The Scotist Way

The Subtle Doctor.

The most powerful and certainly the most wily thinker of this new era was John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), called the Doctor Subtilis or "the subtle doctor." Born in the village of Duns in Scotland, Scotus, declared "Blessed" by the Roman Catholic Church, was educated at Oxford. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1291 (one of the few solid dates from his life known to scholars), he "reigned" as master of theology at Oxford. He was subsequently sent to Paris, where he wrote a commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences. He occupied one of the chairs assigned to the Franciscans in 1305 and a short time later was sent by his superiors to Cologne, where he taught until his death in 1308. Given the fact that he died at the young age of 42, it is little wonder that much of his promise as a philosopher remained unfulfilled and much of the system he had outlined undeveloped. The fact that some of his works survive only in the form of a reportatio—a report taken down by a student—adds to the difficulty in understanding this complex thinker. Reflecting the new spirit of his age, Scotus defended the necessity of divine revelation against those rationalists who advanced the claims of reason alone. The philosophies of Aristotle and his Muslim commentators, by this time so integrated into Christian thinking, were powerless to explain the human condition with its innate sinfulness and need for grace and redemption.

The Concept of Infinite Being.

Unlike St. Thomas, Scotus had a univocal, not an analogous, concept of being; in other words "being" meant the same thing in all of its instances. Scotus' concept of being was everything that is not nothing. Thus emptied of content, being has neither depth nor degrees; nor is there room for the distinction so crucial for Aquinas between essence and being. Thus conceived, being for Scotus eluded comprehension in this life. Given this radically novel metaphysics, Scotus was forced to find a new path to God. All of the beings known to man are finite beings; they therefore demand a cause that is infinite and necessary. If the concept of infinite being is reasonable and not self-contradictory, then it must include the perfection of existence. In other words, if an infinite being is possible, it is necessary.

Divine Law and Divine Nature.

God for Scotus was both completely rational and completely free. Nothing in the immutability of the divine nature demanded one course of action as opposed to another. The moral law was not the result of capriciousness on the part of the divine will, nor was it determined in any absolute sense by the divine essence. This meant that the divine law, which is the foundation of the moral law, was the product of the divine will, operating, however, in accord with the non-contradictory character of the divine nature. Thus God can change the rules of morality, according to Scotus, but he cannot contradict his own nature. He cannot, for example, command that he not be loved.

Knowledge of Uniqueness.

Scotus was the first among the Franciscan masters to break with St. Augustine on the question of knowledge; he did not believe that man needed a special divine illumination in order to know truth. On the other hand, he also distanced himself from Aristotle in one important detail. For Aristotle the paradox was that we know individuals but only in a universal way; one knows Callias, said Aristotle, as man (a universal), not as Callias (an individual). Scotus found this explanation wanting and proposed an additional form or entity that makes each individual the individual he or she is; he even invented a word for it: haecceitas or "this-ness." In addition to the formal realities we share in common, such as being embodied, living, sentient, and rational, there is an additional difference that is unique to each of us, and the mind is capable of knowing this uniqueness. The late nineteenth-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, a great admirer of Scotus, called it "the dearest freshness deep down things."

Complexity and Distinctions.

Like Augustine—and unlike Aquinas—Scotus gave primacy to the will over the intellect. True, desire is moved only by what is known, but the impetus toward the object comes from the will. The will is thus the higher faculty in that it moves the intellect to know what it knows. The complexity of his thought and the glut of distinctions (of which only a few have been suggested here) led his enemies to dub him the "Duns man," which quickly evolved into the term of denigration that is with us to this day: dunce.

sources

Jerome V. Brown, "John Duns Scotus," in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 115: Medieval Philosophers. Ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, Inc., 1992): 142–150.

Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Stephen D. Dumont, "John Duns Scotus," in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Eds. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (London: Blackwell, 2003): 353–369.

Armand Maurer, Medieval Philosophy. 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1982): 220–241.