Per Caritatem

[Part II]

In this section Turner engages Scotus’s critique of Henry of Ghent’s teaching on analogy and claims contra Richard Cross that Henry’s doctrine of analogy must be distinguished from St. Thomas’s.  Moreover, according to Turner, though it is the case that Scotus shows Henry’s position to be seriously flawed and even incoherent, St. Thomas’s doctrine of analogy does not so easily fall when hit with Scotus’ barrage of arguments.  As Turner reminds us, Scotus’s insistence that being must be predicated univocally of God and creatures was fueled by his belief that “on no other account could the possibility of the natural knowledge of God be justified” (p. 136).   With this in mind, Turner then proceeds to unpack Henry’s teaching on analogy in order to highlight the problems that Scotus unearthed in Henry’s position.   On Henry’s account, all predicates predicated of God and creatures are predicated analogically.  Furthermore, and here the problems begin to emerge,

[f]or any predicate predicated analogically of God and creatures, there are two, as he calls them, ‘irreducible’ concepts; that is to say, two concepts neither of which is capable of further reduction to any simpler concept, one of which is predicated of God, the other of creatures (p. 138).

For example, if I say, “God is good” and “Olga is good,” the predicate “is good” contains two diverse, irreducible concepts which, on the one hand, given their irreducibility “can have nothing in common with each other,” and yet, on the other hand, the two predicates are said to be like one another because that which is predicated of the creature is due to “divine creative causality” (p. 137).  God’s goodness, for example, being the cause of goodness in creatures.  If you press Henry’s position, as indeed Scotus does, it seems that we end up either with equivocity or univocity.  For example, if Henry’s two concepts are in fact irreducible, then how is this different from equivocity?  If they are in some way similar, is the similarity a point of univocal contact?  If so, then Scotus has won the day.  But what about Henry’s claim that the likeness between the two concepts is founded in divine causality?  Here presumably Henry would claim that “cause” is not predicated univocally or equivocally but must be predicated analogically.  However, if this is the case, then given Henry’s own logic, “there must be a simple concept of ‘cause’ predicated of God, and another simple concept of ‘cause’ predicated of creatures, neither reducible to the other, and linked through…what?” (p. 138).  Needless to say, Henry’s argument results in an infinite regress, and seems to prove Scotus’s claims rather well, viz., “either we cannot talk about God at all, or, if we can, some predicates must be predicable of God and of creatures univocally” (p. 138).  As we shall see in chapter nine, although Turner readily grants that Scotus does a fine job demolishing Henry’s position, Turner does not believe that Scotus’s criticisms apply to Thomas’s doctrine of analogy. 

Turner begins the next section by stating that for Scotus, “‘being (ens) is the proper object of the intellect and is predicated univocally of anything whatsoever.”  Turner goes on to say that when this proposition is taken together with another of Scotus’ unambiguous claims, viz., that “ens is not a genus and the logic of ens is not that of a genus [Ordinatio 1 d8 q1 a3, n. 108]” the result is incoherent, or rather incoherent to those operating within a Thomistic paradigm.   As Turner explains, “[f]or Thomas, univocity is defined in reference to genus; as we shall see, for Thomas a term is predicated univocally if, whether truly or falsely, it is predicated in accordance with its definition, and a definition is the conjunction of the genus and a differentia” (p. 139).  Although Turner, if I am reading him rightly, seems to find Scotus’ position confused, he does make clear that Scotus is not claiming that being is predicated of the infinite, which for Scotus can only refer to God, and the finite as genus is to species; yet, being is predicated univocally of both God and creatures.  Turner, however, does not seem to stress, as does much of the standard secondary literature on Scotus, that Scotus’s doctrine of univocity is a semantic doctrine that concerns the concept of being.[1] 

Here I wonder whether a more in depth engagement with Scotus’s teaching on (1) being as the primary adequate object of the intellect, as well as his (2) parsing of the quid/quale distinction, might further the conversation.  (In saying this, I am in no way claiming that I fully understand Scotus’s teachings on these topics, nor am I simply dismissing Turner’s arguments.  However, in my next post, I plan to present a brief summary of the two topics mentions above (1)-(2), with the hope that fruitful conversation will ensue. 

Notes

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[1] As Stephen Dumont observes, “it is worth stressing that the debate is over the univocity of the concept of being.  Both Henry and Scotus hold that being is not a single reality (res, realitas) common to God and creatures but two wholly diverse realitates proper to each. At issue is whether any concept which is positive and real, as opposed to a mere second intention, can be applied univocally to these two diverse realitates” (“The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century,” n. 6, p. 3).