William of Alnwick on intelligible being

Now that my beautifully rebound copy of De esse intelligibili has arrived, I have begun reading the first question. When time permits, I will attempt to blog on all the questions in the work (there are six questions). The first question is "utrum esse repraesentatum obiecti repraesentati sit idem realiter cum forma repraesentante, et est idem, utrum esse cognitum obiecti cogniti sit idem realiter cum actu cognoscendi." The Parisian players he is opposing, according to Ledoux, are James of Ascoli and Henry of Harclay. Henry of Ghent is probably just off-stage. William himself answers the twofold question yes and yes; the form (=intelligibile species) representing the object outside the mind is the same as the intelligibile being the object has in the mind. He does mention esse deminutum, which can be found in Scotus as well (Owens has an article on the topic)but I think it's being used in a different sense; Idon't recall Scotus positing it as a sort of being midway between real being and being of reason, which is the position William is attacking. Ledoux refers us to Ord. I d. 36 (I don't have my books handy so I can't follow up). The language does sound a bit like that of the formal distinction, as his opponents apparently think there is some distinction between the form representing and the representative being (albeit an intentional one) that holds prior to the operation of the intellect, human or divine.

I'll post a quote here on the different sorts of being that he attributes to his opponents, and his own opinion later.

"Esse reale est illud quod convenit rei ut existit formaliter et in natura propria et tale esse non convenit nisi singulari vel ei quod habet esse in singulari, quia solum singulare existit in natura propria per se et primo; universalia autem non existunt nisi ut habent esse in singularibus de quo esse intelligitur illud Philosophi in Praedicamentis, 'destructis primis impossible est aliquod aliorum remanere.

Esse vero intentionale est illud quod convenit rei ut habet esse repraesentative sive esse repraesentatum in aliquo alio ente reali, et quia repraesentari in aliquo alio obiective indifferenter convenit tam universali quam singulari, ideo esse intentionale convenit tam universali quam singulari, ideo esse intelligibile non magis appropriat sibi esse universale quam singulare nec e converso, et tale esse intentionale est debilius esse reali et ideo semper fundatur in ipso licet obiective.

Esse vero rationis convenit rei ut habet esse conceptus in sola consideratione intellectus operantis et tale cum sit esse diminutum, semper praesupponit alterum duorum praecedentium.

Dicunt igitur quod esse intentionale non est esse reale, quia potest convenire rei non existenti in natura propria, nec etiam esset esse rationis quia enti rationis repugnat existere in re; ei autem quod habet esse repraesentatum in aliquo et esse obiectivum in anima non repugnat existere in re, ideo istud esse intentionale est medium, ut dicunt, inter esse reale et esse rationis. Consimiliter distinguunt de distinctione, quia sicut triplex est esse, ita triplex est distinctio consequens, scilicet realis, intentionalis et rationis."

Bad translation:

"Real being is that which befalls a thing as it exists formally and in its proper nature, and such being does not befall anything except a singular or that which has being in the singular, because only the singular exists in its proper nature per se and primarily. Universals, however, do not exist unless they have being in singulars, about which we should understand that statement of Aristotle that 'with the first things destroyed it is impossible for something of the others to remain.

Intentional being is that which befalls a thing as it has being representatively or to be represented in some other real being, and because to be represented in some other objectively is suited to both the universal and the singular indifferently, therefore intelligible being does not draw closer to universal being or singular being, and such intentional being is weaker than real being and therefore is always founded in it, although objectively.

Being of reason befalls a thing as it is a concept only in the consideration of an operating intellect and such being, since it is diminished, always presupposed one of the two preceding.

They say therefore, that intentional being is not real being, because it can befall a thing not existing in its proper nature, nor also is it a being of reason because it is repugnant to beings of reason to exist in reality; to that however which has representative being in something and objective being in the soul it is not repugnant to exist in reality, therefore that intentional being is medium, they say, between real being and being of reason. Likewise they distinguish about distinction, because just as there is a threefold being, so there is a threefold distinction consequent to it, namely, real, intentional, and rational.

Note on Charity

As is well known, for Scotus acts of intellection are caused by to essentially-ordered co-causes. Initially, I had thought that these co-causes are the object and the activity of the agent intellect on the species. In today's reading of Ordinatio IV, he left out the object and was discussing the intelligible species' relation to the intellect as a partial cause of intellection. I don't have my books at hand (as I am on vacation), so I can't follow this up. In any case, amid a series of interesting remarks he said that the two partial causes can co-inhere, but that this is entirely accidental. As an example, he made the following remark about charity (Ord. IV d. 12 q. 3):

Et ita breviter dico, quod charitas in patria immediate causabit intellectionem intuitivam sui in intellectu, et tamen non erit praesens intellectui inhaerendo, sed voluntati, et tamen ista praesentia sufficit ad hoc quod ipsa, ut causa partialis, concurrat cum alia causa.

Bad translation: "And so I say briefly, that charity in heaven will cause immediately the intuitive intellection of itself in the intellect, and nevertheless will not be present to the intellect by inhering, but to the will, and that presence will suffice for this that this charity, as it is a partial cause, concurs with another cause."

Perhaps it is not all that surprising; it just makes a little more explicit some of his claims elsewhere that we have intuitive cognition of our own (interior, mental) acts.

Denys Turner on Univocity

I was rather encouraged by the chapter Turner devotes to univocity in his book Faith Reason and the Existence of God. The book as a whole seems to be the usual Thomist affair of showing Thomas is still relevant in the post-Modern intellectual marketplace. He questions the notion of onto-theology, and shows how Thomas isn't an onto-theologian. but he does devote an entire chapter to univocity, which I have to say is the best attempt yet by a Thomist to come to grips with the doctrine; Gilson's Jean Duns Scot, despite the discouraging introduction is also fairly good, being hampered by the fact that he devotes only three pages to Scotus's arguments.

One can find many things to quibble with in Turner, such as the near absence of footnotes, or the fact that the only scholar he seems to be familiar with is Richard Cross (probably due to the latter's criticism of the Cambridge Phantasists); not to bash Richard, but poor Turner seems to take Cross's incidental remarks about the general drift of univocity as gospel truth.

He also seems to suffer from the usual Thomist problem, that of being a Thomist without also being a medievalist. So like all Thomists, he assumes that what Thomas calls analogy in Aristotle is actually analogy, and not what Aristotle calls pros hen equivocity. There is no evidence of any knowledge of the ensuing tradition on analogy, equivocity and univocity as it is shaped by Boethius, the neo-Platonists, the arabs, or, and this is especially important for understanding both Thomas and Scotus, logical commentaries from the arts faculties.

I think this latter problem is what lies behind his claim that Scotus is involved in a vicious circle when he claims that the unity of an univocal concept is sufficient so that when it is both affirmed and denied of the same thing a contradiction results, and when he thinks that normal syllogistic reasoning assumes univocity to avoid fallacies of equivocation. Turner may think that one can have analogical syllogistic reasoning, which I think makes no sense in logic (based on what I have read in logical works); I don't think Thomas comes right out and makes the claim anyway. McInerny has written articles titled "analogy is a logical doctrine" which I have not read, but seem rather confused to me. But perhaps I am just guilty of reading too much logic. It may well be Scotus and Thomas are irreconcilable on this point. The point of all this being, I would think Scotus is only pointing out the obvious way in which logicians operate.

I was unclear if he grasped that univocity is for Scotus something that holds on the conceptual, not "real", metaphysical level, or that Scotus wasn't talking about analogy on the real level, which he simply accepts and moves on to something more interesting. I was also unclear why, and this always confuses me, the Scotistic univocal concept of being must be equated with Thomistic ESSE. All Thomists, all least since Gilson, do this and I don't know why. Turner is pretty clear later on in another chapter that Esse has no conceptual content. As he says p. 176: "Esse, therefore-not being the object of any concept-cannot be predicated univocally, for were it predicable univocally that could be in terms only of some same formal characteristic predicated of all things said to exist. That, essentially, is the mistake of Duns Scotus." Now, is it just that we have two incommensurate notions here? For I think Scotus would accept, and does accept due to his claim that being is the object of the intellect, the latter part of Turner's sentence. Perhaps our dear readers can instruct me on this one. I was also unclear if he grasped the "real community" issue correctly.

Unlike most non-Scotist scholars, he actually quotes some of Scotus's arguments at length, and exposits them fairly accurately. Naturally, he has to argue with them. He attacks the first argument, from certain and doubtful concepts, by coming up with a weird objection from Herny, though he changes the conditions in the middle. Basically, he starts out with two people seing a speck on the horizon and thinking about what it might be, but then he switches to the speck on the horizon and the dot in his eye that represents it. His conclusion is that if univocity is true, there would have to be some general sense that would embrace both the speck in his eye and the object, which would denote some property of "thisness" possessed in common by everything you can point to. I really can't tell if he's being ironic or not, because he hints that this is Henry's problem, and Scotus does posit individual differentia in his account of individuation, later called "haeceitas."

The other main objection he brings is against the part in the same first argument for univocity in which Scotus says that one can be in doubt as to the identity of the first principle but be certain that it is a being, which he thinks is true de facto from the pre-Socratics. But Turner casts the whole thing into a debate between Thomas and Scotus on idolotry, from the last few articles in summa I q.13. Thomas holds that when paynims use the word "God" of an idol they apparently do so analogically. Turner even makes it sound as if the idol itself is divine in an analogical sense to the use of the term "God." But he distorts Scotus into talking on the same level, as if he were concerned in this passage with the difference between and idolater and the true Christian believer regarding the Christian God. Scotus himself is only talking about the first principle. This isn't the same thing, and the fact that Turner puts words in Scotus's mouth is telling. In any case, he doesn't have a clear statement about who is right or wrong, they just say different things (perhaps a common theme among those Thomists who finally get around to reading Scotus).

That's all for now. all in all, though some bits could use some work, it was the best account I've seen so far. He actually read Scotus (kudos), and had some interesting things to say. Plus he rejected the Cambridge crowd's position in a gentlemanly fashion.

Bonaventure Against the Eternity of the World

As I promised Jonathan Prejean recently, here I post a lengthy excerpt from a several-year-old term paper, with very minor modifications. It no longer exists in electronic form and I had to retype all this: consequently I left out most of the references and only included the portion of the paper dealing with Bonaventure's discussion of the infinite and the possibility of an infinite past. Here goes:

St Bonaventure argues against the eternity of the world in II Sent. 1.1.1.2. First he claims

“that nothing can be added to the infinite. This is manifest per se, because everything that receives addition becomes greater, but nothing is greater than the infinite. But if the world is without beginning, it has lasted into infinity: therefore its duration cannot be added to.”

Since every day adds another revolution of the sun to the world’s duration, this duration cannot already be infinite.

St Thomas presents a basically identical argument in chapter 38 of his Summa Contra Gentiles, but then rejects it:

“There is nothing to prevent an addition to the infinite on the side on which it is finite. On the supposition that time is eternal, it must be infinite on the part of what went before, but finite on the part of what came after, for the present marks the end of the past.”

St Thomas’ assertion might be illustrated by imagining a number line, where 0 marks the present, the negative integers the past, and positive integers the potential future. The negative integers stretch backwards into infinity, but there is a last one, -1; then we come to the present. After this we will continue to move alone the number line into 1, 2, 3, etc. Everything after 0, the present we have picked out, is clearly finite, no matter how many times we add an integer; the infinity lies in the other direction. And our 0 can be taken anywhere along the line we like: there is always some finite number of integers afterwards that can be added to, with an infinity before.

St Bonaventure has heard this argument, but he thinks it doesn’t work. You can’t tell me, he says, that it is on the present side that the “more”, the addition is to be found. Every additional revolution, as soon as it happens, becomes the past and joins the supposed infinity of former revolutions; furthermore, the infinite number of past years would have to be multiplied by a twelve-times infinite number of past months. Therefore even on the side of the past you have an infinite, and something else more infinite, which is impossible.

The second argument Bonaventure proposes relies on the principle that the infinite cannot be ordered. “For every order flows from a principle to a mean; if therefore there is no first, there is no order,” and this applies both to the succession of heavenly revolutions and to the successive generation of animals in a species. St Thomas would reply by insisting that there is no real order to be found in per accidens efficient causes, but only in essentially ordered causes. For Thomas this is enough to invalidate the argument; to show why it is not so for Bonaventure would be to go further into the Seraphic Doctor’s metaphysics than time permits. Suffice it to say, along with Gilson, that for St Bonaventure

“every celestial revolution, instead of following indifferently an infinity of identical revolutions, coincides with the appearance of unique events . . . Every day, every hour even forms part of a series which is ruled by a certain order and of which Divine Providence knows the whole reason.”

(Gilson, The Philosophy of St Bonaventure, 174)

To insist on such a worldview at this point when arguing with Averroists or pure Aristotelians would probably seem philosophically indefensible to St Thomas, however much he might agree with it as a Christian; therefore in philosophy he is prepared to do without what to St Bonaventure is an essential but also wholly evident fact about the world. Nevertheless given the assumption that successive events in the universe are really ordered to each other, and not merely accidentally, St Thomas would also accept the argument (see Summa Theologiae Pars 1 art. 46 q. 2 ad 7.)

Bonaventure’s third argument is probably his most interesting and compelling. Like the first one, it examines the notion of an infinite succession of days or years for coherence, but is much more ingeniously constructed. I will give it in full and examine it at greater length than the others.

“It is impossible for the infinite to be passed through; but if the world has not begun, there have been infinite revolutions: therefore it was impossible to pass through them: therefore it was impossible to come up to this one. If you say that they have not all been passed through because there was no first, or even that they can be passed through in an infinite time, you will not escape this way. For I will ask you if some revolution infinitely preceeded today or not. If not: therefore all are finitely distant from this one, therefore they have a beginning. If some one is infinitely far away, I ask about the revolution immediately following that one, whether it is infinitely distant. If not: therefore neither is the first one, because there is a finite distance between the two. If [the second one] is infinitely distant, similarly I ask about the third and the fourth to infinity: therefore no one of them is more distant from today than another one: therefore one is not before the other: therefore they are all simultaneous.”

Let me bring back my illustrative number line of years. 2007 years have passed since the 0 moment, the now of the incarnation. The year before that we will call -1, and before that -2, and so forth. It is perfectly conceivable to extend the line to posit a year -1,285,397; this simply means that 1,285,397 years passed before the angel Gabriel came to Mary. But Bonaventure insists that if the world never began one has to posit a year –(infinity), requiring that an infinity of years passed before that moment. This he denies as impossible.

Thomas would insist that this argument is poorly framed. In Summe Theologiae Pars 1 art. 46 q. 2 ad 6, he says:

“A passing through (transitus) is always understood from term to term. But whatever past day is assigned, from that day to this one there was a finite number of days, which were able to be passed through. But the objection proceeds as though, having posited these extremes, there was an infinity in between.”

In other words, it doesn’t make sense to posit a year –(infinity) because the infinite doesn’t work that way. Pick any number you like and you can say that so many years passed before 0; but any such numer will be finite. Infinity is not a number at all. It simply means that there is always more beyond any point you assign.

Plainly St Bonaventure just doesn’t accept St Thomas’ principle that “even though the infinite does not exist at all if it is actual, it can exist successively” (from On the Eternity of the World Against the Averroists), or at least not in the same way. For him this is nothing more than an evasion. Perhaps what he has in mind can be clarified by adding a future arm to our number line. Until now I have only contemplated the past leading up to the present; I either assigned the past a negative number and labeled the present 0, or I assigned 0 to some point in the past and counted the finite number of years following it up to now. But I can project into the future and postulate that if today is 2007, there will be a 2008, and a 1,285,397. In fact I can postulate that there will be no final year but that the world will continue forever, that whatever number I choose there will be a corresponding future year, and more after that. In this sense we can say that the future is infinite, even though the world will never reach a single particular year that itself is infinitely distant from this one.

It seems that in St Thomas’ view the past and the future are the same in this respect, while in St Bonaventure’s view they are fundamentally different. Neither the past nor the future exists in the way that the present now does, since now they are not, but since time moves in a definite direction their nonexistence is not of the same kind, and from the vantage point of the present we cannot look indiscriminately either way. The future is in potency as not yet having happened, and this potency is infinite, because more can always happen. But the past is not in potency but in the state of already having happened. There is no potential for more past once the present has passed away, except by adding on to it from the future end of the line, converting potential future revolutions into actual present ones and the completed past ones. We speak of it in the perfect tense because, while not having simultaneous being with the present, nevertheless it has a kind of unalterable completion. It has the status of having been the present, and so every past now must have been passed through to come to the present now. In the imagination we can always extend the future arm of the number line further and say that there can always be more years. But this is a different operation from extending the past arm backwards and saying that there can always have been more years. If future years are like promissary notes, past years are like debts which have already been paid to reach the free and clear state of the present. Thus Bonaventure insists that it makes no sense to wave one’s hand at an infinitely and indefinitely distant past without relating it to the present. Either some given past year has an infinite distance from the present, or it doesn’t. If not, then the past is finite. But if it does, then since that infinite distance cannot have been traversed, it must really be a kind of simultaneous eternity with no real relation to the present at all, a year which was never passed through to reach the present, a year that the world now cannot count as having once experienced as part of its journey to reach the present now. We have then the finite number of years that the world has passed through, and the unreachable infinity of time somehow lying behind them which we can never reach by counting back, and which were never passed through on the way forward. In other words, we have a finite past which is really past, and an infinite one which is not past. Bonaventure will agree with Thomas that a passing through requires going from term to term; but he rejects as contradictory the notion of apst which, not having been passed through, was never a present, and thus cannot serve as a term marking the distance between then and now.

If Bonaventure rejects Thomas’ principle that, while there cannot be a simultaneous infinite in act, there can be a successive one, it is because he thinks that this still implies the admission that there can be an actual infinite of some sort or other. Stretching it out in time does not eradicate its actual character; but the infinite can only exist potentially. Bonaventure draws out this implication in his fourth and fifth objections. . . .

What Can Men Do Against Such Reckless Hate?

"And this aspect of modern realism (its ability to discard God when describing the real) owes its origin to developments in theology at the end of the thirteenth century, when those who attempted to argue for knowledge of God did so by attempting to discern the nature of God from the nature of the ontic world. This 'natural theology' was, in effect, first constituted by Duns Scotus who, when wishing to give to human cognition the possiblility of knowing God, elevated a neutral account of being above the distinction between the Creator and his creatures, allowing both God and finite beings to share in this being in due proportion, since for Scotus rationality required that the same substance be shared by both God and his creatures if each were to know the other."

-Philip Blond, Radical Orthodoxy, 232-33.

"...whereas voluntarist or secular justice is based upon the private appropriation of property, theological justice is grounded in assimilation to that body of Christ which one imbibes..."

-Milbank, Pickstock, Ward, "Introduction" in Radical Orthodoxy, 15.

“Two theses will be argued in this section. The first is that for Scotus there is no real distinction in a creature, nor in God. That much is incontrovertible, but this is extended to suggest that there is in effect, for Scotus, no real distinction between God and creatures. So the second thesis is that there is, then, effectively for Scotus, only a formal distinction between God and creatures. We can think a difference, so there is one, but this difference is but a formality.”

-Conor Cunningham, Geneology of Nihilism, 27.

"Genealogy of Nihilism rereads Wesern history in the light of nihilistic logic, which pervades two millennia of Western thought and is coming to fruition in our present age in a virulently dangerous manner. From Parmenides to Alain Badiou, via Plotinus, Avicenna, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, nothingness can be witnessed in development, with devastating consequences for the way we live. As a dualistic logic, nihilism has come to ground existence not in life but in the absences beyond it. We who are, are no longer the living, but rather the living dead; in the death-wielding modern approach to knowledge, we are all reduced to cadavers.”

-Conor Cunningam, ibid., flyleaf.

“The outcome of the univocal thesis of Scotus was a twofold abandonment and scission of the inter-relation of God and creation. The univocal thesis allowed the world to abandon God, as one could now wholly dispense with God by explaining the world in terms of this higher ground whatever it might be.”

-Phillip Blond, Radical Orthodoxy, 221.

“This elevation of worldly univocal being above the distinction between God and his creatures marks the time when theology itself became idolatrous. For Scotus disregarded what Aquinas had already warned him against – that nothing can be predicated univocally of God and other things. [...] For theology, therefore, the very possibility of any secular realism derives from the Scotist belief that the ground of both God and created objects is the same.”

-ibid. 233.

“For Scotus...the possibility of divine intervention, compatible with his notion that actuality can always and unpredictably be superseded by any imaginable possibility, forces him to distrust the traditional more ontological account of truth.”

-Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, 130.

-“In the case the case of God, univocity of Being and the formal distinction apply also to His attributes, in such a way that God can possess formally distinct – rather than really identical (and distinguished only from our perspective) – attributes without losing anything of His simplicity, which is grounded in the indeterminacy of Being and the supremacy of divine will which unites the attributes as its own virtual powers.”

- Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, 125.

"In the wake of the axis fashioned, however unconsciously, by Henry of Ghent, Scotus and Ockham, that which exists was taken outside the divine essence. Consequently, that which was expelled became nothing, a nothing that allowed the invention of a priori realms, and tales of things called logical possibilities (a Scotist fantasy). It also generated a virulent synchronic contingency that led to a de-existentialised existence, as it became first essentialised, and then factualised. This in turn facilitated a methodological lateralisation, as non-existence settled alongside existence. What we find is that this expulsion of that which exists outside the divine essence permitted the emptying of existence of any inherent or, in a sense, 'natural' theology.

-Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism, 171

"In the end, it becomes illogical, both in philosophy and theology, to uphold the 'postmodern' against the 'modern' Scotus. In other words, if one cannot countenance Scotist ontotheology, one must also question a 'pure' philosophy concerned with a non-divine being, since this is ultimately grounded in univocity and the refusal of analogy."

-Catherine Pickstock, "Postmodern Scholasticism: Critique of Postmodern Univocity," 8.

"French historians waver between a reading of Scotus as surrendering Catholicism's mystical heart and as inaugurating a Pascalian charity."

-ibid.

Gilson on William of Alnwick

Here's a quote from Gilsons History of Christian Philosophy on William of Alnwick, Duns Scotus's secretary and socius. Gilson labels him an "independent Scotist" due to his diagreements with Scotus (He sides with Henry of Ghent on individuation, among other things). His De esse intelligibili is my next reading project, my leisure reading during exams (such as there can be any). Once I get it back from the bindery, that is.

"Among the original minds standing out in that group [I.e. early Scotists], was the Franciscan William of Alnwick (d. 1332), whose remarkable Questions on Intelligible Being have been published. It would be difficult to quote a more perfect specimen of dialectical discussion. At the end of the work, the question is literally exhausted. It is true that the reader is also. But at least he knows what to adhere to, and if he remians insensible to the technical perfection of such an intellectual style, one can only feel sorry for him. The problem discussed by Alnwick is that of the degree of reality one should attribute to the being of the object known, precisely insofar as it is only an object known in the mind. His conclusion is that, although Duns Scotus attributed a sort of relative being to the object of cognition (esse cognitum), no precise meaning can be found for that thesis. The fact of 'being known' does not imply, in the being that is known, any reality more distinct from it than the fact of representing Caesar implies in the stature of Caesar. On the side of the intellect, the being of a stone, considered as known by it, is none other than the being of the intellect that knows it. Applied ot the problem of divine Ideas, this conclusion leads William of Alnwick to deny that they have, in the divine understanding, a relative intelligibile being (esse secundum quid) which would be, if not created, at least produced."

St Bonaventure, Univocity, and Analogy

L’être désigne dans les créatures une perfection que n’est pas analogique, mais qui est celle d’un genre; il faut donc dire que la matière se retrouve, au sens propre du mot, dans tous les êtres concrets. C’est là, nous a-t-il semblé, un des points importants de l’argumentation de saint Bonaventure et qui nous servira à l’opposer tout à l’heure à celle de saint Thomas. Dans la philosophie bonaventurienne, l’être est sans doute une notion analogique, mais c’est seulement lorsqu’on considère la communauté qu’elle désigne de Dieu à la créature. A l’intérieur du domaine des créatures, elle redevient une notion univoque.

"Being designates [for St Bonaventure] a perfection in creatures which is not analogical, but which belongs to a genus; one must then say that matter in the proper sense of the word is found in all concrete beings. This is, it seems to us, one of the most important points in St Bonaventure's argument by which we may compare it to that of St Thomas. In Bonaventurian philosophy, being is without doubt an analogical concept, but this is only when one considers the community between God and creature which it designates. Within the domain of creatures, it becomes a univocal concept."

--Aimé Forest, La Structure métaphysique du concret selon Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 118.

Ss. Thomas and Bonaventure Compared

“St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas use in large part a common vocabulary and handle several philosophical themes common to the thirteenth century. But the meanings of many common terms and the understanding of particular themes are so different in the Bonaventurean and Thomistic syntheses that, as original compositions of philosophical doctrines, they really cannot be reduced fundamentally to a common frame of metaphysical principles. This fact is very evident in the different meanings of act and potency in the two syntheses . . .” For Thomas the former is being and the latter essence; for Bonaventure the former is the act of being given by form where the latter is the foundational existence given by matter. “These different uses of act and potency by the two theologians make their syntheses irreducible not only to a common frame of metaphysics, but also to a common ground in the metaphysical principles of Aristotle. Although the metaphysical insights of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas are expressed in Aristotelean terms, nevertheless, their personal insights are no more Aristotelean than the metaphysical insights of Aristotle himself are Platonic, and Aristotle expresses his personal insights in many Platonic terms. In our view, therefore, St. Thomas has not corrected a Neoplatonizing Aristoteleanism by deepening the epistemological and metaphysical bases of St. Bonaventure's theology. Though the Thomist reformation of philosophy was not a stage in the discovery of Aristotle by Latin theologians, the transformation acheived by St. Thomas was accomplished on the metaphysical level before it had its effect on the theological level of his thought. St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure approach the truth of the created universe, and of its dependence on God, from the two different bases on which they have built their philosophical edifices. Both theologians, in their philosophical reflexions, have transformed in their own way the Aristotelean principles of act and potency . . ."

--J.F. Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy, 882-883.

Heidegger and Scholasticism

I've been leafing through a book for my historiography paper, and came across the following quotes. It's from McGrath, The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy. The author is basically a thomist with Heideggarian sympathies. His section on Scotus is horribly inaccurate, but then, in post-modernism, accuracy isn't valued. I'll post on that another time. This is fairly self-explanatory.

"Heidegger's twenty-year polemic with Scholasticism can be summed up in the following three theses: (1) Scholasticism makes certainty (apodictic judgment/scientia) the proper mode of access to beings. This epistemological relation is theologically established in the Scholastic interpretation of divine creation as an act of judgment; (2) Scholasticism sets up world as product and delivers to modernity the conceptual paradigm it needs to get technology off the ground. That each of these accusations applies to most forms of philosophical theism should not be overlooked. Heidgger's polemic with Scholasticism is rooted in a more basic opposition to the notion of divine creation."

This Just In-Unicity of Substantial Form Condemned!

Well, according to Roger Marston. Here's a quote I came across in Gilson's history but haven't been able to track down the latin. This is a quote from one of Roger Marston's Quodlibets, reporting an incident that Gilson thinks happened around 1270. p. 417

"I was in Paris, and I heard it with my own bodily ears, at the inception of the Precentor of Peronne, before master Gerard of Abbeville, in the presence of brother Thomas Aquinas, of brother John of Peckham and of about twenty-four other doctors in sacred theology, when this opinion was solemnly excommunicated as contrary to the teaching of the Saints, particularly of Augsutine and Anselm, as was made manifest by the opposition."

Avicebron on the Vastness of the Intelligible World

Et omnino debes ut cum uolueris imaginari has substantias, et qualiter tua essentia est diffusa in illis et qualiter est comprehendens illas, ut erigas tuum intellectum ad ultimum intelligibile et ut purges eum et mundicifes ab omni sorde sensibilis et ut expedias illum a captiuitate naturae et ut accedas cum ui intelligentiae ad ultimum quod tibi possibile est apprehendere de certitudine substantiae intelligibilis, donec quasi denuderis a substantia sensibili et fias quasi ignarus eius. et tunc quasi includes totum mundum corporalem intra tuam essentiam et pones eum quasi in uno angulorum animae tuae; quia quando hoc feceris, tunc intelliges minoritatem sensibilis secundum magnitudinem intelligibilis.

"And when you want to imagine these [spiritual] substances, and how your essence is diffused in them and how it comprehends them, you ought to lift your intellect to the ultimate intelligible and purge it and purify it from every coarse sensible thing and loose it from the captivity of nature, and so that you may draw near with the power of intelligence to the ultimate thing which it is possible for you to apprehend of the certitude of intelligible substance, until as it were you may be stripped of every sensible substance and may be as it were unaware of them. And then as it were you will include the whole corporeal world within your own essence and will hold it to be as it were in one corner of your soul; for when you do this, then you will understand the littleness of the sensible world compared to the magnitude of the intelligible."

Avicebron, Fons vitae Tr. III.56.

Bridges on Petrus Thomae

Here's a quote, mostly for Michael, about Petrus Thomae. Not terribly flattering, perhaps. But probably worth editing (and besides; all his treatises are short which is good since I want some experience before jumping into, say Richard of Middleton or William of Ware)

Bridges on Petrus Thomae, from Identity and Distinction in Petrus Thomae OFM
p. v-vi:
“Petrus Thomae, as he emerges from oblivion, is seen to be within the shadow of Duns Scotus. The scope of his work, the brilliance of his mind both suffer by comparison. In relation to Scotus Petrus Thomae is a minor figure. Yet he takes on importance from the fact that he is an immediate successor of Scotus, one of the first links after Scotus in the chain of the Franciscan tradition in theology and philosophy. He reflects the doctrine of Scotus and at times contributes to a better understanding of the Subtle Doctor. But as the structure and design of the doctrine of Petrus Thomae is uncovered, it is found that his doctrinal edifice is more than a reproduction by less skilled hands of the architectural masterpiece that Scotus designed and executed. Masterpiece though Scotus’ work was, it nevertheless was not perfect and complete in every detail. No philosophy to date has been, nor, I think, will any philosophy in the course of human life and progress be perfect beyond perfecting. The scope of reality is too vast, the depths to be searched too profound, for any single mind to comprehend and expound completely and perfectly. But there are outstanding men who appear from time to time who open up new insights and push human understanding onward. John Duns Scotus was one such, to remain close to the man we propose to study. He not only reached new understanding and insight himself, but he inspired and directed his followers to new advances. Petrus Thomae was one of the first who launched out into original speculation under the inspiration of Duns Scotus.

There would appear to be two types of mind bent upon philosophy. One might be called the passive mind, which approaches the philosophy developed by another and expends its full capacity in understanding. The majority of a great philosoher’s disciples are endowed with this type of mind. The other type of mind has over and above this understanding the gift of insight, the active ability to advance beyond what it has learned from others. And this is most truly the philosophical mind. Petrus Thomae had some of this gift. He was not as richly endowed as Scotus; but he did have the ability not only to assimilate what Scotus taught him, whether personally or through his works, and not only to assay critically other philosohies and attakcs upon his own or his master’s position, but he had a certain amount of that philosophical insight, that active ability to go on where others had pointed but had not read.

The man this study presents, then, is not only a mirror of Scotistic philosophy; he is a philosopher in the fullest sense. This is not to say, however, that he is an outstanding philosopher. His gift is not of the order of a Scotus; that much is certain. But much more must be uncovered in the history of Franciscan thought before a final estimate of his true stature and importance can be made.

p. 174:
“Ordinarily Scotus is considered to have a style difficult of comprehension. Much of this difficulty comes from a technical terminology and a closeness of reasoning. Once this terminology is mastered it becomes easier to follow the line of reasoning. But even then thought always takes precedence over style. In comparsion to Scotus, it must be said that Peter often shows less clarity. It is true that this is not as readily perceived in the more carefully thought out works. But in the other works, even when paraphrasing the thought of Scotus there is no improvement. Of course one must remember that no critical edition of Peter’s work is available. Until such is available it will be impossible to judge how much of this difficulty is due to Peter and how much to successive scribes. But even after a critical editoin is published I believe that it will be evident that Scotus possessed the clearer, sharper, more penetrating mind; but that Peter, one of the first of his disciples, is far from the least of them.”

The Solemnity of Our Lord Christ the King

Rex tremendae maiestatis
qui salvandos salvas gratis,
salva me, fons pietatis

King of tremendous majesty
Who saves those to be saved for free,
Save me, fount of piety.

Not that it's my business casting judgment (I am after all a creatura judicanti responsura), but most of the changes to our Church Caledar made some decades back seem pointless or worse. Ordinary Time, anyone? I think there's an exception to be made, however, for today's feast. November being the month of meditation upon death, of prayer for the faithful dead and for hearing Requiems, as well as the end of the Liturgical year, ending it a celebration of the Crucified God's kingship over all creation seems eminently fitting. Send the year out with a bang, not a whimper! Not only that, but it provides an excellent transition into the next year and perhaps points out some often-overlooked points. Advent is, of course, the season of purification anticipating Christimas, but with Christmas being more and more hyped up every year, Advent's eschatological dimension seems more and more rarely noticed. Its function is not simply to help us spiritually recapitulate old Israel's waiting and longing for the Messiah's first advent, but also the heighten and make explicit our anticipation of the second. Today's Solemnity seems to tie together November's liturgical focus with December's, and help us to make our Advent not only an anticipation of Christmas, but also an anticipation of our own death, judgment, resurrection, and (hopefully) participation in Christ's kingship of the universe.

That's all my preaching for today. We can all get back to our liturgical griping now.

The Finitude of Trinitarian Persons

Now that I have finished two of my three major papers for the semester I have gone back to studying for exams. In the middle of a detailed series of questions on the nature of the status of the accidents in the Eucharist following the conversion (in which Scotus argues that inherence is not part of the essence of an accident, and that therefore accidents inhere only by a further addition of inherence, which leads to a twofold distinction of accidents into accidens intrinsecus adveniens and accidens extrinsecus adveniens), I came across the following quote in which the subtle doctor argues for that the Trinitarian persons are finite. This view of course as far as I can tell is the standard view; having come from an almost non-creedal (at least in the traditional sense of creed...they were quite fond of the 'no creed but the bible' line although they held numerous extra-biblical doctrines) branch of Christianity I found this fact quite surprising, but it does make sense once one thinks about it. The persons are finite in the sense that one is not the other; they themselves are the boundaries of the others.

Incidentally, In all this reading on the Eucharist I have gotten quite the dialectical experience. I started with Thomas. But in the Leonine edition the text of Thomas is accompanied by that of Cajetan's commentary, most of which is simply an attack on Scotus and Durandus. Moving to Scotus, however, one finds that his text is printed next to 16th or 17th century commentaries, who spend a lot of time attacking Cajetan and the Thomists. So it makes for exciting reading.

In any case, here is what Scotus says about the Trinity.

Ordinatio IV d. 12 q. 2 (Wadding XVII 574-5):

"...nulla enim perfectione formaliter infinita caret aliqua persona divina, quia tunc non esset simpliciter perfecta; sed quaelibet caret aliqua relatione originis; ergo nulla relatio est formaliter infinita, et hoc patet ex ratione perfectionis simpliciter, quia secundum Anselmum Monol. 15 'Est illud quod in quolibet melius est ipsum quam non ipsum' non autem potest relatio esse simpliciter nobilior suo opposito, quia relativa sunt simul natura."

translation: For a person does not lack some formally infinite perfection, because then he would not then be absolutely perfect; but whichever person does lack a relation of origin. Therefore no relation of origin is formally infinite, and this is clear from the definition of perfection unqualifiedly, because according to Anselm in chapter 15 of the Monologium "[perfection] is that which it is better to have than not to have"; relation, however, cannot be unqualifiedly more nobler than its opposite, because relatives are simultaneous in nature

Peter Olivi on Aristotle

Not all scholastics, nor even Franciscans, had the same stance on how much authority or philosophical deference to give to the pagan philosophers. Scotus, Ockham, or Gonsalvus Hispanus, for instance, all of whom wrote commentaries on Aristotle, clearly held the Philosopher in very high regard, even while being willing to disagree with him. Olivi, on the other hand, although his positions on many subjects anticipate Scotus and are as a rule in line with the general Franciscan tradition, claims not to give a fig for Aristotle--even while quoting him and taking his arguments into consideration. The other day I came across these rather harsh remarks:

Aristoteles etiam non hic videtur ibi sentire, licet mihi non sit cura quid hic vel alibi senserit; cuius enim auctoritas et cuiuslibet infidelis et idolatrae mihi est nulla, et maximae in iis quae sunt fidei christianae aut multum ei propinquam.

"Aristotle also does not seem to think this way about this matter, although it's of no concern to me what he thought about this or anything else, whose authority (as that of any infidel and idolator) is nothing to me, and especially in those matters which belong to the Christian faith or touch nearly on it."

Ad decimum dicendum quod christiano viro sola scriptura sacra et fides catholica debet esse in robor et culmen auctoritatis; et ideo posito quod omnes pagani falso dicti philosophi contrarium senserint aut aliqui eorum, non est mihi cura.

"To the tenth argument it should be said that for a Christian man only the scriptures and the Catholic faith ought to be the core and summit of authority, and therefore even if all the pagan so-called philosophers thought the contrary, or some of them, it does not concern me."

--Peter John Olivi. Quastiones in secundum librum Sententiarum, ed. B. Jansen (Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi 4-6), 3 vol. Quaracchi: Ad Claras Aquas, 1922, 1924, 1926. v. 1, Quaestio XVI.

C.S. Lewis on John Jewel (1522-71)

"One of Jewel's very minor works in Latin, the early Oratio contra Rhetoricam would be of great literary interest if we could be sure that it was seriously intended. We should have to salute a man who stood almost alone in maintaining that rhetorical study is a total waste of time, that rhetoricians are neither better understood nor more believed than natural speakers, and that an art which bad causes need far more than good ones is the ruin of states. The Oratio has been so taken by an eminent scholar, but I cannot agree with him. What first awakes suspicion is the absence of all arguments drawn from religion. Its whole atmosphere is that of literary paganism. And towards the end we find a passage which, from such a man at such a date, must surely be ironical. It might be translated thus:

Our owne country men not many yeares sithence whan they had no shadowe, I saie not of eloquence but of verie Latine and clene language, whan Cicero lay despised and scorned in kennels and darke corners and Scotus blocked vp the gate and entrie of all the scholes, how well learned neuerthelater, of how sharpe iudgment in philosophie, how graue in diuinity they were esteemde? Oh blessed vniversitie! Oh the goode worlde! For than naught might be done against oure sentence, than might we make peace and warre and stirre vp tumultes and sette prynces by the eares.

What can this be but an insinuation that none could seriously attack (as Jewel has been ostensibly attacking) the new Ciceronianism, unless he were a Papist and a scholastic? The whole Oratio is a laboured academic joke of the kind not then uncommon. Jewel was no more seriously condemning rhetoric than Erasmus was seriously praising folly."

--English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 306-307

Scotus and Universal Hylomorphism

This topic is somewhat enigmatic; the twentieth century historical-critical scholarship on the topic is agreed that Scotus denies spiritual matter, while nineteenth-century, based on the false attribution of the De rerum principio, assumed he held to it. The usual contemporary claim, example below (from the online Standford encyclopedia article on Scotus by Thomas Williams), is that the doctrine is denied in Lectura II d. 12; when I read this passage I found it not to be the case. But it is a sort of dogma in the scholarship at the moment. What I have seen is that Scotus generally refers to it when it comes up as "alia opinio" and may mention strengths/weaknesses it has, but doesn't definitively reject or hold it.

Second, Scotus denies "universal hylemorphism," the view that all created substances are composites of form and matter (Lectura 2, d. 12, q. un., n. 55). Universal hylemorphism (from the Greek hyle, meaning ‘matter’, and morphe, meaning ‘form’) had been the predominant view among Franciscans before Scotus. Saint Bonaventure, for example, had argued that even angels could not be altogether immaterial; they must be compounds of form and "spiritual matter." For matter is potentiality and form is actuality, so if the angels were altogether immaterial, they would be pure actuality without any admixture of potentiality. But only God is pure actuality. But as we have already seen in his affirmation of the existence of prime matter, Scotus simply denies the unqualified equation of matter with potentiality and form with actuality. Prime matter, though entirely without form, is actual; and a purely immaterial being is not automatically bereft of potentiality.

Milbank

On that note...try this gem from Milbank. I won't subject it to the usual ridicule. The Cambridge Phantasists are clearly committed to a hyper-negative theology, almost as a first principle. So of course they won't like the ten lines Scotus devotes to criticizing negative theology.

Milbank, "Beauty and the Soul" in Theological perspectives on God and Beauty, p. 3:

"In the High Middle Ages, the possibility and experience of seeing the invisible in the visible, or of seeing the invisible as invisible (this is the necessary other aspect), was generally assumed and pervaded life, art and understanding. Therefore, there was no specific discipline of "aesthetics," which only arose in the eighteenth century. Beauty took care of herself.

By contrast, one mark of modernity is that we still, indeed, acknowledge the invisible, yet we only stand on its brink, and only acknowledge it as unknown. We continue to see the invisible as invisibile, but we have lost the counterpoint: seing the invisible in the visible. In consequence, we only see the invisible as visible in the sense that we are blinded by it: seing what we see when we close our eyes. Bedazzlement now no longer betokens an excess of saturated form. Thus Duns Scotus's famous rebuke to Dionysius: Negationes etiam non summe amamus misunderstands, certainly, the Dionysian hyper-positive divine provocation of negation of our highest conceptions (even of divinity itself) yet may apply, indeed, to the modern cult of the sublime. Without this cult, we moderns remain agnostic concerning the unknown; with this cult, we hypostaize and consecrate the unknownness as the force of nullity."

Not terribly interesting, to be sure, and totally out of context (a charge which I often accuse "them" of); but I was tickled by the passage as it is one of my favorite quotes from Duns Scotus, a passage which I incorporated into my recent Derrida paper. Like Scotus, and obviously under his influence, I am becoming more and more critical of negative theology. And participation as well, for that matter.

Obscurity

Barrett Wendell, in his admirable book on writing, points out that clearness and vividness often turn on mere specificity. To say that Major André was hanged is clear and definite; to say that he was killed is less definite, because you do not know in what way he was killed; to say that he died is still more indefinite because you do not even know whether his death was due to violence or to natural causes. If we were to use this statement as a varying symbol by which to rank writers for clearness, we might, I think, get something like the following: Swift, Macaulay, and Shaw would say that André was hanged. Bradley would say that he was killed. Bosanquet would say that he died. Kant would say that his mortal existence achieved its termination. Hegel would say that a finite determination of infinity had been further determined by its own negation.

--Blanshard, "On Philosophical Style"

Scotus is obscure, but he's not obscure like that.

Derrida

Here's a quote from his 1968 essay Differance:

“Différance is not only irreducible to any ontological or theological--ontotheological--reappropriation, but as the very opening of the space in which ontotheology--philosophy--produces its system and its history, it includes ontotheology, inscribing it and exceeding it without return.”

Sokolowski on Necessity and Scotus

From Fr. Sokolowksi's Eucharistic Presence, p. 47-48. A book I found rather disappointing, mainly for its rather uncritical reliance on Thomas's metaphysics of eucharistic conversion. But he does touch on matters of interest here on this blog.

"In biblical belief, the whole, which is so dense and final outside biblical revelation, is now seen as existing 'contingently' and God is seen as existing 'necessarily.' But when we make this transposition, we must avoid thinking that the domain of the necessary in the world is now somehow dissolved, that everything worldly is diluted into the worldly contingent. [there follows a diagram I am omitting]

To turn everything in the world into the contingent in this way would be to equate the contingency that marks the world as a whole with the contingency that is found as part of the world. The consequence of such a confusion, of course, would be another confusion regarding necessity; the necessity by which God exists would be equated with the necessity that is part of the world, and the divine choice to create would be assimilated to events that take place within the contingent domain of the world. God's choice would then appear as a 'merely contingent' event and would take on the quality of being arbitrary. Cajetan criticzes Scotus for making this mistake. He says, 'How uncultivated and upstart (quam rudis et novus) is Scotus's way of speaking...when he calls the divine will 'the first contingent cause.' It is nefarious (fas quippe non est) to speak of contingency in the divine will.' All such confusions follow if the shifting senses of necessity and contingncy are not clearly recognized.

We must also observe that the metaphysical categories found in Aristotle and other pagan philosophers, and the patterns of thought found in natural religion, must be transposed into analogies when taken into Christian discourse and Christian metaphysics. It is not just that we have to add new categories or new names; the old names have to be newly understood. 'Necessity' and 'contingency,' 'divine' and 'worldly,' take on a transposed sense. And the issue that helps us determinte the new, analogous senses is the issue of how the world and God are to be understood: although the world does obviously exist, it might not have existed, with no lessening of the perfection of being, since God would still be in undiminished goodness and
greatness."

Note the similar uncritical reliance on the lesser light of Cajetan here, that figure which so aggravates contemporary Thomists, either for or against. From what I've read in his commentary on the Summa I have not been terribly impressed. Apparently if one wants to read good Thomistic analysis of Scotus one must go to Capreolus, who in some fashion demonstrated (according to a dominican I was reading some time ago) the way in which one can be begin with the concept of a creature and move through it to a concept of God that is analogous (ie, getting around one of Scotus's arguments, either two or three, for the necessity of univocity to ground theological discourse and avoid equivocity).

The obvious reply to the Sokolowski passage is to point out Scotus's notion of the disjunctive transcendentals, in which the entirety of being is divided into either necessary or contingent. God of course falls on the necessary side, creation on the contingent; this is perhaps similar to Sokolowski's presentation of the biblical view. Yet Scotus is also concerned to safeguard divine freedom; to deny that God creates contingently is to leave the door open (if not to positively embrace) for the claim (inspired by the arab philosophers, et al.) that God creates necessarily, the problem for the intellectualist/Thomist view. So it seems Scotus can both affirm that God is necessary being and that he is the first contingent cause (recall Scotus's rejection of the Aristotelian proposition "omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur"). This is not to say God's will acts alone without reference to anything else (I suspect that this what 'arbitrary' means in discussions like this), but in his view intellect and will are essentially ordered co-causes of volitional acts.

Now, Sokolowski wasn't making a particularly rigorous criticism of Scotus, and it is somewhat unfair to single him out, but it illustrates a further point I have been pondering lately. Note that Sokolowski's comments are basically all Thomistically-inspired. Much of his book is Thomism with a phenomenological gloss. I on the other hand, am philosophically and personally committed to the positions of Duns Scotus. Both are widely divergent systems of explaining facts about the world as well as elements of the deposit of faith. Both (and this is one of my purposes in maintaining this blog) are positions that catholics can hold. So what does one do with this fact that they contradict? Gloss over the contradictions, or simply try to reduce one system to heresy (the Garrigou-Lagrange method0? Garrigou-Lagrange once wrote that since they contradict, they can't both be true (PNC). But their basic arguments about a given area of philosophy or theology all depend on principles higher up the chain till one reaches their first principles (which I think differ as well, unless one wants to posit the depost of faith as the first principle). Much of what happens in the literature, scholarly or otherwise, is simply to analyze the opposing school through the lens of the one one accepts, and obviously it won't come off making sense. I'm not advocating relativism here, as I do think one of these systems is largely more correct than the other. But the problem isn't new with me, either. This is what really can be called the "dissolution of scholasticism," which happened in the 15th-16th centuries (I am unclear if the the late 14th century was involved, though it seems to be prior to the "second scholasticism" represented by Suarez and spanish Thomism). At the end of the middle ages we have a situation where there were four viae, being of the nominalists, the Scotists, the Thomists and the Albertists, all of whom had different first principles (so the claim is; very very little scholarship has been done on this), and simply stopped debating each other. Everything was conducted within the respective school, and university legislation was passed to keep out rival schools. I would like to think that this is a purely contingent historical accident not related to philosophy itself or the philosophies of the schools, but am not sure. I suppose I should study and try to figure out in practice what the first principles really are, and if they are incompatible. Thoughts anyone?

Fr. Emery on Thomas on Spiritual Matter

Here's one for Michael, from Gilles Emery, OP, "Trinity, Church, and the Human Person". A collection of essays we are reading through the ethics and culture center (all translations, often awkward, from Emery's original french).

"By definition, form is act. This definition excludes the possibility of any matter entering into the composition of the soul itself, as was suggested by St. Bonaventure, among others. Following the Jewish philosopher Avicebron, and more distantly, St. Augustine, the Franciscan master effectively taught that the soul contains some kind of matter, a spiritual matter (materia spiritualis) that bears witness to its creataurely status. St. Thomas criticizes this conception of the soul for its metaphysical inconsistency. Since the soul is created, it includes composition: a composition not of matter and form, but of essence and participated existence. Like every creature, its essence (what it is) is not identical with its exiwtence, which it receives from God at the moment of creation."

This is in an essay on the unicity of the substantial form in Thomas. Like all of Fr. Emery's essays, its framed within contemporary debate; the point is that Thomas doesn't fall prey to contemporary claims that posit a dichotomy between dualism and biblical wholism (ie, various protestants). Once again, we learn that Thomas really is relevant in today's world. Emery is better than most Thomist scholars, despite the criticisms (far more extensive than what i've whined about before), in that he at least mentions the fact that there were other theologians than st. Thomas, and sometimes even quotes them in latin. But there're ultimately just the frame for Thomas's greatness. The usual tedious historiographical tale. I'm still reading the essay, and so far Emery hasn't mentioned the Eucharist, one of the fault lines in which the unicity thesis is shown to be implausible. One also wonders what St. Thomas would have made of organ transplants; the organ is still alive, but removed from the body which is actualized by the single substantial form. I am tempted to say that the only options are substantial form and form of the corpse. Presumably the latter, as it is a form and therefore has some actuality that might continue on in an organ separated from its original body, though being taken into a second body seems problematic. All in all, the Scotist line seems easier to maintain, with various bodily organs, bones, CNS, being separate forms of some kind, all ordered in potency-act relations to higher forms until you reach the rational soul at the top. An organ removed from this setup would have its own actuality once separated from the chain.

separate question: does Thomas think that the intellect is active, functioning (ie, are we thinking) at all times?

Scotus on the Sabbath

Here's a short quote I came across yesterday, from a discussion about whether the ten commandments are part of the natural law. The answer is yes, albeit in different ways (the fact that God has at certain times dispensed people from the second table makes it probelmatic). Scotus distinguishes two ways in which something can be part of the natural law: as practical principles are known to be necessarily true from knowledge of their terms, and as being highly consonant to these per se nota propositions. The first table is part of natural law in the first way; the first two precepts being have no other Gods and do not take the name of the Lord in vain. The third precept, the sabbath, is problematic, and may actually be of the second table. The second table is part of the natural law in the second way, as it is highly consonant with it, but it does not necessarily follow as it is about contingent things. Somewhere I remember reading that the items of the first table have the divine nature as their object and so are necessary, while those of the second look to contingent matters.

So in the long run, this question of Scotus has nothing to do with Sabbath-Sunday debates (which turn on Church authority and very early church history, anway) currently played out among those who dialogue with groups such as the Seventh-Day Adventists.

In other news, while reading a question on the connection of the moral virtues, Scotus repeated the traditional claim that virtues can only be formed by repeated acts consonant with right reason. His "voluntarism" is of an entirely different nature than the Cambridge phantasists and Fr. Schall deign to report.

Ordinatio III d. 37 q. un. n. 21:

"The third precept of the first table, which is of observing the sabbath, is affirmative as far as to showing some worship to God at a determinate time; but as far as to the determination of this time or that, it is not part of the law of nature strictly speaking. Likewise, neither is it of the law of nature strictly speaking asf ar as to the other part, the negative, which is included there, by which a servile act is prohibited, for a determinate act, prohibiting one from then showing worship to God: for that act is not prohibted unless because it is impeding or holding back from that worship which is commanded.

n. 24: if however this third commandment is not of the law of nature strictly, then it should be judged about it, with respect to this, just as of the commandments of the second table."

Conventional History

Here's a tiresome discussion, illustrative mainly of the sorts of ideas still floating about outside of the few scholars who actually read Scotus. These quotes are from a history of philosophy The Mediaeval Mind, A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages, by Henry Osborn Taylor in Two Volumes, Volume II., MacMillan Co., New York, 1911; pp. 509-524. From http://www.elfinspell.com/DunsScotus.html

A note from the end:

"In discussing Duns Scotus, I have given less from his writings than has been my wont with other philosophers. And for two reasons. The first, as I frankly avow, is that I have read less of him than I have of his predecessors. With the exception of such a curious treatise as the (doubtful) Grammatica speculativa (tome i. of the Paris edition); and the elementary, and comparatively lucid, De rerum prinipio (tome iv. of the Paris edition) — with these exceptions Duns is to me unreadable. My second reason for omitting excerpts from his writings, is that I wished neither to misrepresent their quality, nor to cause my reader to lay down my book, which is heavy enough anyhow! If I selected lucid and simple extracts, they would give no idea of the intricacy and prolixity of Duns. His commentary on the Sentences fills thirteen tomes of the Paris edition! No short and simple extract will illustrate that! On the other hand, I could not bring myself by lengthy or impossible quotations to vilify Duns. It is unjust to expose a man’s worst features, nakedly and alone, to those who do not know his better side and the conditions which partly explain the rest of him."

And the beginning:

"The opening years of the fourteenth century, so fatal for the papacy, were also portentous for scholasticism. The Summa of Thomas was impugned by Joannes Duns Scotus, whose entire work, constructive as well as critical, was impressed with qualities of finality, signifying that in the forms of reasoning represented by him as well as Thomas, thought should advance no farther. Bacon’s attack upon scholastic methods had proved abortive from its tactlessness and confusion, and because men did not care for, and perhaps did not understand, his arguments. It was not so with the arguments of Duns Scotus. Throughout the academic world, thought still was set to chords of metaphysics; and although men had never listened to quite such dialectic 510 orchestration as Duns provided, they liked it, perceived its motives, and comprehended the meaning of its themes. So his generation understood and appreciated him. That he was the beginning of the end of the scholastic system, could not be known until the manner of that ending had disclosed itself more fully. We, however, discern the symptoms of scholastic dissolution in his work. His criticism of his predecessors was disintegrating, even when not destructive. His own dialectic was so surpassingly intricate and dizzy that, like the choir of Beauvais, it might some day collapse. With Duns Scotus, scholasticism reasoned itself out of human reach. And finally with him also, the wholeness of the scholastic purpose finally broke. For he no longer maintained the union of metaphysics and theology. The latter, to be sure, was valid absolutely; but, from a speculative, it has become a practical science. It neither draws its principles from metaphysics, nor subordinates the other sciences, — all human knowledge — to its service. Although rational in content, it possesses proofs stronger than dialectic, and stands on revelation.

[...]

There had always been men who maintained similar propositions. But it was quite another matter that the severance between metaphysics and theology should be demonstrated by a prodigious metaphysical theologian after a different view had been carried to its farthest reaches by the great Aquinas. Henceforth philosophy and theology were set on opposite pinnacles, only with theology’s pinnacle the higher. In spite of the last circumstance, the coming time showed that men cannot for long possess in peace two standards of truth — philosophy and revelation; but will be driven to hold to the one and ignore the other. By breaking the rational union of philosophy and theology, Duns Scotus prepared the way for Occam. The latter also asserts vociferously the superiority of the divine truth over human knowledge and its reasonings. But the popes are at Avignon, and the Christian world no longer bows down before those willing Babylonian captives. Under such a blasted condition of the Church, how should any inclusive Christian synthesis of thought and faith be maintained?

[...]

Having thus tested whatever was presented by human reason, and accepting what was declared by Scripture or the Church, Duns proceeds to build out his doctrine as the case may call for. No man ever drove either constructive logic or the subtilties of critical distinctions closer to the limits of human comprehension or human patience than Duns Scotus. And here lies the trouble with him. The endless ramification and refinement of his dialectic, his devious processes of conclusion, make his work a reductio ad absurdum of scholastic ways of reasoning. Logically, eristically, the argumentation is inerrant. It never wanders aimlessly, but winding and circling, at last it reaches a conclusion from some point unforeseen. Would you run a course with this master of the syllogism? If you enter his lists, you are lost. The right way to attack him, is to stand without, and laugh. That is what was done afterwards, when whoever cared for such reasonings was called a Dunce, after the name of this most subtle of mediaeval metaphysicians."

Festum: Continuatio

Quotidiana B. I. Scoti Commemoratio

O Doctor Subtilissime, Ioannes, qui Deiparae Custos fidus fuisti; quamque Adam non foedaverat, Immaculatam clarius tu primus perpexisti; nostri tuam da mentibus doctrinam datam coelitus ad Matris laudem Christi.
v. Protege nos, Virgo praeservata ab omni macula.
R. Ut liberati a peccatis omnibus, per te perveniamus ad Praeservatorem tuum.

Oremus:

Deus, qui per Immaculatam Virginis conceptionem dignum Filio tuo habitaculum praeparasti: et qui per hoc lucis mysterium Seraphicam S. Francisci Religionem illustrare, atque in ea gloriosum Doctorem Subtilem Ioannem Scotum mirificare dignatus es: praesta quaesumus; ut qui ex morte Filii Mariae praevisa, eam ab omni labe praeservasti, nos quoque mundos eius intercessione ad te pervenire concedas. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Festum beati Ioannis Duns Scoti

Today's the day, folks, the anniversary of the death of the subtle doctor. He died on November 8, 1308 in Cologne, where his body still lies in the Minorite church. Sadly, despite the copious entries in Schafer's Bibliographia of prayers, songs, etc. composed in honor of Duns Scotus, I cannot post any as they are all from nineteenth and early twentieth-century journals that Notre Dame does not carry. So in honor of the feast (well, it's more of an optional memorial) I am reposting the previous post of prayers for his canonization.

O Most Holy Trinity, Who exalts the humble and confuses the proud,

You Who grant gifts of wisdom and charisms of holiness

To the simple ones of heart, Graciously sanctified your servant,

Blessed John Duns Scotus,

By His Holiness John Paul II on March 20, 1993,

"Doctor Subtilis" of the Order of Friars Minor.

For through him you first realized the Immaculate Mother of God;

Openly defending her exemption from Original Sin.

He modeled his life on that of Jesus Christ, Intensely loving Him and bravely serving Him

Through the apostolate of science; Illuminating, with humility and simplicity,

To all people the mysteries of the Faith, And showing heroic fidelity

To the Church and the Pope. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Prayer for the canonization of Blessed John Duns Scotus:)

Glory be to the Father, etc. (3 times)

Most Blessed Trinity, glorify Your Servant Blessed John Duns Scotus, The defender of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We beg you, hear us!

Odd Remark of Brentano

Sadly, the time has come to replace Michael's serious research post. That's Robert Brentano in the title, of The Two Churches, a study of England and Italy in the Thirteenth century. Not terribly exciting, but he did furnish me with an odd, humerous quote:

p. 229: "And although the thirteenth century was not the golden age of the relic, Thomas Aquinas, lying on his deathbed at Fossanova, thinking his last syllogism, can hardly have been unaware of eyes contemplating his body, minds thinking what a splendid relic he was about to become."

Scotus's feast day approaches, so I'll try to rustle up some poetry in his honor, or at least a prayer. I promise not to post on various oratorio's or comedies (yes, that's right...see Schafer's Bibliography for details) composed in his honor.

Some Free Research

Here are some of the fruits of today's research. I offer it here because it may (or may not) be of interest to any of the Smithy's readers, and is otherwise not easy to find.

Richard of Middleton. Commentarium super quartum Sententiarum. Venice: Bonetus Locatellus, 1499.

II. Sent. dist. III art. 1 q.1. In discussing the nonsimplicity of the angels Richard asks first whether the angels are composed of essence and existence. He concludes that in a certain respect they are, but not in a way that precludes or renders unnecessary a composition of the angelic essence from matter and form.

“Respondeo quod eo modo quo essentia angeli et suum esse differunt, est ibi compositio ex essentia et esse.” If the angel’s essence and existence differ only notionally (secundum rationem), then it only has a notional composition. But this can’t be the case because the two are not simply interchangable in predication: “[Hic] praedicatio est falsa: essentia angeli est suum esse.” According to Hugo, Didascalicon i.6, only in God are essence and existence the same.

How then should we understand the relation of essence to existence in angels? Richard first recognizes three ways in which the essence can be said to be in potency to its existence: 1) The essence without existence can be understood as simply lacking the perfection of actuality (carentiam perfectionis actualitatis); 2) or as having some intelligible matter, that is, a nature not simply potential, but potential with respect to the form of the angel; 3) or as having some purely potential nature (aliquam naturam pure potentialem).

1) The first option posits no positive reality (non dicat aliquid reale positivum) other than the essence itself. Nothing can enter into composition with a privation or negation, nor can a privation or a negation be an essence or part of an essence. This option then is equivalent to declaring that the actual being of the essence of the angel is really the same as that essence, differing by nothing positive, which Richard rejects as insufficient.

2) The second way still posits nothing of the essence of the angel besides actuality: “quia sicut possibilitas formae non esset eius essentia, sic nec possibilitas materiae; sed tantummodo constitutum ex actualitate materiae in completa, et actualitate formae complete: et sic ad hoc sequeretur quod actuale esse angeli esset realiter idem quod eius essentia, non pars eius.”

3) The third way is more probable, supposing that we could posit some purely potential nature in the angelic essence which would need the addition of an extrinsic principle of existence to be. “Sed sicut patebit inferius illud quod est loco materiae in angelo non est natura pure potentialis: et ideo illi opinioni non consentio.”

Others say that for an angel to exist some “absolute thing” must be added to the angel’s essence which is neither a part nor an accident of the essence, but something nobler than the essence, “quid nobilius essentia”, since the essence itself has more “possibility” than its being.

But others say, what Richard himself agrees more with, “quibus magis consentio”, that actual existence adds nothing absolute over the essence of the angel himself, but only a real relation to the giver of his being, “tantummodo realem relationem ad datorem ipsius esse.” Existence cannot be anything accidental to the substance, because it is natural for substance to exist, “substantia nata est existere in se.” An accident is that whose nature is to exist in another (and not as a part of that other), nor can it exist per se, except miraculously. Therefore, if actual existence were some absolute thing besides the essence of the angel itself, since it would not the sort of thing that could exist in itself, but in the essence, it would be a certain (quoddam) accident of the essence, “quod est inconveniens”, because then, since existence is supposed to be something more actual than the essence, an accident would have more actuality than its subject, which is inconvenient.

Because of this Richard declares that existence adds nothing real to the essence beyond a relation to God insofar as He is the giver of existence itself. Essence therefore bespeaks absolutely what existence bespeaks in relation to the giver of that existence. Therefore this predication is unacceptable: the existence of a creature is its essence. “A run” is not the same thing as “running”, since “a run” denotes something absolute, whereas “running” is said in relation to a runner.

“Concedendum est quod in angelo et in omni creata substantia est aliqua realis compositio ex essentia et esse.”

II. Sent. dist. III art. 1 q.2.

“Secundo quaeritur utrum angelorum essentia sit compositum ex materia et forma.”

Obection 1) Then angels couldn’t understand forms abstracted from matter, but they do.
Reply: angels do understand forms abstracted from matter, and this is not prevented by their having their own matter. The abstracted form is received in a subject having matter (the angel); but it doesn’t follow that the abstracted form is in the intellect materially. Every abstracted species is rather an accidental form in the intellect. The angel understands something composed of matter and form by a similitude of the composite, which is not itself composed of matter and form.

2) Since a form exists more truly in an intellect than in an external thing (in re extra), then since a form can make an extramental thing such-and-such, e.g. hot or black, much more would the same form make the intellect hot or black, if it had matter just as the extramental thing. Reply: The form of heat is not more truly in the angelic intellect than it is in fire, for it is in fire according to the truth of its essence, but in the intellect by its similitude. . . . As fire is hot by the reality of heat, so proportionally the intellect is similar to heat by a similitude of heat. [Therefore the angel does not become hot when understanding heat.]

3) An angel is created by one creation. But two things are not created by one passive creation. Therefore the essence of an angel is not composed of two things. Reply: Two things are created in the creation of an angel. But matter and form are two things constituting one essence, therefore not two things in act but only in potency.

4) Matter is only necessary where there is a possibility for its being something. But angels were created out of nothing, not out of anything preexisting; nor is there in an angel now anything which has a possibility to be something else. Reply: Richard replies that matter is not only necessary to account for the possibility of substantial change, but also to account for the possibility of movement of any kind.

In the body of this question Richard first considers whether the composition of essence and existence he has just recognized in the angel can dispense with the need to posit a composition of matter and form in the angelic essence. For some say that the essence of an angel is not composed of matter and form, whether the matter in question is of the same kind (unigenea) as the matter of corporeal things or not. For that essence is not purely actual, but is possible in some way, nor is it necessary that every kind of possibility requires matter. For every created form, insofar as it is from God, is dependent on him and hence possible.

. . . [here I skip a paragraph where Richard quotes authorities apparently in agreement with this formulation]

But this attempt to dispense with matter in angels rests on a false foundation (falso fundamento). For matter is not said to be necessary in order that something (res) may be possible with respect to the first cause, but in order that it may be possible with respect to itself, or to something inferior to itself. But an angel, when it moves itself from one will to another will (de uno velle ad aliud velle), and from one thought (cogitatione) to another, and even from one place to another, is possible in some way with respect to itself, since to be moved is as such to be possible with respect to the mover. [The authorities quoted deny that angels have the same matter as corporeal things, which Richard agrees with.]

Nor should those denying spiritual matter rely on the authority of Aristotle, Avicenna, or the author of the Liber de causis, for they thought that the intelligences never began, and that they were in no way possible, except with respect to the first cause, and that they were wholly immutable (nullo modo mutabiles). It’s no wonder, then, that, remaining in this error, they denied matter in the angels. (Et ideo non fuit mirum si, in hoc errore permanentes, in eis negaverunt materiam.) If the philosophers had believed that the intelligences began to be, and were mutable, and could move themselves, they would have without a doubt admitted that there was matter in them.

“Videtur igitur mihi dicendum quod essentia angeli composita est ex materia et forma, extendendo [nomen] materiae ad omnem naturam possibilem ex qua et alia natura magis actuali constituitur unum per essentiam.” For one and the same thing cannot be both agent and patient with respect to the same thing. An agent acts insofar as it is in act, and not insofar as it is in potency; and a patient receives (patiatur) insofar as it is in potency, and not insofar as it is in act. Otherwise one and the same thing would be simultaneously in act and not in act, and in potency and not in potency, and contradictories would be true. . . . But to move is to act and to be moved is to receive (pati). Therefore something cannot be both moving and moved with respect to one and the same thing. Since, therefore, an angel moves itself from one will to another, and from one thought to another, and from one place to another, if he were a simple immaterial form he would be both moving and moved with respect to the same thing. Therefore, in his essence there is one thing through which he moves himself, and another thing through which he is moved; the first thing we call form, [the second we call matter] accepting matter as was said at the beginning of this opinion.

[Richard quotes the standard authorities in support of this position, Boethius, Augustine, etc.]

II. Sent. dist. III art. 2 q.1.

“utrum materia angelorum sit unigenea cum materia corporalium.”

Richard argues that things can only be said to have matter univocally when they can be transmuted into each other. All of the elements can be changed into each other; all bodies can be broken down and recomposed into any other kind of body. But bodies can never be changed into spirits, nor vice versa. The matter of angels is determined to receive only spiritual forms, and the matter of bodies to receive only corporeal forms. They are not therefore the same kind of matter.

“Ad secundum dicendum quod materia non ideo dicitur natura potentialis quod nullam penitus habeat actualitatem propriam, ut dicunt quidam; sed quia materia generabilium et corruptibilium tenet infimum actualitatis gradum: rem in potentia ad substantialem formam. Unde non est inconveniens dicere quod materia angelorum plus habeat de propria actualitat quam materia corporum, quamvis ita sit potentialis, respectu magnae actualitatis formae angelicae: sicut materia corporum, respectu parvae actualitatis formae corporeae.” Furthermore, even if matter could be said to be pure potency, this would not require that all matter be univocal, more one kind of matter could be “pure potency”, but only with respect to corporeal forms, and another kind could be “pure potency”, but only with respect to spiritual forms.

That's all for today, folks!

Moving Day

I'm moving into some new digs today, with the result that lately I've been packing and not reading. Here's a quote, which I don't have time to translate, but enjoy.

Ordinatio III d. 32 q. unica nn. 19-22

*Update*

I have added a very rough translation, which precedes the latin. The text is somewhat relevant to my previous post on Fr. Schall, as one sees the will having both metaphysical priority and willing in accordance with reason. So what exactly is voluntarism? Is it a useful term? I would say yes, as long as we don't use it as a blanket cipher for Scotus and Muslim fundamentalists; As we should remember that "intellectualism" does not indicate exactly the same thing in Thomas, his predecessors or successors.

"The third is apparent, because there is one power and one first object, and he has one infinite act adequated to himself. Nor is it necessary for that one act to be of all things, as if all things were required for the perfection of this act, but only from the perfection of this act follows this which perfectly tends into the first term; it tends also into all things around which the first term is the total means of acting. Essentia alone is able to be the first means of acting both to the divine intellect and the divine will, because if something else could be the first means, that power would be lowered.

From this it follows that there is not inequality in God's loving of all things, by conparing the act to the agent.

But by comparing the act to connotated objects (?) or to those things over which it passes, there is inequality, not only because those willed things are inequal or inequal goods are willed for them, but also because according to every grade something passes over; for every rationally willing agent, first wills the end, and second immediately that which attains the end, and third other things which are more remotely ordered to attaining the end. so also god most rationally, although not by diverse acts, but by a single act, insofar as he in various ways tends over ordered objects, first wills the end, and in this there is a most perfect act and his intellect is perfect and his willed is blessed; in the second he wills those things which are immediately ordered into him, namely by predestining the elect, who immediately attain him, and this as if by relfecting, by willing others to love the same object with himself; for he first loves himself ordinately (and as a consequence not disordinately by zeal or jealousy), in the second he wills others to have co-lovers, and this is to will others to have his own love in themselves - and this is to predestinate them, if he should willthem to have a good of this sort finally and eternally; third however he wills those which are necessary for attaining this end, namely the goods of grace; fourth he wills - on account of them - other things which are more removed, for example, this sensible world for others so that they might serve them, and so it is true what is said in Book II of the Physics, "in a certain way man is the end of all things," indeed of sensible things, because on account of him willed by God as if in the second instant of nature, are all sensible th ings willed as if in the fourth moment; that also which is nearer to the ultimate end, is accustomed to be called the end of those which are more removed. Either therefore because God willed the sensible world to be as ordered to predestined man, or because he more immediately willed man to love himself than that the sensible world should be, man will be the end of the sensible world.

And so appears the inequality of willable things - as far as the things willed - not as volition is of the one willing, but as it passes over the aforesaid objects. nevertheless, that inequality is not in act on account of the presupposed goodness in whatever objects other than himself, which is a quasi reason wherefore such and such a thing is to be willed, but the reason is in the divine will alone; for because he accepts something in such a grade, therefore they are good in such a grade, not vice versa. Or if it be granted that in them - as they are shown by the intellect - there is some grade of essential goodness, according to which rationally they ought to please the will ordinately, at least this is certain that they are pleasing, as far as actual existence, merely from the divine will, without any reason determining on their part."

In Latine:

tertium apparet, quia una est potentia et unum obiectum primum, et habet unum actum infinitum adaequatum sibi. Nec oportet istum unum actum esse omnium, quasi omnia requirantur ad prefectionem huius actus, sed solummodo ex perfectione huius actus consequitur hoc quod perfecte tendit in primum terminum; tendit etiam in omnia circa quae primus terminus est totalis ratio agendi. Tam autem intellectui divino quam voluntati sola essentia potest esse prima ratio agendi, quia si aliquid aliud posset esse prima ratio, vilesceret illa potentia.

Ex hoc patet quod non est inaequalitas Dei in diligendo omnia, comparando actum ad agentis.

Sed comparando actum ad connotata sive ad ea super quae transit, est inaequalitas, non tantum quia illa volita sunt inaequalia vel inaequalia bona sunt eis volita, sed etiam quia secundum ordinem quemdam transit super ea: nam omnis rationabiliter volens, primo vult finem, et secundo immediate illud quod attingit finem, et tertio alia quae sunt remotius ordinata ad attingendum finem. Sic etiam Deus rationabilissime, licet non diversis actibus, unico tamen actu, in quantum ille diversimode tendit super obiecta ordinata, primo vult finem, et in hoc est actus suus perfectus et intellectus eius perfectus et voluntas eius beata; secundo vult illa quae immediate ordinantur in ipsum, praedestinando scilicet electos, qui scilicet immediate attingunt eum, et hoc quasi reflectendo, volendo alios condiligere idem obiectum secum: qui enim primo se amat ordinate (et per consequens non inordinate, zelando vel invidendo), secundo vult alios habere condilegentes, et hoc est velle alios habere amorem suum in se, - et hoc est praedestinare eos, si velit eos habere huiusmodi bonum finaliter et aeternaliter; tertio autem vult illa quae sunt necessaria ad attingendum hunc finem, scilicet bona gratiae; quarto vult – propter ista – alia quae sunt remotiora, puta hunc mundum sensibilem pro aliis ut serviant eis, ut sic verum sit illud II Physicorum “homo quodammodo est finis omnium,” sensibilium quidem, quia propter ipsum volitum a Deo quasi in secundo signo naturae, sunt omnia sensibilia volita quasi in quarto signo; illud etiam quod est propinquius fini ultimo, consuevit dici finis eorum quae sunt remotiora. Sive ergo quia in ordine ad hominem praedestinatum vult Deus mundum sensibilem esse, sive quia quodammodo immediatius vult hominem amare se quam mundum sensibilem esse, homo erit finis mundi sensibilis.

Et ita patet inaequalitas volibilium – quantum ad ipsa volita – non ut volitio est ipsius volentis, sed ut transit super obiecta modo praedicto. Nec tamen ista inaequalitas in actu est propter bonitatem praesuppositam in obiectis quibuscumque aliis a se, quae sit quasi ratio quare sit sic vel sic volenda, sed ratio est in ipsa voluntate divina sola: quia enim ipsa acceptat aliqua in tali gradu, ideo ipsa sunt bona in tali gradu, non e converso. Vel si detur quod in eis – ut ostensa sunt ab intellectu – sit aliquis gradus bonitatis essentialis, secundum quem rationabiliter debent ordinate complacere voluntati, saltem hoc certum est quod beneplacentia eorum, quantum ad actualem exsistentiam, mere est ex voluntate divina, absque aliqua ratione determinante ex parte eorum.