Eustacius a Sancto Paulo on Intelligible Being

More from Ariew's Descartes and the Last Scholastics, p. 44. Perhaps there might one day be interest in Petrus Thomae after all. This is from Ariew's chapter on Descartes and Scotism, in which he takes Gilson to task for glossing over differences in 17th century scholasticism (ie assuming they were all Thomists). But the following is some pretty clear Scotism, albeit of the Petrus Thomae and Alnwick kind, as I am not sure Scotus used this distinction much himself, if at all.

"To understand what is meant by objective being in the intellect, one must note the distinction between objective and subjective being in the intellect. To be objectively in the intellect is nothing else than to be actually present as an object to the knowing intellect, whether what is present as an object of knowledge has true being within our outside the intellect, or not. To be subjectively in the intellect is to be in it as in a subject, as dispositions and intellectual acts are understood to be in it. But since those things which are in the intellect subjectively can be known by the intellect, it can happen that the same thing can at the same time be both objectively and subjectively in the intellect. Other things which really exist outside the intellect, though they are not subjectively in the intellect can be in it objectively, as we have noted. But since all these things are real, they have some real being in themselves apart from the objective being in the intellect. There are certain items which have no other being apart from objective being, or being known by the intellect: these are called entities of reason."

Ockham contra Auriol

Here's a bit I've been meaning to post for a while, Ockham's comments prior to criticizing Auriol's theory of apparent being (also, as I am sure you recall, criticized by Petrus Thomae).

William of Ockham, Ordinatio I d. 27 q.3 (trans. Pasnau p. 226):

"This view seems to me false as regards the conclusion for which the above arguments are advanced. But because I have seen little of what this Doctor says - for if all the time I have had to look at what he says were put together, it would not take up the space of a single natural day - I do not intend to argue much against the one who holds this view. For from ignorance of what he says, I might facilely argue against his words rather than against his meaning. But since his conclusion appears to me false, based on what he says, I will argue against it, regardless of whether the arguments run contrary to his meaning. The arguments that I made in distinction 36 of this book, against one view of cognized being, could also be advanced against this conclusion. I composed that material, and almost everything else in book one, before I had seen the view recited here. Whoever wants to should look for those arguments there and apply them." [arguments follow]

Bonaventure contra Feeney

Each of these excerpts should be of interest to Protestants and those who encounter Protestant ideas. It's always nice to see an old author affirm something that people accuse of being a modern innovation. Each excerpt is from In Sent. IV. Dist. XVII. Pars I. Art. I. Q.IV, on whether confession is necessary for justification, and I translate without providing the Latin:

Again, it seems so from reason, for everyone having grace and justice enters into the kingdom of heaven, nor can anyone close the gate, justice and grace being preserved; but no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven except through the doorward [ostiarium] Peter, since the keys are given to him, from which no one is exempt: therefore no one can obtain grace nor have remission of guilt, unless he has it through the authority of the supreme Pontiff and those who are in communion with him. But no one is absolved by a priest without confession first, ergo etc . . . it should be replied that to enter without the power of the keys can be understood in two ways: either without the power, understood contrarily, as though despising the key of Peter; or without the power, understood privatively, and this [can be understood] in two ways: either simply privatively, so that one does not have the effect of absolution, neither in work nor in devotion nor in desire; or so that one has it in devotion and intention [proposito], and so has it in a certain way. In the first and second way one does not enter, nor is justified, but in the third way one may enter, and this in some way through the key, although not just as he who is actually absolved.

And the second:

God is more prone to being merciful than to condemning . . . God does not restrict his power to the sacraments. Therefore whenever man does what is in himself, God does what is in himself: therefore, if someone is sorry for his guilt in his heart, [even] if there is not a confessor or external confession, God does what is in himself: therefore he justifies.

Paradox!

Item quaritur de hoc quod dicit: 'Confessio ibi commendatur: Iustus in principio est accusator sui'. Videtur enim male dicere, quia aut accusat se iustus in quantum iustus aut in quantum peccator. Se in quantum iustus, sed omnis qui accusat iustum in quantum huiusmodi, accusat iustitiam; et omnis qui accusat iustitiam est iniustus: ergo, si accusat se in quantum iustus, est iniustus. Si accusata se secundum quod peccator, sed omnis qui accusat peccatorem secundum quod peccator, accusat peccatum; et omnis talis iuste accusat et est iustus: ergo, si accusat secundum quod peccator, accusator est iustus, et ita secundum quod peccator est iustus.

--St Bonaventure, Sententiarum Lib.IV Dist. XVI. Pars I. Dubium IV

Fragment

Going through my private manuscript hoard again, and I've discovered another snippet from the writings of Ioannis de Ultima Thule, this time taken from his Commentarium in librum rubrum occidensmerci, long thought to be utterly lost. Only the beginning of a single question is preserved in the codex I've examined, and it begins Quartum, quaeritur utrum unus anulus habeat aliquantulus esse? Et videtur quod non . . . I translate the fragment below:

Whether the One Ring has any kind of being? And it seems not:

For the One Ring neither exists now, nor did it exist at any time in the past, for it is legendary [fabulosus]. But whatever exists at no time has no being, ergo etc.

On the contrary: whatever is the object of knowledge exists, for of nothing nothing is known. But of the One Ring many things are known, for instance, the names of its possessors: Sauron, Isildur, Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo. Ergo, etc.

Again, we may indicate the Ring's exemplary cause, namely elvish lore [doctrina Eldaliae seu Larum antiquorum]; its efficient cause, namely the Dark Lord [Dominus ater seu anularius magnus]; its formal cause, namely roundness [figura orbis]; its material cause, namely gold [aurum]; and its final cause, as its own inscription said:

Unus anulus omnes regere, unus anulus eos comperire,
Unus anulus omnes redigere et in caligini eos devincire.*

But where the cause is posited insofar as it is a cause, the effect is also posited. Ergo, etc.

*The verse, of course, famously concludes in terra Mordor [indcl. n.] ubi tenebrae latunt.

It remains to be seen whether any more fragments, or even the whole work, might surface at some future date when the world's libraries are better catalogued.

Roger Bacon, Alchemist.

How else to explain the following, from Blackwell's A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, page 2: "Among the first scholastics of note were Roger Bacon (b.1214/20; d. ca. 1492) . . ."? The book's proper entry on Roger Bacon states, on page 616, that Bacon died about 1292. However the entry's first sentence is "The basic facts of Bacon's chronology are still in dispute."

Current hypothesis: Bacon found the philosopher's stone, faked his own death in 1292, lived another 200 years or so being awesome, then was lost at sea in the search for a western route to India and Cathay. Probably still living in Atlantis.

Or else the first date was a typo. Right? Right?

Auriol on Scotus on Intuitive Cognition and the Beatific Vision

Here is an interesting summary of some of Scotus' views by Peter Auriol, that seems to me to be fairly accurate. This is from a discussion of the nature of theology, specifically of Scotus and Godfrey's criticisms of Henry of Ghent's special mode of illumination restricted to theologians, the lumen medium.

Petrus Aurioli, Scriptum super primum Sententiarum, Prooemium sect. 2 (ed. Buytaert vol. 1 p. 191):

"Primo quidem, quid est notitia abstractiva et intuitiva. Est enim intuitiva, quae concernit rei praesentialitatem et existentiam, et terminatur ad rem ut in se existentem. Abstractiva vero dicitur quae abstrahit ab esse et non esse, existere et non existere, et a praesentialitate; quemadmodum rosam intueor dum eam praesentem conspicio, abstractive vero cognosco dum eius quidditatem et naturam considero. hae autem duae sunt possibiles in intellectu; certum est enim quod angelus intuetur rosam dum est; cuius tamen essentiam abstractive considerat, etiam dum non existit.

Secundo vero probant quod divina essentia possit cognosci abstractive, sicut et quelibet quiddiativa natura; Deus enim potest facere sola voluntate, quidquid facere potest mediante sua essentia; sed mediante sessentia movet intellectum beati ad suam notitiam claram et nudam, quae quidem est intuitiva, pro eo quod terminatur ad eam, ut praesentem realiter et existentem, quoniam ut sic movet. Ergo sola voluntate poterit movere intellectum ad notitiam suae essentiae nudae et clarae. Certum est autem quod talis notitia sub illa ratione terminatur ad divinam esentiam, sub qua ratione intellectus movetur ad eam; non movetur autem per praesentialitatem et existentiam essentiae divinae, sed per imperium omnipotentis voluntatis. Ergo nec terminabitur talis notita ad essentiam ut existentem et praesentem, sed ad essentiam mere abstrahendo ab existentia et praesentialitate et per conseuqens non erit intuitiva, sed potius abstractiva."

Translation:

First indeed, what is abstractive and intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is that which concerns the presence and existence of a thing, and is terminated to the thing as it is existing in itself. Abstractive cognition, however, is that which abstracts from being and non being, existence and non existence, and from presence[or presenciality]. Just as when I cognize a rose, I consider it as present, but when I know it abstractivly I consider its quiddity and nature. These are two possible [modes of cognition?] in the intellect; for it is certain that an angel knows a rose while it is, nevertheless it considers its essence abstractivly, even while it does not exist.

Second they prove that the divine essence can be known abstractivly, just as any other quidditative nature; for God can do by means of his will alone, whatever he can do by means of his essence; but by means of his essence he can move the intellect of the blessed to clear and naked knowledge of himself, which indeed is intuitive, on account of the fact that the intellect of the blessed terminates at the divine essence as really present and existing, since as such it moves. therefore by the will alone he can move the intellect to clear and naked knowledge of his essence. It is certain that such knowledge under that aspect is terminated to the divine essence, under which aspect the intellect is moved to it; it is not moved, however, by the presence and existence of the divine essence, but through the command of the omnipotent will. therefore such knowledge will not be terminated by the essence as existing and present, but to the essence merely by abstracting from the existence and presence and consequently it will not be intuitive but rather abstractive.

Bibliomania

What wild desires, what restless torments seize
The hapless man, who feels the book-disease,
If niggard Fortune cramp his gen'rous mind,
And Prudence quench the Spark by heaven assign'd!
With wistful glance his aching eyes behold
The Princeps-copy, clad in blue and gold,
Where the tall Book-case, with partition thin,
Displays, yet guards the tempting charms within . . .
For you the Monk illum'd his pictur'd page,
For you the press defies the Spoils of age;
Faustus for you infernal tortures bore,
For you Erasmus starv'd on Adria's shore. . . .
Ev'n I, debarr'd of ease, and studious hours,
Confess, mid anxious toil, its lurking powers.
How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold
The small, rare volume, black with tarnish'd gold!
The Eyes skims restless, like the roving bee,
O'er flowers of wit, or song, or repartee,
While sweet as Springs, new-bubbling from the stone,
Glides through the breast some pleasing theme unknown.

--From Dr John Ferriar's Bibliomania

On the Internal Combustion Engine

This curious device, in its motor-car form, affords some pleasures, either minor and inferior, or druglike and obsessive. It may have some practical uses, though one suspects that these consist rather in alleviating problems whose radical cure lies elsewhere; and certainly from the supposed profits a multitude of new problems and disadvantages have to be deducted. But the motor-car is, essentially a mechanical toy that has run off the nursery-room floor into the street, where it is used as irresponsibly as before and much more dangerously. It is a dubious piece of ‘escape mechanism’. For of course it would not be made in ‘mass’ (which means that it would hardly be made at all), nor would millions be made out of its purchases, but for its invention at a time when we have made our towns horrible to live in—a process which it has itself accelerated. The motor-car attracts, because it enables people to live far away from their noisome and inhuman ‘works’, or to fly from their depressing dormitories to the ‘country’. But it cheats: for the motor-factories, and their subsidiaries (garages, repair-shops, and pumps), and the cars themselves, and their black and blasted roads, devour the ‘country’ like dragons. This is the splendid gift of a magician: he offers to a caged bird that has defiled its cage and perch—what? a little length of chain so that it can flap to a near-by twig and foul that. Magnificent! This is freedom! And the made the chain hundreds of the magician’s prisoners sweat like morlocks. This is Real Life . . .

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Pop Quiz

Who said this?

"...et hoc modo esse potest intelligi sine vero, sed non e converso: quia verum non est in ratione entis, sed ens in ratione veri; sicut potest aliquis intelligere ens, et tamen non intelligit aliquid de ratione intelligibilitatis; sed nunquam potst intelligi intelligibile, secundum hanc rationem, nisi intelligatur ens. Unde etiam patet quod ens est prima conceptio intellectus."

in this way being can be understood without the true but not contrariwise, because the true is not in the definition of being but being is in the defintion of the ture; just as someone can understand being, and not understand something from the notion of intelligibility; but the intelligible can never be understood, according to this aspect, unless being is understood. Hence it is clear that being is the first conception of the intellect.

The answer is in the comments section.

Theoremata Scoti, Pars V

Part five of Bl. Duns Scotus' Theoremata is a kind of deconstruction of natural theology. In it he attempts to find the fundamental principles upon which natural theology rests and shows how the whole edifice comes tumbling down if those principles are not sufficiently rigorously established.

The context in which we should understand this part seems to me to be clarified by a remark Allan Wolter makes in the Preface to his edition of Scotus' De primo principio, namely that this latter work "may be the most carefully thought out attempt of any schoolman to prove the existence of God within the epistemic norms for demonstration laid down in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics." Anyone familiar with that work will appreciate the justice of that remark, as well as the nature of Scotus' project in proving God's existence and attributes. For the subtle doctor is not satisfied with providing "reasons" to accept God's existence or "ways" by which it can be proved; he wants to provide a really rigorous demonstration, one which if properly grasped will give the human mind certain knowledge.

The fifth part here is jumbled. It is clearly divided into three parts, but the parts seem to have been mixed up, with the apparent beginning only coming in around paragraph 70 in the critical edition, and the final third seeming to be put first. Paragraph 70 is where I start.

Assumption 1: In essentially ordered things one must posit a first, which is unique in that ordered series, and cotemporal with it.

Assumption 2: There is an essential order in every kind of cause.

These are called "assumptions" here, because the ability to prove them is precisely what is called into doubt in this part, although it is on these principles that, for Scotus, natural theology--knowledge about God which cam be proved from natural things and insofar as he is the cause of things known to us--rests. Of course they are not "assumptions" for Scotus absolutely, because he spends a lot of time in other works trying to prove them. But here he says, "These two propositions are assumed, of which the first has three parts [i.e. that God is 1) first, 2) unique, 3) cotemporal with his creation], [but] the second is simple. But although either of these parts, namely 'first', 'unique', [and 'cotemporal'], may be probable, still it would be difficult or perhaps impossible for us to prove it simpliciter by necessary argument and by purely natural [reason]."

Conclusion 1: In the genus of efficient cause one must posit a unique first efficient [cause], which exists now in the nature of things.

This follows from the two assumptions, and this cause is called God.

Conclusion 2: Every efficient [cause] is more perfect than its effect or equally perfect, because nothing acts to a greater extent than it is in act.

Conclusion 3: God is more perfect than every effect.

From Conclusions 1 and 2. If God is the cause of everything else he must be at least as perfect as everything else.

Corollary: And so [God] is the most perfect of all and the highest in every difference of being, which simply implies a perfection, among which are one, true, good, necessary etc., because whatever is such is simply a perfection in some way . . . Put here the boundary of wha tis knowable about God by natural necessary reason; and this is supposing those first two assumptions.

This is classic scotism, showing that natural theology is developed by showing that God must contain in a supereminent way all pure perfections. But the conclusions are only as solid as the ground they're built on, and Scotus now begins to explore the difficulty with providing true demonstrations of natural theology's foundations.

How can the first part of the first [assumption] be proved, namely [that God is] "first" more in essentially ordered causes than [in] accidentally [ordered ones] [since in accidentally ordered causes there is no first cause simpliciter]? How can the second part by proved, [that God is] "unique"? How can it be proved [that God is] "cotemporal?

A primary difficulty that Scotus brings up here is how can it be proved by demonstrative arguments that the God who created the world--the temporally "first" cause--is the same as the principle which stands at the head of the chain of essentially ordered causes in the world now? How do you prove that the creaturely order of secondary causes need to be conserved in being by the first cause, even after their initial creation? Scotus sees that the Big Bang does not prove that God exists now, but only that there was an first cause in the sense of an initial one. Our impulse, of course, is to appeal to God's eternity or immutability, but if the foundations of natural theology haven't been secured yet, we can't appeal to its posterior conclusions. And if we can't prove that the initial cause is identical with whatever is the current "first" [in the ontological, not the temporal sense], then what happens to our natural certainty that God is "one" and "unique"?

The second assumption does not seem to be proved necessarily. For if many effects are so coordinated among themselves, so that none of them has the character of an effect with respect to another--as with a cow and an ass--why are all causes so ordered, that the first [in one causal chain] is always the cause of another [causal chain]? If this name "God" is given to some numerically identical first efficient [cause], it follows from this that it cannot be proved that God exists in the real world now, because if he no longer existed the coordination [of causes in the world] would remain through another [first cause, another God] univocal with him.

Again, remember that Scotus has not yet made his argument for the incompossibility of two first causes, because in this work the conceptual apparatus with which to do so hasn't been developed yet. From comments he makes later on it seems that what Scotus is showing what kinds of problems a thinker proceeding along Aristotelian lines, with principles and arguments from the Physics, is going to run into.

Beyond this, Scotus continues, the second assumption does not prove that any God exists, even a new one like the first, if it cannot be proved that conservation of the created order is needed as much as the original act of creation. Otherwise we can only conclude that a first cause is necessary for the world's becoming, not for its being. Whence it follows only that either exists or did exist once, as from a house it can be proved that a builder exists or did exist once.

Therefore these things, which it seems cannot be proved by necessary arguments from merely natural [reason], are laid out in order in the conclusions, as well as some others which cannot be proved.

That is, if these primary propositions of natural theology turn out to be unprovable, so are whatever less know propositions which follow from them and depend on them.

I omit any detailed discussion of the rest of Part V, in which Scotus lays out the "unprovable" conclusions systematically. It's rather horrible reading, a kind of anti-Contra Gentiles in which Scotus insists at great length that unless he who builds metaphysical systems builds his house upon the rock, he labors in vain that builds it.

In any case, the problems that he lays out here are not solved here. The reader must go to the De primo principio or other theological writings to see how Scotus deals with them. As I said yesterday, what seems to emerge is that the Theoremata is a kind of testing-ground where Scotus is working out the consequences of different approaches before giving them a more authoritative treatment elsewhere.

Theoremata Scoti, Pars IV

The fourth part of Scotus' Theoremata contains little worthy of comment. It consists of a (largely scattered and unconnected) series of notes on some of the questions in books VIII and IX of Scotus' QQ in Metaphysicam. The notes are mostly about the construction of a composite substance, the causes of its constituents and of the whole, and of the causation effected by each. There are no settled conclusions and no immediately discernible order in the notes, and so I'm going to omit any translation from the text.

Part IV supports what I've been suspecting about the nature of the Theoremata, namely that it seems to be a set of--not drafts, exactly--but of preliminary studies on questions that interest Scotus and which he discusses at much more length elsewhere. He's working out in a systematic way the consequences of various approaches to the problems set out in the various parts. Because of this none of it should be taken as Scotus' final word on anything without confirmation from one of the more authoritative works.

This sketch of an interpretation is particularly relevant for how to approach part V, which contains much of interest and which is very disconcerting at first. We'll see tomorrow how plausible it is.

Theoremata Scoti, Pars III B 2

Now we proceed with the second part of the section section of part three of Scotus' Theoremata, on conceptual analysis. After the lone conclusion about act we begin the numbered conclusions about concepts.

Conclusion 1: The analysis of concepts has a stopping-point.

This is of course the same as the first conclusion in section A. The explanation is also similar. For otherwise by definition nothing would be perfectly knowable, because none of the more primary things which might belong to it would be perfectly knowable either. Analysis has to stop at something which just is understood. "For neither can we conceive of infinites in one act, nor in infinite [acts], which could not be passed through," and so forth.

Conclusion 2: Every analyzable concept is primarily analyzed into determinable and determining [concepts], since into potential and actual or into material and formal. The determinable concept is called quidditative, the determining qualitative. Therefore essentially [predicative concepts] exceed quidditative ones.

This is quite different from the second conclusion in section A, although related to material presented later on there. But Scotus has decided not to continue with the previous thought and see where this determinable/determining set of concepts leads him--which is somewhere quite different. Read on.

Conclusion 3: Determinable and determining essentially include nothing the same, nor does one include the other, and this they are fundamentally [primo] diverse.

This is of course related to the corollary following the second conclusion in section A, and follows from the same reasons given there.

Conclusion 4: There is some last determining [concept] of every analyzable [from Conclusion 1]; [it must be] unique [from the unnumbered conclusion at the end of the last post]; [it must be] simple, because it is the last [therefore not further analyzable].

"And this one is properly called the determining one, because whatever else in included in that concept is determinable with respect to it, although with respect to [something] prior it might be determining in some way, but not [with respect to] the total concept."

Corollary 1: Therefore there are as many analyzable concepts as there are properly determining ones [which are] primarily diverse from the determinable ones. . . . Corollary 2: Therefore there is no concept which is common to all, [...] but the analysis of anything stops with what is qualitatively unanalyzable.

Again, otherwise there is an infinite progression. And if there were not more than one primary and irreducible concept, then there could be no different concepts at all, since each would contain the same formal content.

Conclusion 5: Not just any concept is analyzed at once into qualitatively unanalyzable ones.

This is the converse of the preceding corollary. Because if it were otherwise, then any two concepts whatsoever would be primarily diverse, rather than (as is the case) many concepts sharing something in common as well as having something different. If every concept were immediately analyzable into primary constituents, everything would be in its own genus.

Conclusion 6: Quidditative concepts are more common than analyzed ones, but in analysis the posterior are more common than the prior.

Conclusion 7: There is a stopping-point in quidditative analysis at one first concept.

"But this concept is the most common [from Conclusion 6], and it is the concept of being."

Wait a minute! Hold on! Section A, especially Conclusions 2 and 5, were looking like a direct rejection of the univocity of the concept of being, which was strange and disconcerting, because this is Scotus after all. But now, after largely similar definitions and conclusions, Scotus is clearly affirming a univocal concept of being! What's going on? Perhaps the explanation which follows here explains the difference in the thinking between the earlier and later versions:

"Now there can be certainty about this and yet doubt remain; this is not true of any other quidditative concept: it would be certitude and doubt about the same concept. {*Interpolated note: One can know quidditatively that potency is a being, yet not know what kind of being or whether subject or accident.}

There is some more stuff on this subject, less clear than the foregoing, in the next few paragraphs. More helpful are the parallel texts from other works the editors give us. The key point here is that we can have the concept of being confusedly in a way that we can't with any other concept. I cannot really be unclear whether white is a quality or a quantity without simply failing to have the concept. I either know it or I don't. But I can be sure that it is something.

More immediately relevant to us is the application this have to Conclusion 5 in section A, which was, as we recall, "No identical concept is per se common to the created and the uncreated." Why does Scotus not repeat this? Because he's now being more clear about the difference between the concept of being and other concepts. Remember that properly-formed concepts about extramental things are not fictions, but have real adequation to the external world. And our concepts if true need to reflect the structure of things outside of ourselves. I can't think that man is a quality or that white is a place. This is not merely false but nonsense.

Now it is also nonsense to think that God and creatures have anything whatsoever in common. God does not exist in the way that man does; he does not belong to the genus of substance as man does, nor does he fall under any other genus. He's not the sort of thing that the rest of things are. And yet! He exists, and because the concept of being is indeterminate in any sense whatsoever, we can think that God is and not be wrong, as we would be wrong to attribute to him any other creaturely determination. So--just as Scotus says above that I can know that potency is a being while unsure whether it's a subject or accident or what kind of being--I can think accurately that God exists, without being sure whether God is temporal or eternal, material or immaterial, willing or bound by necessity, etc.

St Bonaventure makes this exact same point in his Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity. And it simply must be accepted as true, or else what philosophers and theologians have been doing for the last three thousand years is simply nonsense. Homer thought that divinity was plural and finite and was wrong, but he really was talking about the providential order of the universe. Aristotle thought God knew only himself and made the world by necessity, and was wrong, but he was talking about God. Tertullian and Manes thought God was a finely diffused material substance, and they were wrong, but they were talking about God. Therefore we allude to God using the same concept of "something that is" that we do to everything else, even though in point of metaphysical fact there is nothing whatsoever really in common between God and any creature.

Conclusion 8: There is only one most common quidditative concept.

Everything else will fall into some category. "Because if there were two, both would be included in any other quidditative [concept]. Therefore either one would be in the other and then one would be most common, or else neither in either and then one is determinable and the other determining, and so only one is quidditative." See Conclusions 1 and 6.

Conclusion 9: Some quidditative concepts are immediately contained under the first quidditative [concept].

These are "famously posited to be only ten," the categories which cannot be reduced to each other or to anything more common, except being, and are the ten primary genera. Being itself does not fall under any genus.

Conclusion 10: There is some qualitative concept denominating any quidditative one [...]

"This is proved, because the first denominating [concept] per se denominates whatever is below. These first ones denominate being as one, true, good. Thus they will denominate per se any quidditative [concept]. These are called the most common denominatives."

Conclusion 11: No most common denominative concept includes per se the first quidditative concept, nor therefore any inferior one, and so [they are] in no genus . . . Thus they are qualitative transcendentals.

Otherwise it would be nonsense to say "one being", since "one" and "being" would have an identical meaning, which they obviously don't.

So here we conclude with Scotus coming upon four transcendentals, one quidditative, three qualitative, which neither fall into any categories, describe any genera, nor follow the general rules applying to nearly every concept. None of this was included in the version of Theoremata part III labeled section A. Is it perhaps the case that we can't simply speak in the realm of concepts without examining the metaphysics behind them, since not every concept has the same kind of reference to the extramental world? Could it be the case that a denial of conceptual univocity comes from an insufficient examination of the uniqueness of the transcendentals? And--interesting as this conclusion may be--what does the difference between the two sections here tell us about the nature of the work we are examining? What exactly is Scotus doing in the Theoremata?

Further reflection will have to wait for later posts.

A New Discovery

In a comment to my post from last night, one of our anonymous readers writes the following:

Hurry, before I start solving the problem about how many angels are on a pinhead!

Hopefully the Scotus installment for tonight will sate the hunger of our ravenous audience for a while. But if not, I hereby announce a discovery which will render anonymous' project superfluous: the only known scholastic discussion of this famous question. I found the following disputation in one of the many medieval codices lying around in my library, in a collection of little-known quodlibets by the obscure but brilliant Ioannis de Ultima Thule. Although short and in especially barbarous jargon, nevertheless its unique character makes it a highly significant text. You heard it here first! Enjoy:

Utrum possit determinari quanti angeli in capite acus sunt.

Interrogatus est quanti angeli sunt in capite acus. Et arguitur quod numerus est infinitus. Quia angelus nulli magni magnitudini est. Ergo, etc.

Contra: angelus est pura intelligentia. Sed caput acus est stultus. Intelligentiarum autem cum stultorum non societatum potest esse. Ergo videtur quod numerus angelorum in capite acus est nullum.

Respondeo quod stultus quoque habet curatorem angelum, qui non eum relinqueret quamvis stolidus. Ergo numerus est unus.

Here is my translation:

Whether it can be determined how many angels are on a pinhead.

It was asked how many angels are on a pinhead. And it is argued that the number is infinite. For an angel has no magnitude, therefore, etc.

On the contrary: an angel is a pure intelligence. But a pinhead is stupid, and there can be no association between the intelligent and the stupid. Therefore it seems that the number of angels on a pinhead is none.

I respond that even a stupid person has a guardian angel, who would not desert him no matter how dumb he might be. Therefore the number is one.

Theoremata Scoti, Pars III B 1

In Theoremata Part III, section B, Scotus starts in the same place as in section A, with the definition of the concept. Here, however, the treatment is fuller and soon veers off down an alternative path. This sort of thing is not unprecedented elsewhere in Scotus' works. It appears that more than once he will begin a treatment of a topic, change his mind about how he wants to approach it, and start over. But because of the unfinished state in which he left so many of his works, both versions end up in posthumous editions of the book as though they were distinct parts. For another example, see the QQ. In Metaphysical VII, questions 14 and 15.

All right, beginning again with the definition of a concept:

I call a concept an object understood in act, namely as it is in the intellect, not as the form [exists in itself], but as it is in the act of thought [in esse cognitum].

"Here 'to be in' is nothing except having an actual relation to the intellect, or the intellect [having an actual relation] to it, or either to either."

It's clear that Scotus is trying to be more clear here than in the parallel definition in section A. The follow-up explanation in part A was about terminology, but here instead Scotus goes on to define subsets of concepts, perhaps a more useful task. He divides concepts into several varieties and explains their differences:

"Every concept [which is] per se one is either altogether simple--that is, of which either nothing is conceived, or else the whole is--or it is not altogether simple, but rather incomplex." *{Interpolated note: That is, it is not composed of potency and act, as [for instance in the concept] of an infinite being.} "Infinite being" is not simple, because I can conceive "Infinite" and "Being" separately, but it's not a complex concept either, since "Infinite" is not exactly a determining characteristic of "Being"--since the latter, after all, is neither a genus nor in a genus.

"A concept is called analyzable, when it essentially includes several concepts, of which one can be conceived without the whole." For instance, "Triangle" can be analyzed into "Three" and "Plane Figure", etc., which can be conceived apart from "Triangle".

"Of concepts which are not per se one, [there are some] which are called aggregate, such as 'white man'; and about a fourth kind, called complex, and a fifth, called discursive, see below."

Now Scotus adds some remarks about how these varieties of concepts are related to one another.

"Every concept [can be] compared to any [which is] not altogether the same as itself: either it is primarily diverse from itk, if it agrees with it in no concept; or different, if it agrees in something and differs in something; or ordered, for instance if one whole [concept] includes another, but not conversely, the one is called including and the other included. Only an analyzable concept can be different [in the just-defined sense] and can include primarily diverse [concepts]; and an included one can itself be either simple or analyzable."

See? That's much more thorough! But the second definition is identical to its counterpart in section A:

Definition 2: That is said to be conceived first which is adequated to the intellect.

The third definition is going in the same direction as its counterpart, but is less clear and making a slightly different point:

Definition 3: Whatever is included in the primary [object] understood is per se not primary.

The fourth definition is similar to its counterpart but formulated differently:

Definition 4: [Something is] perfectly known on the part of the object when nothing pertaining to the object lies concealed.

And two corollaries:

Corollary: Therefore a simple [object], if it is conceived, is conceived perfectly. [Second corollary:] An analyzable [concept] may happen to be conceived imperfectly.

At this point Scotus starts doing something different than in section A. There are no new versions of definitions 5 and 6, but rather than moving directly to his conclusions, there's some additional business. After explicitly making the assumption that there are in fact some analyzable concepts, he looks in some more detail at how the different varieties of concepts are related to each other.

"Some concepts are not included [in others], such as the concepts of all singulars and lone [objects]. All others are included in these and are abstracted by analyzing from these." There follows an interpolated note, to the effect that things are conceived by us confusedly before being conceived distinctly. The main text goes on to say that something is conceived distinctly when conceived according to the way it is distinguished from other things; but is conceived confusedly when indistinctly. Therefore not everything which is not a first or primary object is conceived confusedly, because (for instance) a genus is conceived as distinctly in the concept of a definition as it is per se, yet then it is not conceived primarily, but the definition is primary.

Here Scotus reminds of the principle that "everything per se one and not simple is [contituted] from act and potency or from matter and form." He indicates that this is Aristotelian boilerplate, before going on to draw the following conclusion:

There is some unique and simple act of any composite.

"From that [act] is the unity of the composite in itself and [its] distinction from something else. For the act distinguishes, therefore it is proper. But it is unique, because anything belonging to the composite is potential with respect to it and so is not the act of this composite, although with respect to anything else in the composite it can be called an act. For the some [reason it is] simple; otherwise something belonging to it would be a further act."

Now Scotus seems to be wandering away from conceptual analysis and just doing straightforward metaphysics; for this reason the editors don't number this conclusion with the ones he draws from the definitions. But since this seems like enough for one post already, I will save the conclusions proper for the next sequel.