Per Caritatem

In sharp contrast with a number of postmodern thinkers engaged in philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer believes that we still have something to learn not only from Hegel and Heidegger but from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas as well.  In fact, in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer spends several pages discussing the Christian doctrine of the verbum, seeking to mine certain truths from the tradition in order to formulate his own position on the intimate relationship between language and thought.  Though at this point in my study of Gadamer, I in no way understand the intricacies and implications of Gadamer’s analysis and appropriation of this aspect of Trinitarian theology, I do find the possibilities intriguing.  In one of his claims, for example, he compares the relation between the inner mental and thought as akin to the consubstantial relation between the Father and the Son (Truth and Method, 421).^[1] Here, as well as in several other passages in this section, Gadamer wants to stress the unity of (human) thought and language.  Just as the Father and the Son are of the same substance (hence, the unity part of the unity-in-diversity of the Trinity), so too language and human thought are essentially one; nonetheless, they can be distinguished.  Gadamer rejects any account that gives priority to thought and then conceives language as something “added later” and used as a mere “tool.” Rather, thought and language have a kind of originary unity.  This in no way means that all thought is thought in the same language.  Clearly, that isn’t the case.  But language is, as it were, thought’s voice, which is a polyphonic—that is, language comes in many varieties, but in all its varieties it works harmoniously with thought to make reality, which is intelligible in itself,  more intelligible for us (Gadamer, contra Habermas, is expressly not a linguistic constructivist!)

Though appreciative of Augustine’s contributions to the theory of the verbum, Gadamer seems to reject certain aspects of his account, particularly as applied to human thought and language.  For example, Gadamer says,

[t]he ‘language of reason’ is not a special language.  So, given that the bond to language cannot be superseded, what sense does it make to talk about an ‘inner word’ that is spoken, as it were, in the pure language of reason?  How does the word of reason (if we can translate ‘intellectus’ here by ‘reason’) prove itself a real ‘word,’ if it is not a word with a sound nor even the image of one, but that which is signified by a sign—i.e., what is meant and thought itself? (Truth and Method, 421).

Gadamer explicitly states that the “inner word” is not the Greek logos, “the dialogue that the soul conducts with itself.  On the contrary, the mere fact that logos is translated both by ratio and verbum indicates that the phenomenon of language is becoming more important in the Scholastic elaboration of Greek metaphysics than was the case with the Greeks themselves” (Truth and Method, 421-22).

Next, Gadamer turns to St. Thomas’s contribution to the theory of the verbum.  Thomas took the Christian doctrine based on the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, combined it with Aristotelianism,^[2] and more or less drops any talk of the variety of languages.  As Gadamer explains (and here I take him to be referring to St. Thomas’ doctrine of the verbum as applied analogously to humans):

For him the doctrine of the ‘inner word’ is the self-evident premise for investigating the connection between forma and verbum.  Nevertheless, even for Thomas logos and verbum do not completely coincide.  Certainly the word is not the event of utterance, this irrevocable handing over of one’s own thinking to another, but the word still has the ontological character of an event.  The inner word remains related to its possible utterance.  While it is being conceived by the intellect, the subject matter is at the same time ordered toward being uttered (similitude rei concepta in intellectu et ordinata ad manifestationem vel ad se vel ad alterum).  Thus the inner word is certainly not related to a particular language, nor does it have the character of vaguely imagined words that proceed from the memory; rather, it is the subject matter through to the end (forma excogitata).  Since a process of thinking through to the end is involved, we have to acknowledge a processual element in it.  It proceeds per modum egredientis.  It is not utterance but thought; however, what is achieved in this speaking to oneself is the perfection of thought.  So the inner word, by expressing thought, images the finiteness of our discursive understanding.  Because our understanding does not comprehend what it knows in one single inclusive glance, it must always draw what it thinks out of itself, and present it to itself as if in an inner dialogue with itself.  In this sense all thought is speaking to oneself (Truth and Method, 422).

What does he mean by the word still having the “ontological character of an event”?  I’m not exactly sure, but I take his point here to be that the inner word (whatever that is) has an ordering toward manifestation—as he says toward “utterance.”  The inner word in some sense has to be completed or formed, which is what (I think) he means by the processual character or the discursive nature of our thought.  If so, the natural question is, what then is the common ground of the analogy, since no temporality enters into the intertrinitarian relations?  To this Gadamer responds,

the successiveness characteristic of the discursiveness of human thought is not basically temporal in nature either.  When human thought passes from one thing to another—i.e., thinks first this thing and then that—it is still not just a series of one thought after another.  It does not think in a simple succession, first one thing and then another, which would mean that it would itself constantly change in the process.  If it thinks first of one thing and then of another, that means it knows what it is doing, and knows how to connect the one thing with the next.  Hence what is involved is not a temporal relation but a mental process, an emanation intellectualis” (Truth and Method, 423).

As Gadamer explains, Thomas, having grasped this processual character of human thought, employs a Neoplatonic concept to articulate both the “processual character of the inner word and the process of the Trinity” (Truth and Method, 423).  By drawing from Neoplatonic resources, Thomas is able to convey via emanation the idea of flowing out that does not involve a depletion of its source.  That is, just as the One is not lessened or deprived when it issues forth emanations, neither is the Father deprived when he generates the Son.    Gadamer then concludes his discussion of Thomas’ contribution to the verbum theory with a few final remarks about how the analogy (for Thomas) applies to human thought.  Similar to the way in which the Father is not depleted in the generation of the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity,

this is likewise true of the mental emergence that takes place in the process of [human] thought, speaking to oneself.  This kind of production is at the same time a total remaining within oneself.  If it can be said of the divine relationship between word [Son] and intellect [Father] that the word originates not partially but wholly (totaliter) in the intellect, then it is true also that one [human] word originates totaliter from another—i.e., has its origin in the mind—like the deduction of a conclusion from the premises (ut conclusion ex principiis).  Thus the process and emergence of thought is not a process of change (motus), not a transition from potentiality into action, but an emergence ut actus ex actu.  The word is not formed only after the act of knowledge itself.  Thus the word is simultaneous with this forming (formatio) of the intellect (Truth and Method, 423-24).

Thomas seems to capture the relation of logical dependence that obtains between the Word (Second Person of the Trinity prior to His incarnation) and the Father.  That is, the Son depends upon the Father in a way analogous to how a necessary conclusion depends on the necessary axioms from which it is logically deduced.  In both cases, the processual character or what follows logically is not a temporal “movement.”

However, Thomas’ account doesn’t seem to explain what is most relevant to Gadamer’s inquiry into human understanding and the relations between (diverse natural) language and thought. For example, the relation between any human concept and the multiple discursive and interpretive practices in which the concept is applied is not purely logical.  Just because Ivan grasps the concept “tree,” nothing logically follows as to how he will apply it or what natural language he will use in his discourse about trees in a given context.  In short, once we turn to actual dialogue and application of concepts as expressed in natural languages, we encounter a great deal of plurality and variability that comes into play.  In contrast, the procession of the Word is unitary, eternal and necessary.   Toward the end of Truth and Method, Gadamer returns to some of the themes discussed in this section and further articulates his understanding of the relation between language and thought and language and reality, thus, addressing certain areas where Thomas’ account either falls short or is simply silent. Hopefully, I’ll have time to post more on that and other related items in the near future.

Notes

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^[1] Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004.  Truth and Method, 2nd ed. trans. and rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall.  New York:  Continuum.    All citations from Truth and Method are taken from this edition.

^[2] Cf.  Commentarium in Johannem, ch. 1, titled De differentia verbi divini et humani, and the difficult and important opusculum, compiled from genuine texts by Thomas, called De natura verbi intellectus.  [Gadamer draws on the latter work in this section of Truth and Method].

Commentary on Wilkins’s Essay
By Jonathan McIntosh,
Fellow of Humanities, New Saint Andrews College

In “Henry of Ghent and the Waning of the Divine Light,” Shane Wilkins presents Ghent’s epistemology as an alternative to St. Thomas’s thirteenth-century synthesis of Aristotelian naturalism and Augustinian supernaturalism. Being more familiar with Aquinas’ ideas than I am with Ghent’s, I would like to spend this commentary developing briefly a point that Wilkins makes in regard to Aquinas, in the hope that it will encourage further discussion of the similarities and differences between these two great thinkers.

Wilkins notes that, his Aristotelianism notwithstanding, Aquinas still “tried to make a little room for illumination by identifying God’s gift of divine light with his bestowing the soul with the agent intellect.” To this end Wilkins cites a passage from Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Truth in which the latter likens the agency of the agent intellect (whereby the intelligible form of a sensible object is abstracted from the imagination) to that of a “light.” As Thomas presents it here, this light, far from it being an unmediated, supernatural gift occasioned by the cooperative work of the senses and imagination, is instead said to be imparted to the agent intellect “at the start,” for in this light is “mediated” the universal concepts by which we have “a prior cognition” of those things experienced through the senses. In the passage cited, Thomas concludes with what appears to be an allusion to Plato’s famous argument in the Meno dialogue that in the act of knowing we are really “recollecting” what we already knew: “In this connection there is truth in the view that the things we learn, we already had knowledge of.” In his commentary on Thomas’s passage, finally, Wilkins makes the point that if this “constitutes Thomas endorsing illuminationism, it is clear that the theory is present in a sense very much restricted from the one which Augustine gave it.” The chief difference Wilkins notes is that, whereas illumination for Augustine and early Franciscans was “an ongoing occurrence,” Thomas seems to limit the role of illumination to “‘the start’ of life.”

In what is perhaps Thomas’s most extended treatment of the themes of divine illumination, however, his Exposition of Boethius’s De Trinitate (EBT), I suggest we see a different picture emerging. For as Thomas expressly argues there, God is always the cause of the soul’s natural light, “not only of its coming into existence but of its existence itself. In this way, therefore, God is constantly at work in the mind, endowing it with its natural light and giving it direction. So the mind, as it goes about its work, does not lack the activity of the first cause” (EBT 1, 1, ad 6, Armand Maurer translation). On this understanding, knowledge would seem to be never truly divisible into purely natural and supernatural phases, but is always simultaneously a natural and supernatural event. As John Milbank has argued, in Thomas the “Augustinian and Neoplatonic construal of truth as inner illuminatio” is not so much pitted against Aristotelian naturalism as it has in fact undergone an “Aristotelian detour” and transformation “through the truth embodied in finite creatures and conveyed to us only via the senses” (Truth in Aquinas 23). If so, the question is raised as to whether Thomas might not in fact achieve an even greater integration of divine and natural “light” than Ghent (at least as Wilkins has represented him), inasmuch as the latter still views the knowing act as indeed in principle divisible into, on the one hand, a “thoroughly naturalistic” (as Wilkins has it) phase that is able to semi-autonomously grasp the “truth of a thing,” and on the other hand, a later, merely corroborative, supernatural phase that knows “the thing’s truth” in light of the divine exemplar. If so, is it any wonder that Ghent’s oil-and-water approach to uniting the mind’s natural powers of reason and God’s own power of illumination should have excited Scotus’s ire, and thus arguably helped produce an even more thorough-going Aristotelian naturalism floating within an even more extremely conceived theological voluntarism? Let the comments commence.

Did you know that your child’s first conceptions are the transcendental conceptions of being, one, and good?  According to Robert Pasnau (articulating St. Thomas’s position), these transcendental conceptions rather than food, mother, father, etc are the first conceptions of a child’s mind.  As Pasnau explains,

“all of these more obvious candidates for a child’s first conceptions will presuppose one or more of the above transcendental ideas.  When a child utters the word ‘mama,’ the child must be expressing the thought either of mama’s presence (being), or of the desire for mama’s presence (being + good).  And to have a thought about any determinate object requires the conception of a discrete entity (one).  All of this takes some sophistication to recognize, let alone articulate, but Aquinas is of course not claiming that infants actually recognize their basic conceptual framework.  The claim, instead, is that the framework must be there, unarticulated, as a precondition on all subsequent thought” (Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, p. 326).

I now feel completed affirmed with regard to a previous post.

In a sub-section entitled, “Thomas and ‘onto-theology’”, of chapter nine of Denys Turner’s book, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, Turner discusses possible ways that Thomas’ acceptance of a famous dictum by the Pseudo-Denys might be taken, and whether any of the interpretations can avoid falling into the error of onto-theology.  According to the Denys, “There is no kind of thing that God is.”  One way of interpreting this statement is that God’s existence is unspecified.  This would then suggest that the name “God” means existence in general, that is, existence of no particular kind.  As Turner explains, this reading might then be taken in two possible ways.  The first way would land one in pantheism, as the name “God” would simply name the “overarching category of ‘being’ of which all other beings other than God are instances” (p. 187).  In this picture, it follows that creatures are just instances of God; hence, onto-theology is unavoidable.  The second possibility would likewise be guilty of onto-theology, as here both God and creatures are instantiations of being in general.  Thomas, however, rejects these options and insists both that God is ipsum esse subsistens (and hence, not “any kind of thing”) and that this does not mean that the name “God” points us to an “empty category.”  Rather, as Turner puts it,

[t]hat we cannot form any ‘concept’ of God is due not to the divine vacuousness, but, on the contrary, to the excessiveness of the divine plenitude.  That excessiveness eludes our language because we could not comprehend it except in a surplus description which utterly defeats our powers of unification under any conception, an excessiveness which is exactly captured in the full text of the Dionysian formula, ‘There is no kind of thing which God is, and there is no kind of thing which God is not.’  If ever there were a compendious statement of the relationship between the apophatic and the cataphatic in the pseudo-Deny’s writing, this is it:  for it says that God is beyond our comprehension not because we cannot say anything about God, but because we are compelled to say too much.  In short, for the pseudo-Denys, and for Thomas following him, the ‘apophatic’ consists in the excessus of the ‘cataphatic’ (pp. 187-188). 

Denys Turner identifies what he labels an “Augustinian principle” governing Milbank’s reading of St. Thomas-a principle that Turner believes leads Milbank astray in his interpretation of Aquinas’ five ways.  According to Turner, Milbank sees the Summa Theologiae as reflecting Thomas’ shift to a more mature theological strategy in comparison to the more overtly philosophical approach of the Summa Contra Gentiles. In the Summa Theologiae, Milbank discerns a reconfigured relation between philosophy and sacra doctrina that involves a more away from an Aristotelian to a more Augustinian strategy.  Thus, according to Milbank, in the Summa Theologiae “a posteriori demonstration from creatures plays a weak role … and there is in fact much more Augustinian a priori (so to speak) argument-in terms of ‘what must’ belong to perfection-than is usually allowed.”[1] Turner then spells out what he discerns as Milbank’s Augustinian and ultimately Platonic hermeneutical principle with regard to Thomas, as well as the some of the implications of Milbank’s interpretation in relation to Thomas’s, as it were, “argument” strategy in the five ways. 

If we are to know the most perfect good ‘to be’, there must exist, prior to any theological expansion of the radical unknowableness of God into an account of the divine attributes, ‘a certain preontological insistence of the ideal’, so that we can respond to it; respond, that is to ‘an as it were a priori vision of the good’ [Milbank, "Intensities," p. 455].  But since Thomas explicitly prohibits any a priori philosophical theology which, in the manner of Anselm’s Proslogion argument, would purport to prove the necessary existence of the highest perfection from that perfection’s being the highest, there is no argument which by itself can get you to that a priori vision-indeed, it could not have the character of the a priori if it was argument from creatures which got you there-and so ‘the only thing that authenticates perfection must be some sort of experience of it actuality’ [Ibid., p. 456].  Moreover, such an experience of ‘highest perfection’ must be presupposed even to Thomas’s a posteriori proofs of the existence of God [Ibid., pp. 459-460].[2]

In light of the fact that if this read is correct, it would seem to make Thomas guilty of a rather elementary logical error, viz., the fallacy of petitio principii, Milbank opts for the conclusion that Thomas was not presenting his arguments in the five ways as formally valid proofs for God’s existence. 

Turner, not surprisingly, thinks that Milbank’s reading of Thomas is seriously flawed.  First of all, Turner directs us to Thomas’ fourth way and emphasizes that Thomas did not claim that we have knowledge of degrees of goodness in finite things only because we already possess knowledge of perfect goodness, viz., the goodness which is God.  Turner also denies that Thomas, unlike Anselm, Bonaventure, Descartes and Augustine, holds the following proposition to be true:  “we can perceive relative degrees of a quality only if we have prior knowledge of what would count as the maximal degree of it.”[3] Rather, Thomas presents his fourth way as an attempt to argue for the existence of some maximal or supreme goodness because we meet with varying degrees of goodness in the things of our experience.  According to Turner, even if one rejects the inferential validity of Thomas’ fourth way, “the argument is clearly presented as an inference, moreover to a cause, ‘which we call God.’”[4]  Secondly, Turner fundamentally disagrees with Milbank’s claim that to engage in natural theology, that is, to attempt to offer logically valid proofs for God’s existence necessarily involves one in some form of “Scotist onto-theology.”  In fact, Turner’s main purpose in writing this book is to argue that “there are reasons of faith why in principle the existence of God should be thought rationally demonstrable and that it is worthwhile revisiting the theology of Thomas Aquinas to see why this is so.”[5]  Turner goes on to point out that Milbank misreads Thomas as claiming that inferential validity requires a univocity of terms.  According to Turner, Milbank thus bases his claim of the impossibility of scientific demonstration of God’s existence on a Scotist principle that Thomas himself never accepted.  Both Thomas and Scotus agreed that inferential validity rules out the use of equivocal terms, but Thomas did not conclude with Scotus that analogical terms could not yield a valid inference.  

Turner closes the section with the claim that Milbank’s objection to logically valid proofs for the existence of God “appears to rest on the supposition that if transgeneric demonstration is invalid, then an inference which purported to transgress the boundary between any created genus and God, who is beyond every genus, must by at least the same token be invalid” (p. 201).  This, however, according to Turner is a non sequitur.  As Turner explains,

To suppose without more ado that because an inference is invalid by the fallacy of equivocation if it crosses from one genus to another it must be at least as invalid if it crosses from generic being to God, who is beyond every genus, is to suppose, without more ado, that the gap to be crossed between one genus and another and the gap to be crossed between generic being and God are logically the same kinds of gap, only-one supposes-‘bigger’ in the latter case (p. 201). 

In other words, to assume that these gaps are logically the same kinds of gaps is to place God and creation on the same scale-it is just a bigger gap that must be crossed with regard to God and creation than the gap between one genus to another. 

Turner then adds that this non sequitur is significant because it shows that Milbank’s critique is operating on a Scotist assumption.  Neither Thomas nor Scotus nor Milbank hold that God belongs to a genus, yet, Turner says, “though Scotus, unlike Milbank and Thomas, so construes the ‘gap’ between God and creatures as to be logically of the same kind as that between one genus and another, Milbank, like Scotus and unlike Thomas, holds that inference could cross the gap between creatures and God only if that gap fell univocally within a common genus” (p. 201). 

I see Turner’s point; however, I am still not completely convinced that Scotus is really guilty of viewing these “gaps” as being of the same logical status.  After all, Scotus’ definition of the infinite is, “What I call ‘infinite’ is what excels any actual or possible finite being to a degree beyond any determinate measure you take or could take.”[6]  Couldn’t this be read as suggesting that for Scotus, the difference between God and creation is incommensurable?  

Notes

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[1] Milbank, “Intensitites,” Modern Theology 15.4, October 1999, p. 455, as quoted in Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, p. 196. [2] Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, p. 196. [3] Ibid., p. 198. [4] Ibid., p. 198. [5] This quote is taken from the opening page of the book which has no page number. [6] Wolter and Frank. Duns Scotus Metaphysician, p. 59.  As found in Reportatio IA in the “reply to the third question”. 

[I recommend reading part III or you might find yourself wondering what this post has to do with Denys Turner].

By “primary adequate object” (PAO), Scotus means that our intellect is proportionate to and commensurate with the object in question (being) and has the ability to actualize the potencies involved.  Being as being as the PAO is understood as “primary” in two senses:  (1) in regard to commonnesss, i.e., commonness in predication and (2) in regard to virtuality.  Neither of these primacies, if taken in isolation, would be sufficient;  however, the two combined cover the entire realm of that which can be known (for us).[1]  At least one important aspect that Scotus wants to emphasize in his teaching is that in knowing the PAO, which for humans is being (ens), the concept pertains to all other things that one would know within the range of our cognitive faculties. In other words, for us, in all that we know-whether a tree, a human being, or God-we also come to know the concept of being; hence, the commonness of the concept.  As Peter King puts it, Scotus wants to show that the concept of being is “‘adequate’ in the sense that it is univocally predicable in quid of whatever the intellect can grasp.”[2]  This does not mean, however, that Scotus believes that being is predicable quidditatively of either ultimate differences or proper attributes.

This brings us to Scotus’s distinction between quid (the “what”) and quale (the “how”).  According to Scotus, the concept of being or ens is an irreducibly simple quid.  Irreducibly simple qualia or ultimate differentiae constitute a range and are properties.  Examples of ultimate differentiae include:  (1) the transcendental attributes one, true, good (which are coextensive with ens); (2) “thisness” or haecceitas, which is an individuating difference; (3) ultimate specific differences which give us particular kinds but not a genus; (4) primary difference pairs (e.g., finite/infinite, contingent/necessary, etc.); and (5) pure perfections (e.g., life, wisdom, will, etc.).  In sum, we might say that ens is a quidditative concept that speaks to the “what is it” question, whereas the qualia or ultimate differentiae encompass a wide range of notions and address how something is.  We arrive at ens (as a quidditatively simple concept) and the ultimate differences at the end of a process of resolution. 

As King explains, an ultimate differentia is that which itself does not have a differentia and which cannot be further resolved.[3]  In the Ordinatio, Scotus gives us two proofs for his claim that being is not univocally predicated in quid of ultimate differences.[4]  The first states that in order to avoid an infinite regress, we must have some differences that themselves cannot be further resolved (de-composed) and consequently, of which being is not predicated univocally. Scotus’ second proof[5] states that we have concepts that are conceptual composites consisting in determining and determinable conceptual “components.”  The focus is of course on those concepts to which we arrive after the process of resolution that are irreducibly simple and which themselves display these non-resolvable concepts.  In other words, what we end up with is the purely determinable concept of being and the purely determining ultimate differences.[6]  Here Scotus displays his comfort with radical diversity, as he does not feel compelled to press ens and the ultimate qualia into a Parmenidean-like unity.[7]

In paragraph 134 (Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3), Scotus addresses proper attributes.  Concisely stated, “a proper attribute is a feature that includes its subject in its definition, though not conversely.”[8]  Here Scotus appeals to the analogy of explicating odd or even-in doing so, one must appeal to the concept of number, but not vice versa.  This indicates that a “proper attribute does not belong to the essence of its subject, even if it is conjoined to it necessarily.”  According to Scotus, what are often called the traditional transcendentals, viz., one, true, good, are proper attributes of being and are coextensive with being, yet each adds its own distinctive to the concept of being that is not being itself; hence, being is not predicated quidditatively (but rather in quale) of its proper attributes.[9]

Now that we have mapped out the quid/quale distinction, we return to the idea of the primacy of commonness.  What is characteristic of genera, species, individuals, the essential parts of each, and even uncreated being (God) is that each is a res, and each will give us (at the end of the process of resolution) the irreducible notion of being.[10]  This is not to say that in the order of ontology, we are dealing with the same being-as if we have a continuum of being and God is merely the supreme being at the top and creatures are somewhere in the middle.  Scotus time and again distinguishes between uncreated being (God or infinite being) and created being (all other beings)-a point that Turner readily acknowledges-and specifically claims that he is dealing with the concept of being.[11]  When Scotus speaks of commonness, he is pointing to the fact that to each of these concrete beings, ens is not repugnant.  So we have uncreated being, then we have created beings which are composites of some sort; however, the ens that we obtain at the end of the resolution process is a subject of which we can make predications and about which we form propositions.  It is crucial here to note that ens does not exist except as that which is determinable as infinite or finite.[12]  The ultimate differences then qualify or determine being-they are not themselves forms of being; yet, they are not nothing.  Stated slightly differently, the qualia (as determining elements) inhere in a subject or ens which is determinable.  Because the ultimate qualia are not themselves subjects but are as it were attached to a subject, they are not definable.[13] 

As we mentioned above, according to Scotus, the primacy of common predication does not apply to ultimate differences or to proper attributes.[14]  Hence, in order to cover the full range of knowability, he must introduce the primacy of virtuality.[15]  In light of the fact that being is not predicated in quid of the ultimate differences or proper attributes, yet these inhere in a subject that is definable and to which something can be essentially predicated, the primacy of virtuality provides a way for these quasi-definitions to be accounted for.  Here we should keep in mind that Scotus’ concept of being is a very thin concept-the ultimate differences and proper attributes are not deducible from Scotus’ (irreducibly simple) concept of being.  As we recall, for Scotus, one can think about being and be ignorant or indifferent as to whether, e.g., being is finite or infinite.   Here Frank and Wolter provide a helpful explanation, bringing together a number of things discussed up to this point.

It is the concrete objects or physical entities-such as man, God, or Paul-or the composite concepts that represent such objects-namely, the generic, specific, or individual concepts-which are not irreducibly simple, that can be said to contain virtually these secondary intelligibles.  It is the concrete objects or physical entities to which our concepts refer that move or motivate the intellect, not only to form notions that can be said to contain being univocally but also to form concepts that express essential differences or attributes of quiddities.  Because being can be given a univocal meaning, it can retain that univocal meaning when said to be that which these ultimate qualia qualify.[16]

In sum, we might say that a subject is ultimately a quid-something of which one can ask, “what is it?”   The predicate either tells us what the subject is definitionally (e.g., a human being is a rational animal) or the predicate consists of qualia that do not reduce to a general or more specific quiddity.  Consequently, qualia do not speak to what something is, but how something is and thus are called denominating terms.[17]  In other words, for Scotus these fundamental qualities only exist in so far as they are qualifications of something to which being belongs by a primacy of commonality. Thus, the ultimate differences have an existence only in virtue of the quidditative reality.  In Scotus’ final analysis, we have a transcendental notion of being, convertible transcendental attributes, ultimate differences, which include disjunctive transcendental pairs, and pure perfections etc. None of these are species of the genus “being.” Rather, they are primarily diverse and are irreducibly simple concepts distinct from the irreducibly simple, quidditative concept of ens.  Here again we should stress that it is incorrect (as Turner correctly emphasizes) to suggest that Scotus teaches that being is the ultimate univocal genus to which all things are ultimately reduced.  Clearly, his doctrine is not a kind of Parmenidean idea of the undifferentiated One that diffuses everything, nor is it form of pantheism.  Likewise, Scotus’ teaching is not that ultimate differences or attributes can somehow be deduced from the simple concept of being. Such an interpretation would make Scotus’ concept of being as it too thick.  Scotus, in sharp distinction from any Parmenidean-inspired anxiety arising from the radical (irreducible) reality of qualia, is quite at home with the diversity that results from this irreducibility.  

Unfortunately, I have to end this series with this post, as classes begin next week.  I have not yet finished Turner’s book, but I must say that I have greatly enjoyed his book up to this point, particularly his chapters on the sacramental shape of reason and his comparison of St. Thomas and Meister Eckhart.  Perhaps, during Spring Break I will have some time to re-visit these subjects and to finish Turner’s book.  

Notes

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[1] Cf. Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 137. [2] King, “Scotus on Metaphysics,” p. 19. [3] Ibid., p. 19. 

[4] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 132 [p. 575].

[5] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 133 [pp. 575-576].

[6] King, “Scotus on Metaphysics,” pp. 19-20. 

[7] Perhaps here one might suggest that contra Radical Orthodoxy’s critique of Scotus’ doctrine of univocity as an all-encompassing category, Scotus in fact allows for a unity-in-diversity in the created order that reflect the unity-in-diversity of the Triune God. 

[8] Ibid., p. 20. 

[9] Ibid., p. 20.

[10] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 137 [p. 576].

[11] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 137 [p. 576].  As Thomas Williams states, “[t]he doctrine of univocity is a semantic doctrine.” (“The Doctrine of Univocity is True and Salutary,” p. 576).

[12] Concisely stated, “[b]eing, predicated in quid and as a noun, is regarded by the Scholastics as the first and fundamental concept in the essence of any real thing; it is the ultimate subject capable of existing outside the mind or imagination, the ultimate quid.  It does not express the whole essence or entity of that of which it is predicated; rather, it only expresses the ultimate determinable and common element to be found in anything or any notion that is capable of being resolved into several simpler elements” (William A. Frank and Alan B. Wolter. Duns Scotus Metaphysician, p. 160). 

[13] See Frank and Wolter for a detailed discussion of Scotus’ argument here.  Duns Scotus Metaphysician, pp. 162-163.

[14] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 131 [p. 575].

[15] “All attributes of being are included in being, and are included virtually in what is inferior to it.  Therefore, those to which being is not definitionally univocal are included in those to which it is thus univocal. And so it is obvious that being has the primacy of commonness to the primary intelligibles, that is, to the definitional concepts of genera, species, individuals, and the essential parts of all these, as well as to uncreated being.  And it has the primacy or virtuality to intelligibles included in these primary intelligibles, that is, to the qualificative concepts of the ultimate differentiae and its own attributes” Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 137 [p. 576].

[16] William A. Frank and Alan B. Wolter. Duns Scotus Metaphysician, pp. 163-164.

[17] Ordinata I, dist. 3, q. 3, n. 150 [p. 577].