Hall on Scotus

Alexander Hall has an entry in the internet encyclopedia of philosophy on Scotus' on natural knowledge of God. A good intro  to the topic by a specialist currently working in the field. It had escaped my notice before, so  I call your attention to it now. Here it is.

Introduction to Scotus

Here is a handy introduction to Scotus for the philosophical layperson. Written by Jack Allen.

Here are his thoughts on why Scotus is not read much today.

Given all these major doctrines, one might wonder why Scotus doesn’t get much air time these days. To my mind there are three reasons. Firstly, since the Enlightenment, Medieval philosophy has been seen as backward, superstitious, or just a bit weird. This attitude is encapsulated by David Hume’s famous Enlightenment claim that “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion” (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748). Scholasticism, then, has been given a fairly hard time, often by influential philosophers who have not engaged with it in any deep manner.

Secondly, there is St Thomas Aquinas. Since Pope Leo XIII wrote Aeterni Patris in 1879, great philosophical importance has been given to Aquinas in Catholic and Anglo-Catholic thinking. The 1917 Code of Canon Law claimed that Aquinas’ methods should be used in teaching philosophy and theology. The popularity of Aquinas (which is certainly not entirely unjustified), combined with the negative view of Scotus put about by the Radical Orthodoxy movement, has led to a marginalisation of Scotus’ work.

Thirdly, Scotus’ writings are famous for being difficult to read. It is easy to disparage Scotus for the same reason it is easy to disparage any postmodernist: their writing is dense and subtle, and it can be difficult to see what they are saying, if anything. And not only is Scotus’ Latin tight and elliptical – earning him the title of ‘the Subtle Doctor’ – but little of his work is available in English, although more is becoming available year on year.

Hackett on Scotus

Via Medievalists.net comes Hackett's article, "Duns Scotus: A Brief Introduction to his Life and Thought", Studies in Scottish Literature 26 (1991).

Available at: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol26/iss1/37

Duns Scotus and the Brockie Forgeries

What follows are some brief thoughts on the volume I linked to earlier, Blessed John Duns Scotus: Marian Doctor by Fr. Stefano Manelli, FI. It is published by the Franciscans of the Immaculate, who also have several other volumes on Scotus for sale. Let me say at the outset that I am more than pleased that they are attempting a popular presentation of Scotus. Given the current position held by Catholic Academia (Scotus is evil), it is encouraging that there are those who promote his thought.

Unfortunately this volume relies on the Brockie forgeries. Which is odd, because these were exploded over fifty years ago.  More on Brockie below. The information that comes from the forgeries is that Scotus had an uncle named Elias, his father was named Ninian and was a wealthy landowner. These facts are also found in just about every internet  biography of Scotus, as I am reminded every Nov. 8 when all the 'saint of the day' blogs post this erroneous info. It was also present in the Duns Scotus movie, which was produced by the same Franciscan group.  The Manelli volume also includes lots of other pious myths, but unfortunately he gives no references so I cannot trace them down. Normally, the lack of notes in a volume meant for popular consumption would not bother me, but given there is so much myth-making involved I would like to know where it comes from. For example, the author claims Scotus was a big dummy but prayed to the Virgin who made him smart (this was also in the movie). Also, Scotus allegedly held the Christ child on one Christmas eve during 1290's. Also, before his famous debate at Paris over the immaculate conception, he passed a statue of the Virgin on the facade of the royal chapel and asked the Virgin's favor. The statue nodded, and henceforth was known as "Our Lady of Duns Scotus", but was broken up and thrown in the Seine by the French revolutionaries, and was eventually dredged up by another order and became known as 'Our Lady of Good Health'. Finally, Scotus is alleged to have suffered a breakdown in disputing with Beguines and Beghards and died soon after (perhaps a none too subtle attempt to make him a martyr and so an automatic saint). All of these tales are alleged but no reference provided. No doubt they are part of Scotus' hagiographical tradition and not simply fabricated by Fr. Manelli, but in the absence of notes it's impossible to tell.

But regarding the Brockie forgeries about Scotus' origin there is no excuse, as a lengthy article was published in the first Studia Scholastica-Scotistica series.

Henry Docherty, "The Brockie Mss. and Duns Scotus" in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, Rome 1968, 327-360.

Marianus Brockie (1687-1755) was a Benedictine of the abbey of St. James in Regensburg, Bavaria. He attempted to write a history of the religious orders called the Monasticon Scoticanum, though it was never published. This volume was examined early in the twentieth century by a historian, Dr. Easson, and Longpre, the famous Scotus scholar. Easson was suspicious of some of it, but it was not until Docherty wrote his article that the true extent of the fabrications became clear.

Here's a choice quote from Docherty's article, a comment on a passage about "Elias Duns", p. 357:

In other words, in his anxiety to substantiate his unique thesis on the origin and early life of Duns Scotus, Brockie actually introduces the allegedly relevant clause from the Tweedie Codex and Register [both fabricated] in no less than three different original versions, all variously corrected and two duly cancelled, and with the bold emphasis of its having been found "his verbis", "nominatum" and "expressis verbis". This is surely the high-water-mark of Marianus Brockie's catalogue of bogus charters, fictitious histories, imaginative hagiography, outright mendacity and crass effrontery. On his testimony alone has rested the popular Maxton-Littledean theory on the birthplace of John Duns Scotus, and not the least contribution to the seventh centenary of that event would be its timely and final erasure from the standard manuals and other works of reference: to that end this study has been directed.

on p. 358 he summarizes his results:

1. Marianus Brockie was himself guilty of forgery in compiling his Monasticon Scoticanum

2. This was by no means an isolated instance or occasional lapse; rather, it permeates the whole of his Dominican history and almost constitutes entirely that of the Friars Minor Conventual.

3. The so-called "Codex Tueedianus" - in so far as he intended its acceptance as a primary source - simply did not exist, except in his own incredible imagination.

4. Quite clearly the alleged Register of the Franciscan Conventuals at Haddington comes into the same category.

5. So also - I venture - does the elusive William Tweedie, "scriba primarius" of Haddington, not to mention Elias Duns and the other kindred of John Duns Scotus.

6. The total number of documents which I have found to be certainly fabricated by Brockie in respect of the Scottish Dominicans and Friars Minor Conventual is at least sixty-five, plus three probables, i.e. where the holograph copy is missing. From the nature of these we can also evaluate his references to ohers, including alleged diplomas of Alexander III, David II and James I, which "had been eaten-away by book-worm". Nor does the list include his countless "extracts" on personalities and other items, apparently taken from the codices containing the documents. Of the latter forgeries, six royal diplomas, twenty-seven other charters and one indenture from the Tweedie Codex refer to the Franciscans, while twelve others (including one probable) from the same source apply to the Dominicans. No less Brockie's own composition, although falsely ascribed to other sources such as Guthrie and the Baillies of Castelcary, are three royal diplomas and sixteen charters, plus two probables, for the Friars Preachers also.

Ironically, Manelli includes the letter of Paul VI, "alma parens", which was written for the conference in which Docherty's article appears.

Manelli also includes an address of John Paul II to the Roman Scotistic Commission; JPII is more positive in his assessment than is the current Pope. See Manelli, p. 112:

With his splendid doctrine on the primacy of Christ, on the Immaculate Conception, on the primary value of the Revelation and of the Magisterium of the Church, on the authority of the Pope, on the capability of human reason to make the great truths of faith accessible, at least in part, and to show their non-contradictory nature, Duns Scotus is even today a pillar of Catholic theology, and original teacher, full of ideas and incentives for an ever more complete knowledge of the truth of the faith.

Final estimation of Manelli's book: most of it is pious myth, the section on Scotus' positive doctrine is short (and seeks include Scotus as a defender of the title 'co-redemptrix' for Mary), but the translation of 'Alma parens' and JPII's address is well worth the price ($4.25).

Note on Some Translations of Scotus

The following post is the result of a question that came in over email about the reliability of the following translations. Note that if our readers have any requests I am willing to oblige. Otherwise, you will have more of the same fare of rants against Thomism followed by uncontextualized quotations from manuscripts.

Here is the list:

(1) A Treatise on God as First Principle, ed. Allan Wolter (Franciscan Herald Press)

(2) Philosophical Writings, ed. Allan Wolter (Hackett)

(3) Duns Scotus, Metaphysician, with four texts and commentary, ed. William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter

(4) God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, trans. and ed. Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter

Here are my comments:

(1) Wolter's edition of the De primo principio is based on Evan Roche's edition, itself based on the critical edition of Mueller, completed during the 1940's (independent of the Vatican commission).  I have seen several articles refer to the inadequacies of Mueller's edition, but I am not sure what they are. Wolter mentions that some of the theorems are out of order in the Wadding ed., but he didn't accuse Mueller of the same. In terms of punctuation I found it (Mueller's edition) a little hard to read, but that was all. It does have a stemma codicum, which not even all the modern editions of Scotus have. Wolter's edition, in addition to the Latin and English text, also contains extensive commentary that I found helpful when I read it several years ago. Bottom line: this is the standard edition of the text and is commonly cited by contemporary scholars. Of course, something like 50% of it is cribbed verbatim from the Ordinatio.

(2) Here Wolter used the Wadding ed. and updated it with the Assisi 137 (=MS A) that plays such an important role in the Vatican edition. I would say it's fine for class, but given the complexities of the Vatican edition (extra's, revisions, Ms. A crapping out in bk II, etc.) one would want to cite the Vat. ed. in any publication.

(3) The texts in this volume are taken from the Vatican edition, the Opera Philosophica, as well as the Vienna ms. of the Reportatio which claims to be examined in the presence of Scotus. I would say this volume is fine for class, but obviously one ought to cite the Vat. ed directly (scholarly snobbery I suppose, though the editions of Scotus are fairly complicated and one ought to consult them in any case before making any claims about Scotus).

(4) In this work Wolter translated the Wadding edition, itself based on earlier printings. The version of the Wadding ed. was that published by Alluntis in the BAC series. There is no critical edition of this text. Wolter checked the text against three mss. suggested to him by the Roman editors, though I am not sure how extensively. One ought to cite the latin, but for now Wadding is all there is unless one is willing to dig up mss. or earlier printings.

One ought to note the Wolter-Bychkov edition of Reportatio I as well. The edition claims to be 'hermaneutic', which seems to mean that all readings were chosen for sense. The edition also claims to be the "examined report", which means it is supposed to be based on the Vienna ms. (the only one to contain 'examinata' in the colophon, and which contains many unique readings as well as passages it shares with the Additiones). Though I have heard many rumors regarding the origins of this text and the method employed, all I will say is that I have myself spot-checked passages from Rep. I d.36 for an article I was writing (note that Noone published a critical edition of this distinction). I found that the Vienna ms. was not followed consistently (again, 'hermaneutic' absolves them from this); also, there was a homoeoeleuton introduced by the editors found in no manuscript. Note, however, that I checked only 7 or 8 passages. A full review would require rather more extensive soundings.

So if the general conclusion isn't clear, it is this: these editions and translations are fine for use in classes and private study, but one ought to be careful when basing any claims on them when publishing. One then runs the risks of a faulty text as well as misunderstanding the nature of the work one is reading. Just yesterday I was reading an article by the Radically orthodox Philip Blond, who was complaining about univocity. He quoted a line of Scotus, and said it was contained in the "De Metaphysica" of Duns Scotus. I had never heard of this work, but it turns out that this is one of Wolter's editorial insertions on the first page of (2) above. Wolter himself rather confusingly has a single paragraph from the QQ. in Met. under that heading, immediately followed by the Ordinatio; I'm not sure which Blond meant to cite.

A Ramble on Ockham, Scholarship, and Other Matters

The other day I mentioned that I'd been reading Armand Maurer's The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of Its Principles. I picked it up last week and have read about a third of it so far.

Now, Maurer's book isn't a replacement for or a competitor to Marilyn Adams' William Ockham, which must be one of the most impressive books on mediaeval philosophy of the last fifty years. At almost 1,400 pages, Adams' book is more than twice the length of Maurer's; it's enormously detailed and enormously comprehensive; it treats a vast range of arguments in precise detail, not only Ockham's, but those of many of Ockham's interlocutors and influences, including Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Scotus, Chatton, Aureol, etc. Anyone who wants a good introduction to post-Thomistic philosophy and doesn't need it gentle would do well to study Adams' book carefully, together with John Wippel's The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study in Late Thirteenth-Century Philosophy. (By the way, as long as I'm throwing out generalized recommendations, if you'd like to round out your education, gentle reader, you should pair these books with John F. Quinn's massive The Historical Constitution of Bonaventure's Philosophy, which is however unfortunately very difficult to obtain. I don't have a copy, but I worked my way through it while writing the old dissertation.)

There are, however, problems with Adams' book. For one thing, did I mention that it's freakin' huge? It takes some real stamina. I'll admit that I didn't finish it. When I was taking Timothy Noone's course on Ockham in grad school I started reading it, but about two-thirds in to the book and the semester, I stopped. It's not just the size, but the size combined with the presentation. Adams writes the kind of anglo-analytic scholastic stuff that I've never found very palatable, medieval arguments presented with a heavy 20th century veneer: lists of numbered propositions and labelled arguments, variables with subscripts and superscripts, occasional modern notation, etc. This is not necessarily bad in principle: Scotus himself used some of these techniques (he and Ockham have good claims to be the first real anglo-analytic philosophers, if the term implies an English-speaking origin, preoccupation with logic, linguistic analysis, a highly compressed (for Scotus) or lucid (for Ockham) style as opposed to a florid or elaborate one (like Henry's or Bonaventure's)), apparently for his own convenience, since it does not make him easier to read. But Adams uses them, presumably, for the convenience of and to appeal to a mid-20th-century mainstream analytic audience. This limits the book in some ways, since for a broader audience, continentals or people like me who are actually more familiar with the scholastic tradition than the 20th-century one, understanding Ockham through Adams sometimes means having to mentally re-translate her modernizations back into something like what Ockham might have really said. It's a little like a Latin trying to read Aristotle as translated and commented on by the Arabs - much better than nothing, for sure, but of course you'd rather have it straight from the Greek. And it's a real question whether the mainstream analytic tradition, not used to thinking in medieval patterns, will care enough about any scholastic thinker to master a book like Adams'. I'm afraid the whole Adams-Stump-Kretzmann-Kenny etc. project of dragging medieval philosophy into the mid-20th-century has been more or less a failure, given the fact that contemporary philosophy has moved on without really assimilating their work, making their books targeted at an audience that is fast ceasing to exist and so dated in a way that many books by the likes of Gilson or Maritain or Yves Simon aren't.

In any case, I was talking about Maurer. His book on Ockham may be no substitute for Adams', but in many ways I'm liking it better. It's extremely well written, very clear and even enjoyable. There's a huge amount of erudition behind it - Maurer has clearly mastered the corpus of Ockham's writings and the secondary literature - but I find the presentation clean, uncluttered, and very intelligible. Maurer's writing in English but he presents Ockham as a medieval, not as a modern anglo-philosopher in disguise. He's light on his feet, which is a pleasing contrast to some other scholars whose projects are similar. I'm thinking for instance of Wippel, whom respect and filial piety (he was one of my teachers and on my dissertation committee) forbid me to criticize too harshly. His (fairly few) books are magisterial and indispensable. But The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being is not exactly fun to read.

Maurer is not writing a really comprehensive survey, but as his title indicates, is seeking to understand the various facets of Ockham's thought as reflected in his few basic principles. The first part of the book treats these principles in themselves, with two long chapters on "Logic and Reality" and "Philosophy and Theology" which provide a very good summation of the central stances of Ockhamism. The second and third parts are about the application of these principles to God and Creatures respectively. Maurer presents Ockham without espousing Ockhamism, as he indicates in his introduction, but extremely fairly and straightforwardly, with only the very occasional criticism or caveat.

I'll post a longish excerpt soon, but right now I want to notice something Maurer says in the prefatory blurb right at the beginning of the book:

Martin Heidegger once declared, "Every thinker thinks but one single thought." The original and focal point of Ockham's thought is the singular or individual thing (res singularis), as common nature (natura communis) is the central conception of Scotism and the act of existing (esse) is of Thomism. With Ockham the traditional conjugations of being come to signify the thing itself in its ineluctable unity.

With all due respect to Heidegger, I'm not so sure about this. No doubt some thinkers can be reduced to one single central thought, but I have my doubts about both Aquinas and Scotus. Certainly some modern Thomists have acted as though all of Thomism depended on his doctrine of esse, but there's a lot more to Thomas himself than that. In fact when I think of Thomas what primarily strikes me is a certain kind of order which sets him apart from his competitors (recall his remarks about order in the first chapter of Summa contra gentiles). St Bonaventure is another extremely orderly thinker, but Bonaventure's sense of order is artistic and graceful, where Thomas' is schematic and pedagogical. Not for nothing is Thomas the patron of teachers. He excels at being able to talk intelligently about everything, and above all to produce the sense that everything fits. This is why Thomism gets compared to a Gothic cathedral. It's huge, it's varied, the variety is subordinated to a single great design. On the other hand the range of issues that Scotus or Bonaventure deal with is more restricted. Bonaventureanism is less like a cathedral and more like a fantastically illuminated manuscript.

It's more fair, however, to say that esse is an "original and focal point" for Thomas than it is to say that the common nature is for Scotus. That just strikes me as wrong. Scotus' mind does not evince either Bonaventurean or Thomistic order: opening his books frequently produces the sensation of falling into a profound but chaotic abyss of insight. His method is not systematic and his thought is not easily systematizable. Vos' book The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus tries to reduce it to some semblance of order by orienting his achievement around some central conceptual accomplishments, like synchronic contingency, but with in my opinion very limited success. The common nature is, of course, very important for Scotus, but the notion of the irreducible individual is no less so - in fact the Scotist insistence on the primacy of the individual is in my opinion one of its great strengths over Thomism. Haecceities, the formal distinction, intrinsic modes, essentially ordered causes, and many other distinctively Scotist ideas work together in a complex and delicate balance in which no one of them takes priority over the others and all are fitted into a more general Aristotelean substrate from which they only emerge as needed in the particular instance. There are certain basic Thomistic notions which Aquinas deploys over and over again in a hundred contexts with almost monotonous regularity - esse, the real distinction of being and essence, immateriality or separability from matter, etc. - in a way that Scotus doesn't. If Thomas' thought is like a cathedral, Scotus' is like a piece of enormously complex polyphony sung over a drone of Aristotelianism and a cantus firmus of revelation. You can't grasp it all at once because it's essentially developmental and progressive. You can't reduce it to a leitmotif because the various melodic themes arise when needed by the music as a whole in one or another voice, and the importance is less in any particular voice or theme than in their fugal interplay. What's happening now depends on what happened in the debate a moment ago more than on the demands of some architectonic conceptual structure.

All this rhapsodizing is, of course, taking us away from Ockham again. For Ockham I do think it's fair to say, as our own Ockham said the other day, "It seems Ockham took a handful [of] basic and already established principles then applied them relentlessly and consistently in places they had never been applied before." But if Ockham's strength is to show what happens when you join genius and fearless persistence to such a technique, damn the consequences, it would be a mistake to assume that other thinkers are trying less successfully to do the same thing.

As I noted, in a while I'll post a lengthy excerpt from Maurer's book. I may also say something soon about the other book I bought at the same time and am reading simultaneously with it, Sokolowski's Phenomenology of the Human Person, which I'm enjoying very much.

Errantry

I have the character defect (not too rare, perhaps) of, whatever I am or ought to be doing, wishing I were doing something else - even when what I am or ought to be doing is something I very much want to do. Throughout school I had this problem: whatever I was studying, I wanted to study something else. When I was supposed to be learning calculus I was reading Thomists. When I was supposed to be studying Greek and French I was teaching myself Latin on the side.

Now that I'm in school not as a student but as a teacher this fault hasn't gone away. Last week I was teaching Hume's Enquiry, but Hume got me thinking of other British Empiricists I'd loved and lost, and I ended up rereading Berkeley's Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous instead of focussing on class preparation. This week it's Kant's Prolegomena, and I find myself feeling the pull, which I haven't felt in a very long time, of the Critique of Pure Reason.

{Autobiographical Interlude}

Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant were the first serious philosophy books I ever read, back as a fifteen-year-old novice. I might have glanced at a little Plato first, but I don't recall. Until then the extent of my philosophy had been largely C.S. Lewis and various things along the lines of Francis Schaeffer. At fifteen I hoarded my pennies until I could afford to buy a set of the 1952 edition of the Britannica Great Books. I read here and there as inclination and ability led me, but I knew I wanted to get to the philosophy. As I say, I don't recall how much Plato I looked at, but it couldn't have been much. A short acquaintance showed that Aristotle and Aquinas were too hard to start with, and I thought I'd look at the English thinkers. The Locke-Berekely-Hume volume was just right.

On the whole these guys weren't a bad place to start philosophy. Their great advantage is that they are very good and clear writers, a fact I've come to appreciate more and more after spending so much of my subsequent years with either Germans or scholastics. I read the empiricists avidly but never felt taken in by them. I couldn't at the time put my finger on where they were going wrong but I felt sure they must be; nevertheless my appetite was whetted. They incited my curiosity without settling my opinions or even my inclinations. When in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley said

It were an endless as well as an useless thing to trace the Schoolmen, those great masters of abstraction, through all the manifold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute which their doctrine of abstract natures and notions seems to have led them into

he didn't dissuade me from doing so myself. It turns out that following the schoolmen through their labyrinths - of error sometimes, of dispute always, of wisdom, I hope, occasionally - is indeed an endless thing, but not, I have found, a useless one. When at the end of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume said

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion

I didn't take his advice. My volumes of divinity and school metaphysics have multiplied a hundredfold since then. But it was a start.

I have to confess that I didn't read Kant next because he was the logical step after Hume, but for a much stupider reason. Nickelodeon used to show a cartoon called "Rocko's Modern Life", and in one episode Rocko discovers that his friend, who he had always considered a dim bulb, is actually a prodigy. He visits his friend's house to find him reading the Critique of Pure Reason, decides that he can't be bested by his friend, and goes home to read it himself, resulting in an amusing montage of mental anguish and existential horror (this is how I remember the episode; it's been more than fifteen years). I took this as a challenge and started to read the Critique myself. Kant daunted me as it daunted Rocko - I had to take notes to follow the argument, the first time I had done that with a book, and I didn't finish it - but I took it as a challenge to come back to.

Of course, speaking of challenges to come back to, thinking of the possibility of picking up the Critique reminds me that I never did finish Hegel's Phenomenology. We spent many weeks reading sections of it my senior year in college, and at the time it didn't leave me wanting more. Some years after that it was the only book on my comprehensive reading lists in graduate school that I didn't finish. Last year I bought a commentary on it by my favorite undergraduate teacher, thinking that he if anyone would teach me to love Hegel as he deserves, but the commentary has so far gone as unfinished as its commentatum.

* * *

So, reading the opening sections of the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics is filling me with an irrational desire to read Hegel side by side with a 500-page commentary. I think I'll manage to hold out for now. But I do the same thing with literature. Earlier this summer I was rereading The Canterbury Tales. I took a break to read The Faerie Queene for the third time, and when I was done, instead of going back to Chaucer, I've instead gone back to a series of Icelandic sagas. Right now I'm in the middle of a translation of Njalssaga which is more literally faithful than the last one I read, so I'm enjoying it. But I confess that I'm taking a break from it in order to read The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, a little book that I find improves with age. I've decided just now that the third poem, "Errantry", is an allegory of the philosophical life, and it includes an episode on the hero's attempt to win love and reward from that harsh mistress Academia:

He sat and sang a melody,
his errantry a tarrying,
he begged a pretty butterfly,
that fluttered by to marry him.
She scorned him and she scoffed at him,
she laughed at him unpitying,
so long he studied wizardry,
and sigaldry and smithying.

It turns out that the pursuit, like so many pursuits, is just a distraction. The butterfly squanders his gifts and falls to bitter quarreling; the hero abandons her and looks elsewhere, but in his journeying and tourneying forgets his message and his errand. I need to beware of distractions. The real thing is the study - the wizardry and sigaldry and smithying.

How to Understand Scholastic Thought

Here are some pointers for beginners wanting to learn about Scholastic theology and philosophy. I hope my fellow bloggers will add their own material to this post.

1. Learn latin (otherwise, you'll be stuck reading Aquinas).

2. Learn the basic elements of Aristotelian logic: quia vs. propter quid demonstrations, parts of a syllogism (middle term, major and minor premises).

3. Read as much Aristotle and Augustine as possible.

4. Know the basic Scholastic genres: Quodlibet, Sententiae, Ordinary questions, Summa, various kinds of commentaries.

5. When you've done all this and are confronted by an actual Scholastic quaestio, consider the following bit of advice I have received from several professors but never followed: start by reading the determination [=the author's own answer/solution] of the question, then read the initial objections and their responses. I have never followed this myself, but it is good advice. Some scholastic questions can be bewilderingly complex (Scotus and Alnwick come to mind) and it is easy to get lost in all the back and forth. In my less lazy moments I like to at least glance over the structure of the question.

6. Read as much as you can by as many authors as you can find. At first the latin will seem weird and opaque if you are classically trained, but the amount of vocabulary is really quite small and the grammar is easier than classical latin. There are no dictionaries of scholastic terms (save for the Aquinas lexicon), so the best way to learn the Scholastic jargon is to read.

A Brief Introduction to the Works of Scotus

This post will be updated from time to time. For a published article on this topic, see Thomas William's introduction to the Cambridge Companion to Scotus.

LECTURA. Scotus's first set of lectures on the Sentences. The date of this work is unclear, the genre is probably that of notes. That is, they may not directly reflect the classroom lectures. Lectura I-II are a discrete work, Lectura III may not actually be part of the same sequence at all and could be a Reportatio.

ORDINATIO. An Ordinatio is the official version of a work prepared by a master for publication (from "ordinare). Scotus' Ordinatio incorporates the Lectura text, and was begun in 1302. It covers books I-IV. The order Scotus lectured was probably I-IV-II-III; and books I and IV contain a great deal of revisions that Scotus indicated be included in the final copy (these are the "extra's"). Scotus never finished this work, so in the strict sense it is not an Ordinatio at all. He was probably working on it at Paris as well as Oxford, which means that the interpolated passages from the Reportatio might be there at Scotus' direction (the Vatican edition normally excises these). This work has been commonly seen as the "summa" of Scotus, that is, where one can get Scotus' standard or normative opinion of things. This may not be the case.

REPORTATIONES. A Reportatio is a student report of a lecture, based on the oral presenation in the classroom. There are several sets of Reporationes associated with Scotus. For example, there is one allegedly from Cambridge, and a set from Paris. These cover all four books, and were probably delivered 1302-1305 (1305 was the year of Scotus' regency, in 1303-4 he was exiled) The "A"set is generally seen as the best of the reports, and it is indeed fairly polished. If one were to read a work of Scotus all the way through, I would recommend this one. Book I was apparently examined and approved for publication by Scotus himself; this is not true of the other books. Their exact doctrinal weight is thus somewhat ambiguous.

COLLATIONES. A set of conferences Scotus held with his students. There is both an Oxford and Parisian set. They are probably from later in his career. The format is a series of pro and con arguments, without any magisterial determination. So one would probably not cite one as evidence of Scotus' opinion's on a subject. Collatio 23, for example, is about analogy. It is the only passage in Scotus' writings where he analyzes arguments from Aquinas (taken from the Summa contra gentiles). But while he does criticize the arguments themsevles, he does not give a final answer to the problem. A few have been critically edited, no critical edition of the whole is even on the table at this point (well, it's listed as part of the Brepols series; but no one is actually going to start work on it for at least thirty years).

QUAESTIONES SUPER LIBRUM ISAGOGE PORPHYRII.

QUAESTIONES SUPER PRAEDICAMENTA ARISTOTELIS.

QUAESTIONES IN LIBROS METAPHYSICORUM ARISTOTELIS. A question-commentary rather than a literal one, as readers will be familiar with from Aquinas. Only books I-IX are genuine. This work is traditionally seen as early, but parts of book VII postdate the Lectura, and book IX at least has the appearance of a finished treatise. There are also some "extra's" and "additiones" that show that Scotus did spend some time revising the work. It has been edited as vols. 3-4 of the Opera Philosophica series from St. Bonaventure University.

QUAESTIONES DE ANIMA. This covers books II-III of the De anima. It has the appearance of a compendium for students of common franciscan positions with replies to standard objections to the franciscan positions. It is commonly seen as early, and Parisian, but I think the editors are begging the question on this. My co-blogger Michael showed in his dissertation that the editors screwed up a bit on the spiritual matter question, which is dependent on Gonsalvus of Spain's Quodlibet (disputed ca. 1302-4). When I read the work, the final questions on univocity and the object of the intellect seemed to me to be simply abbreviations of the Ordinatio rather than the first breakthrough of a new position (though this might be hard to prove). Further research on this matter is required.

QUAESTIO DE FORMALITATIBUS/LOGICA SCOTI. This is a fragmentary question disputed by Scotus at Paris (all of which info was proven by Dumont; Balic had thought the text to be one of the Collationes) on the subject of certain inferences that could be allowed when the formal distinction is at play. One issue is whether formal distinction can be derived from formal non-identity, which Scotus allows here; he had denied it in the Ordinatio.

TRACTATUS DE PRIMO PRINCIPIO. A treatise proving the existence and essential properties of God; there has been some debate of its relation to the commentaries on the Sentences. It appears that the majority of it is derived from the Ordinatio. Scotus gave the work over to a socius, who did not understand Scotus' directions clearly for there are some errors and irrelevant material thrown in. This treatise was cited early on by Scotists like Petrus Thomae and Antonius Andreae.

THEOREMATA. This treatise is modelled on Euclid and consists of a series of propositions and conclusions on various topics. Noone has described it as an unfinished notebook. There has been some controversy concerning the work, as passages appear to contradict Scotus' genuine writings. But these could also be explained as examples of positing impossible hypotheses in order to study what follows; for example, if univocity is not true, what does natural theology look like. My co-blogger Michael has written on this here.