Modern Theology 21:4 October 2005 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

RE-SITUATING SCOTIST THOUGHT

MARY BETH INGHAM
In Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Signicance, Catherine Pickstock presents several levels of a critique against Scotist thought, rst from its contemporary interpretation (by scholars like Cross, Honnefelder and Boulnois) and following this, from its basic assumptions that are more central to her negative assessment of the Subtle Doctor. In this essay, I focus less upon the rst element (although I treat it briey) and more upon the assumptions that ground her critique. In sum, I think that Pickstocks argument errs on two counts. First, she moves from interpretations about Scotus to afrmations about his thought. Second, she (like many others) views Scotist thought not from within his Franciscan assumptions (which I refrain from calling voluntarist), but rather from within the assumptions of a Thomistic perspective (which I likewise refrain from calling intellectualist). As I hope to show, while her contemporary critique may be better lodged upon the interpreters and not the Franciscan himself, her much more elaborated critique of Scotus is not well founded. I intend to show this with a few textual pieces of evidence. I conclude my response with a few comments about the danger of historical categories such as voluntarism or intellectualism for any authentic retrieval of a medieval thinker. At the outset, however, I wish to state how important such scholarly debate is, especially for Scotus, since there is so much misinformation about his thought at large, fueled for the most part by histories of philosophy written before the critical editions were available. Because of this, I wish to begin by thanking Catherine Pickstock for her thoughtful and detailed treatment of this important issue.

Mary Beth Ingham Philosophy Department, Loyola Marymount University, One, LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA
Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

610

Mary Beth Ingham

I. The Critique of Contemporary Interpreters of Scotus In her opening paragraphs, Pickstock identies four reactions among contemporary scholars to the development within the history of philosophy. The rst attempts to reconcile modern thought (Kantian and Scotist) with the Christian vision. The second involves the French phenomenologist interpretation, focused on univocity of being and the primacy of charity. The third emphasizes univocal ontology as more basic to modernity than epistemology and the shift to the subject. The fourth (her own) is critical of the univocal ontology and the centrality of efcient over nal causality. We can group her overall critique in terms of these four reactions. Her critique of contemporary interpretations focuses on the second and third points. Her critique of Scotus is centered on the way in which the fourth position raises serious objections to the rst position. The second and third reactions, the French phenomenologists and socalled post-modern thinkers, both center on univocity and the rejection of analogy. This, it turns out, is really the crux of Pickstocks argument with Scotus. Thus, once she has raised objections to these two approaches, she is able to move into her more central critique of Scotist thought, which is basically a critique of univocity of being, but also involves other aspects of his overall vision. I prefer to let contemporary scholars (such as Cross, Honnefelder and Boulnois), whose interpretation of the history of philosophy and Scotuss place in it are the focus of the initial critique, answer for themselves. I do question, however, the way in which Pickstock (and perhaps all scholars mentioned in her article) view the history of philosophy. It is clearly the grand narrative of broad categories that assists in a clear and systematic view of history. It also fuels the great man approach to the history of philosophy. If Kant and Descartes are great men, then the men who inspired them are also great men and so on, back to the greatest men of all: Plato and Aristotle. This view, despite its clarity, does not take into account the historical details of an individual thinker, his response to thinkers with whom he is in dialogue, and the way in which some aspects of his thought are contextualized by others. My point here is simply to state that the isolation of the univocity of being (by Pickstock or any other scholar) from other aspects of Scotist thought (such as the formal distinction and formal modal distinction) contributes to a misunderstanding of his philosophical and theological perspective. Whether or not any particular element of a thinkers vision (isolated from the original context) plays a key role for later thinkers in the history of philosophy or contemporary interpreters, may be grounds for attribution but no more than that. I do not think the history of philosophy has trajectories that are set by any one thinker in isolation from other thinkers who use his work. To this extent, I would say that the reference to Deleuze, Badiou and Derrida as appealing to Scotus moves too quickly to
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Re-situating Scotist Thought 611 the afrmation about what Scotus did, attening out of actual necessity . . . to pure virtuality, and of being to the bare fact of existence.1 That several contemporary scholars appeal to Scotus is not disputed here. That they accurately capture the entirety of his vision, however, is something of which I am not convinced. To isolate the univocity of being from all other aspects of Scotist thought and to use it to ground a philosophical perspective is to do something with a piece of Scotuss thought that Scotus did not do. But, by the same token, to take this piece from contemporary discourse and apply it to Scotus himself misses a key historical and methodological point. Pickstock presents Thomist analogy as the counter to Scotuss focus on univocity. Historians of Scotist thought know well that the Franciscans discussion of being as a univocal concept (and not a term) was in direct response to Henry of Ghents neo-Augustinian illumination theory. It was not a response to Aquinass position on analogy and its key use in language about God. In fact, Scotus points out that his defense of the univocal concept being is precisely what is needed for theology to have anything coherent to say about God. So, rather than destroy theology, or even reduce it to immanence, his defense of univocity aims at the same goal as Aquinass discussion of analogy, i.e., a defense of language about God. On this point, Boulnois has shown quite effectively that Scotus himself distinguishes between the univocity of being required by the logician and the analogous use of being that appears with theological discourse.2 Thus, when Pickstock claims that Scotus defends a strict separation between logical abstraction from spiritual ascesis, she misses the point that, for the Franciscan, the separation is not between logic and spirituality, it is between the categories used by a logician and those used by a theologian in their discourse about God. But this may in fact point to a key area where Scotus does indeed distinguish himself from Aquinas. He labors to make clear that the categories of being found in Aristotles metaphysics (or even those present in Platonic thought, to which he had an indirect access via Augustine) do not exhaust the domain of Christian theology. This is because Christianity contains revelation not known to the Greeks. And while, like Aquinas, he afrms that there is coherency between what natural reason can know and what is revealed, he also notes the qualitative difference between what philosophers can say with certainty about God and what theologians are able to say. In their respective disciplines (logic and theology) the concept being functions differently. In the domain of logic it functions univocally (since the alternative offered by Henry of Ghent was equivocation disguised as analogy). In the domain of theology, and particularly in regard to the names of God, the term functions analogically. If one were to contrast Scotuss afrmation of the univocity of being with Aquinass afrmation of analogy, it would be necessary to say that Aquinas (in contrast to Scotus) afrmed the analogous use of the concept being.
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

612

Mary Beth Ingham

Aquinas afrms the analogous use of terms, not of concepts. It is difcult to imagine an analogous concept that is not equivocal. This is Scotuss point. When she asserts that Scotus implies that being as a semantic or logical unit is also a formal element of the makeup of any existential reality, Pickstock goes beyond what the Franciscan has actually said. She notes this in the sentence that follows: although Scotus does not explicitly speak of a formal distinction between being and essence, later Scotists developed a clear logicist formalisation.3 This may be true, but then the correction should be directed at later Scotists, not at Scotus himself. Scotus himself refused to accept the distinction between essence and existence; he called it a ctio mentis. Indeed, in her rst set of critical arguments, Pickstock focuses on the narrative of modernity, pre-modernity, proto-modernity and post-modernity. She rightly notes the failure of these categories to capture what the scholars using them are attempting to show. But then she relies on the very narrative that is so problematic in order to attack Scotus, whether that be a move from the narrative itself or from the contemporary scholars who use Scotus to present their position. Her use of sweeping expressions, such as Pre-Scotist Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophical Realism or the Western Catholic Synthesis leave me wondering to whom she refers. It may be Thomas Aquinas. And, if this is the case, then it is better simply to say that Scotus does not share the perspective of Aquinas on many of these issues. No one would debate this point. Pickstocks position is clearly based upon the centrality of a Thomist perspective: the essence/existence distinction, the analogy of being as Thomas presents it, the nature of the transcendentals. Perhaps this is due to the present state of discourse and the way her opponents may use Scotus to critique Aquinas. I leave this to others to sort out. I simply point out here that to criticize Scotus on the basis that he is not a Thomist is as unwarranted as criticizing Aristotle for not being Plato, or any thinker for not being someone else. The key for an accurate retrieval of a central voice in the Christian tradition is, in my opinion, to give them a hearing on their own basis, and not on that of another. It is a tragedy that two such great minds as that of Aquinas and Scotus can only be discussed in competition with one another, by members of one perspective who reject the other on the basis of small points of divergence. A far more helpful approach would be to understand the entire vision with its intricacies. II. The Critique of Scotus It is in the third portion of her article, The Theological Dimension of Univocity, that Pickstock turns to her direct critique of Scotus. Here we see both her assumptions about Scotist thought and the way in which her Thomistic perspective dominates her entire essay. Because she views Scotus through
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Re-situating Scotist Thought 613 the eyes of a Thomist, Pickstock is unable to see what is truly going on in the Franciscans thought: an alternative orthodox Christian intellectual approach to key human questions. Pickstock asserts that her present critique of Scotus has more to do with the separation of faith from reason, grace from nature, will from reason and theology from metaphysics and physics.4 As I hope to show in this section, these are caricatures of Scotus, caricatures taken from the historical narrative about the history of philosophy she alludes to earlier in her essay, caricatures framed entirely from the Thomist perspective and meaningful only if one views reality in the particular way that she does. But of course, this sort of critique cannot work as well as she would like, for one must transform Scotus into someone he is not in order to justify the critique. In what follows, I will present four key elements of Scotuss philosophical and theological approach that show how, both in the historians view and in Pickstocks, the Scotus they critique cannot be established from the textual evidence at hand. The rst key element in Scotuss view of reality and of the relationship of philosophy to theology is the centrality of the Incarnation. Because his vision is so predominantly Christocentric and so afrming of the sui generis nature of Christian revelation, Scotus both critiques the natural capacity of human reason to grasp everything about God and moves his consideration of creation (both in its contingency and in the logical categories used to discuss it) to a secondary status. Thus, he would not hold (with Aquinas and Aristotle) that this world is the only one possible, nor (with Aristotle) that its unique existence points to a single, necessary prime mover. Nor would he hold (with Aquinas and Aristotle) that the life of natural virtue and the philosophers goal of happiness (felicitas) are sufcient reasons to demonstrate immortality. This is not because he holds that reason cannot demonstrate the souls immortality. Rather, he holds that natural reason cannot (alone) demonstrate the sort of immortality promised by Christianity (cf. 1 Cor. 2: eye has not seen nor has ear heard . . .). Scotuss critique of philosophical arguments based upon necessity is grounded on his view that the necessity of which philosophers speak is a determinist necessity. In light of revelation about creation and, especially, the Incarnation, the Franciscan works to defend a notion of freedom that avoids any strong determinism. This is the metaphysics behind his defense of freedom in the will. I have argued elsewhere5 that the impact of the development of philosophical/theological discussion in a post-1277 university context cannot be overlooked in any attempt to identify authentic Scotist positions on these central human issues. Regardless of the power of Aristotelian thought for Scotus (and his critique of Henry of Ghent is based upon his commitment to Aristotelian logic and epistemology, corrected by the insights of revelation), Aristotle was not a Christian, nor had he access to sacred texts. This is a signicant element for the Franciscan in a post 1277
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

614

Mary Beth Ingham

academic world, where the centrality of Aristotelian thought (especially for human free choice) was under growing scrutiny. Scotuss treatment of the relationship of philosophy to theology in the Ordinatio Prologue clearly demonstrates both his respect for and his criticism of the Aristotelian tradition as it was defended by members of the Faculty of Arts in Paris at the end of the thirteenth century.6 What Pickstock calls the separation of theology from metaphysics and physics can equally be called the afrmation of the centrality of revelation for any Christian thinker. Indeed, from Scotuss perspective, one might criticize Aquinas for his overly naturalistic approach to key human questions, odd for a Christian thinker, indeed, equally odd for a religious. It is clear that such a critique of Aquinas would be a caricature of the Angelic Doctor, based upon the selective use of several texts, themselves a small portion of a much larger corpus. But the point I am trying to make here is that the very same sort of approach is being taken with Scotus. The centrality of creation is no less important to Scotus than to Aquinas; he defends it in a different way. Scotus defends the dignity of creation in his discussion of the principle of individuation (haecceitas), the centrality of the human person and the powers of human reasoning, which need no light of glory to experience the beatic vision. It is Aquinas who views human nature in an inferior light, not Scotus.7 The second element of Scotuss vision has to do with his optimistic anthropology. This ows, I have argued elsewhere,8 from his Franciscan spirituality. He endows human rational nature with enormous capacity for knowing and loving God, and he minimizes the effects of the Fall. His defense of the Immaculate Conception and position on the Incarnation were counter to the commonly held positions of his day, but entirely orthodox and consistent to positions taught within his own religious family.9 Thus, when Pickstock accuses Scotus of a separation of grace from nature, she misreads the intricate way that grace and nature are at work within Scotist thought from the divine act of creation. Nature is not opposed to grace; rather nature is graced in its most basic being. This is how, for Scotus, the contingency of creation, the Incarnation and the Immaculate Conception function as a coherent set of doctrinal positions that are fundamental to the Franciscans vision. To present Scotuss position on the contingent nature of creation independently of his position on the Primacy of Christ and the Immaculate Conception removes a central insight from a larger body of thought and offers it as a self-standing proposition. Creation, Incarnation and the Immaculate Conception all belong to the order of execution that follows upon the divine ordo intentionis, or Gods desire (as revealed in Scripture) from before the foundation of the world. The third element involves the claim that Scotus separates the will from reason. This, along with the univocity of being, forms the central target for Pickstocks critique of the Subtle Doctor. Indeed, Scotuss position on
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Re-situating Scotist Thought 615 freedom in the will has been and continues to be an area of much discussion among historians and philosophers. Much of the criticism, in my opinion, stems once again from a misreading of the Franciscans position. Scotuss early death (at 42) is responsible for the fact that he left numerous texts incomplete. There is much scholarly debate as to whether or not Scotuss afrmation of the wills freedom is dangerous, proto-modern or classic in its formulation. There are two texts central to the debate that contributes to the confusion. The rst, his Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics, Book 9, question 15, offers textual evidence that Scotus taught that freedom is simply the wills exercise of choice, independent of the intellect. The second, from his Ordinatio Book II, distinction 6 offers a careful analysis of Anselms two affections (the affectio commodi and affectio iusititae) showing that the centrality of choice and self-control requires an external world of objective goods. It is the interaction of the two affections in the will that explains freedom as a substantive exercise, not an empty act of spontaneous willing.10 In a recent article, I have argued that it is in a Parisian text, his Reportatio II, distinction 25, that we nd evidence that Scotuss treatment of the rational will integrated the powers of cognition, rather than separated them from rationality or the intellect.11 While this point is far too complex to be treated at length in this short essay, it is important to note that, pace Pickstock and many other readers of Scotus, the development of Book II, distinction 25 of the Sentences Commentary (in its Lectura, Ordinatio and Reportatio versions) demonstrates quite clearly that, during his teaching career, Scotus moved from a position that identied reason with the intellect toward a position that afrmed the wills rationality. This means that he did not, as is claimed, separate the will from reason. Rather, he worked continuously to integrate rationality into willing. What this means for his position on freedom is, I think, clear enough. Scotus does not defend an exercise of freedom that takes for granted the absence of intellection or reason. He does, however, defend an exercise of rational freedom in the will that is free from any determinism on the part of the intellect, or any other force outside the will. The will is the seat of rationality for Scotus, just as, for Thomas, the intellect is the seat of reason. Since both hold that freedom and reason are fundamental to human action, it is no surprise that Aquinas afrms true freedom to be where rationality is not determined by anything outside intellectual deliberation (such as the passions). Scotus, for his part, afrms true freedom to be where rationality is not determined by anything outside voluntary self-mastery. The object as known by the intellect is within the wills power of choice, and is not seen as separate from the exercise of freedom. Scotist thought focuses on the exercise of practical reason (the will) as central to the exercise of the fullest form of human agency and its perfection in freedom. If one is not aware of the key role played by the Condemnation of 1277, of the shift in discourse around notions of nature as determined and will as
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

616

Mary Beth Ingham

self-determining and directive of choice, then one might easily conclude that Scotus removes rationality from willing and contributes to an understanding of freedom that is an exercise of a power having no objective content, other than that determined by the subject. On the contrary, it was precisely in response to an overly naturalistic vision of human behavior, based upon an Aristotelian perspective, that Scotus offered his critique of philosophical categories and his defense of freedom, both in God and in the human person. The nal element of Pickstocks critique of Scotus is the afrmation of the univocity of the concept being and its lethal consequences for any defense of transcendence and a spiritual ascent. This point deserves a more careful treatment. Scotus sets forth his argument for the univocity of being in Ordinatio I, distinction 3, question 1.12 The text deals specically with the possibility of knowledge about God and, by implication, of the existence of theology as a science. Here, the Franciscan develops his position on the univocity of being in tandem with a discussion of scientic knowledge of God. Together, both constitute the sine qua non condition for any possible theology: human cognition must have some natural basis from which to reect on the divine. This natural ground is, in Scotist thought, the univocity of the concept of being. If, in his argument, Scotus can show that the human mind has foundational access to reality, and if that reality provides adequate basis for natural knowledge of God, then theology can be understood as a science, whose content does not exhaust the truth about God. Scotus reasons from the discussion of language about God to the deeper consideration of the sort of foundation that would explain how such language is possible (namely, that being rather than quidditas is the rst object of the intellect). In this, he follows his usual methodological procedure, moving from experience to what grounds the possibility of that experience. In addition, Scotus bases his argument upon the Aristotelian cognitive model, where sense knowledge, mental species and agent intellect form the constitutive parts. Finally, the Subtle Doctor rejects Henry of Ghents proposed illumination theory, along with its argument from analogy. For Scotus, Henrys position on analogy without an underlying univocity of concepts is simply equivocation. The Franciscan argues that when we conceive of God as wise, we consider a property (wisdom) that perfects nature. In order that we might do this and in light of the cognitive structure Aristotle provides, we must rst have in mind some essence in which the property exists. When we consider properties or attributes such as wisdom, we do not understand them as pure abstraction, but as belonging to an essence. This more basic, quidditative concept is a type of conceptual whatness that grounds the act of cognition. Were such a concept not univocal, theology could not be a science, nor would language about God be meaningful. The formal modal distinction is key to understanding the way in which Scotus presents the relationship of cognition to the natural world and then to language about God. The formal modal distinction is related to but not
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Re-situating Scotist Thought 617 identical with the formal distinction. This modal distinction applies not to different attributes or aspects of a being (as does the formal distinction), but to the distinction between a subject, such as intelligence in humans, and its mode, such as nite. The signicance of the formal modal distinction becomes clear when we understand its role as foundation for those concepts that are predicable univocally of God and creatures. Consider, for example, the concept wisdom as predicable of God and creatures. Scotus asks, How can the concept common to God and creatures be considered real unless it can be abstracted from some reality of the same kind?13 In response, he explains the difference between the modal distinction and the strict formal distinction. A perfection and its intrinsic mode, such as innite wisdom, are not so identical that we cannot conceive of the perfection (wisdom) without the mode (innity). We can, indeed, conceive of wisdom independently of whether it is nite (human wisdom) or innite (divine wisdom). The perfection and mode are not really distinct, however, because they cannot be separated in reality; nor are they formally distinct, because they are not two formalities each capable of terminating a distinct and proper concept. Nonetheless, they are still not identical, because the objective reality signied by the perfection with its modal intensity (innite wisdom) is not precisely the same as that signied by the perfection alone (wisdom). The formal modal distinction, then, actually safeguards the reality of those concepts, such as being, that are predicable of God and creatures. Without the mode, these sorts of concepts are common and imperfect. They function semantically in a confused manner, designating in a general way. With the mode, the concept is called proper, and has a more focused, specifying role. The referent (that is, the being designated as innite) emerges more clearly within the eld, like a gure against a background. The formal modal distinction, in a manner similar to the formal distinction, is linked to the activity of abstractive cognition. The modal distinctions specicity can be clearly seen when we reect upon the experience of the beatic vision. The blessed in heaven, states Scotus, perceive the innite perfection of divine innite wisdom intuitively, not as two formal objects, but as one.14 By contrast, no intuition in heaven erases the formal distinction between the divine persons and the divine essence, or between the divine intellect and the divine will. In short, the formal distinction is such that it remains even in the beatic vision, while the formal modal distinction does not.15 In her critique of Scotuss afrmation of the univocity of being, Pickstock isolates that afrmation from those aspects that both contexualize it for Scotus (i.e., Henrys arguments) and those aspects that inform its use in theological reection (the formal modal distinction). In isolation, the position on the univocal concept being is contrasted to Aquinass position on the analogous use of the term being and how it functions semantically to enable natural reason to speak of God in ways that safeguard transcendence and the link between natural reasoning and the spiritual journey. Such a contrast
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

618

Mary Beth Ingham

is unfair to Scotus, since the univocal concept being and the formal modal distinction achieve the same sort of transition from natural reasoning to language about God. Aquinas and Scotus have two distinct and systematic ways of approaching reality, the spiritual journey and language about God. Both seek to defend the content of Christian revelation with logical and metaphysical tools. They defend that content differently, however, and such difference is a richness for the tradition.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Signicance, pp. 543544. See Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scot, Thoricien de lAnalogie de LEtre in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, edited by Ludger Honnefelder, Riga Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 293315. Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Signicance, pp. 546547. Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Signicance, p. 553. The Condemnation of 1277: Another Light on Scotist Ethics, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie, Vol. 37 Heft 12 (1990), pp. 91103. On this, see my Duns Scotus, Morality and Happiness: A Reply to Thomas Williams in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 74 no. 2 (2000), pp. 173195. Aquinass insistence on the light of glory (lumen gloriae) needed for the beatic vision is challenged by Scotus as a diminishment of the natural powers of the human person. When he presents and defends the key role of intuitive cognition, Scotus notes that it follows from the natural constitution of the human person as created by God. It was known to Jesus and thus belongs to human nature. With his Franciscan insight of viewing the person as imago Christi (a perspective shared by Bonaventure), Scotus does not hesitate to attribute to the human person any perfection that does not contradict Scripture or right reasoning. See Scotus for Dunces: An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2003). Both his position on the Incarnation and Immaculate Conception were held by Scotuss teacher, William of Ware. See Allan B. Wolter, Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus, in Allan B. Wolter and Marilyn McCord Adams, eds., The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 148162. Did Scotus Modify His Position on the Relationship of the Intellect and the Will? Recherches de Thologie et Philosophie Mdivales, Vol. 69 no. 1 (2002), pp. 88116. An English version of this text can be found in Duns Scotus, Metaphysician, translated and edited by William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1995), pp. 108133. Ordinatio I, d. 8, q. 3, n. 137 (ed. Vat. 4: 221222). Ordinatio I, d. 8, q. 3, nn. 137142 (ed. Vat. 4: 221224). Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1946), pp. 2527.

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005