I’m a bit(!) out of my depth here, but I simply do not venerate rationality. I like the image that Lewis used in “The Pilgrim’s Regress”, where Reason, a mounted and armed lady on a horse, spoke to the traveller, and upon him questioning her, told him that she cannot tell him anything other but what is already in his mind.

Or as Pascal put it – the very height of reason is that there is a limit to reason.

So, given these insights, I would say that completeness is reached when reason lives within its limits. Attempts at transending of these limits yields error.

So maybe my statement was badly worded – my apologies. I was more moaning at the common assumption (not yours) that rationality is the acumen of humanity. In this it would appear that Scotus is a help.

Your illustration on seems to expand an undeniable ethical claim into the ontological realm. Our ability to see a great ethical difference between two humans is taken as a sign of an underlying ontological divide.

Isn’t that just the mistake that is made in “evil uses” like Hitler’s?

In other words, Mother Theresa was certainly more of a person than was Hitler, and as such, she had a more perfect being, but can we really say that her being was more real? The conflation of the ontological and the ethical (at least in terms of human judgment) scares me.

But, I may just be reflecting a “look of shock”!

I’d rather apply the “degrees of perfection” notion (in the ontological sense) at the level of species rather than individuals.

When I make the claim during a lecture that some people are better than others, my students invariably look at me with shock (as well they should, given the evil uses to which those words have been put). I then present Mother Theresa and Hitler to them, and the looks of shock turn to looks of comprehension.

I have to start from such an example to explain Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine’s view of the universe. It’s the most effective way I know of beginning to convince them that talk of “degrees of perfection in being” might actually make sense. In other words, I think they buy the claim that since Mother Theresa was a better person than Hitler, she was “more of a person,” more of what a person should be.

I think you have it right. some of the comments were making it look as if there were God (infinite) and an infinite series of creatures leading up to him (so, the universitas entium as a second infinite being). But obviously Scotus doesn’ think that.

One might qualify the ‘infinite’ gap, as being bridged by a conceptual univocity (but I realize that’s not the point of the post or comments). Otherwise I think you’re spot on.

I take Scotus’ position to be something along the lines of the following: Unlike a situation in which you have beings/entities that are “measurable” by some finite measure, when you get to the actual infinite (viz. God) you have that which exceeds them all by a non-finite degree. Hence, the idea that being is a perfection which is open to (finite) degrees of perfection, but between the (speaking more theologically) Uncreated and the created the difference is infinite. Is this correct or would you explicate/nuance it differently?

Cynthia

Thanks for your helpful comment. Would you say that the key disjunctive pair then is infinite/finite (where the actual or intensive infinite applies only to God and hence between God and creatures there is an un-measurable so to speak gap)?

Best wishes,
Cynthia

p.s. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Might I say that it seems to me that perhaps Scotus could appeal to the priority that the univocal concept of being has with respect to God and creatures. He could then apply his understanding of disjunctive transcendentals in coming to terms with perfection. Just a thought.

Good luck on your presentation, Cynthia. I’ve sent a few prayers your way.

All the best,
Victor

I appreciate Scotus’ notion of perfection. I feel more at home with it than with the more “maximal” notion of perfection that I tend to associate with Hellenistic thinking. To say that perfection is that which lies outside the boundaries of our imagination (much less our ability to attain) is to respect God’s beyond-ness without presuming to impose a precise criterion on him. At the very least, this would avoid the silly questions about really heavy rocks that God can’t lift, etc.

Would the “degrees of perfection” notion leave room for a proposal akin to Moltmann’s? Could this validate the suggestion that God isn’t perfectly at home until his Sabbath is realized in creation–insofar as Revelation 21-22 are the “seventh day of Genesis 2?

At any rate, thank you for a compelling post.

Go well,
Eric