval Philosophy and Theology 2 (1992): 142–64.
13.75 Ingham, M.E. Ethics and Freedom: an Historical-Critical Investigation of
Scotist Ethical Thought, Washington, DC, University Press of America,
1989.
13.76 Prentice, R. ‘The voluntarism of Duns Scotus as seen in his comparison of the
intellect and the will’, Franciscan Studies 28 (1968): 63–103.
13.77 Wolter, A.B. ‘Native freedom of the will as the key to the ethics of Scotus’, in
[13.54] 148–62.
13.78 ——‘Duns Scotus on the will as rational potency’, in [13.54] 163–80.
Routledge History of Philosophy.
Taylor & Francis e-Library.
2005.