At the end of the thirteenth century, the theory of divine illumination still had its defenders, although fewer and fewer. Even early in his career, Augustine had argued that purely natural processes cannot result in knowledge. First, when we cognize things intellectually by purely natural processes, our cognition stems from an exemplar that is itself changeable. With a changeable basis, our cognition must likewise be changeable and so not certain. Second, the other basis of our cognition, the human soul, is likewise changeable and therefore fallible.
We can attain certain knowledge, therefore, only if we have access to the unchangeable, uncreated exemplar, which only God can grant by a special illumination. Henry maintains that what is in the soul as a subject is mutable, even its own act of intellection; but if that is the case, then an illuminated intellection is itself mutable.
In that case, even divine illumination fails to preserve the soul from error. Moreover, Henry contends that created as well as uncreated exemplars play a role in producing certain knowledge. However, because the created exemplar is incompatible with certainty, adding an uncreated exemplar does not achieve certainty any more than adding necessary premises to contingent ones in an argument results in a necessary conclusion.
However, Scotus did considerable damage to any future attempts to formulate a divine illumination theory by undercutting its motivation. On his view, we do not need a theory of illumination to show that certain knowledge is possible.
The human intellect, by purely natural processes, can attain it, and in four sorts of cases:. We can have certain knowledge of principles because they are self-evident through their terms. As long as one grasps the meaning of the terms, one immediately sees that the principle is true. Experience can also result in certain knowledge, such as our knowledge that magnets attract iron. On the basis of this principle and experience, we can gain certain knowledge through induction.
We can have certain knowledge of our acts and mental states, such as whether we are understanding or willing. We can even be certain that we are seeing, Scotus contends. If I see a flash of light, but there is no light in the room, the species causing my visual act must still exist in my eye, and so I am genuinely seeing something, although not something outside my own body.
The level of certainty we gain from knowledge in this case is no less than that we gain from grasping principles evident through their terms. We can also have certain sensory knowledge, thanks to the same self-evident principle that grounds the certainty of induction. If the same object, always or for the most part, causes multiple senses to judge that it has property F, then we can be certain that the object really has property F.
Scholastic philosophical theologians are taxed not just with solving philosophical problems and creating philosophical systems, but with doing so in ways consistent with Biblical religion. Now, Genesis reports that the holy patriarch Abraham set out to kill his own son and that the holy patriarch Jacob took two wives, while Exodus tells of midwives who lied to Pharaoh and yet were rewarded by God. For a scholastic thinker, these texts would naturally raise questions about the status of the natural law, especially that portion of it recorded in the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue.
If, as the scriptures suggest, these agents did not do wrong in acting as they did, did they not, despite appearances, violate the natural law? Or did God grant a dispensation from the law? It is with these issues in mind that Scotus offers his most revealing discussion of the natural law. According to Scotus, God has in fact offered dispensations from the law. Dispensation may take two forms: God can revoke the law, or God can clarify the law.
However, even God is limited in the extent to which he can dispense. That is because the natural law in the strict sense consists of laws known through themselves on the basis of their terms. Because they are logically necessary truths, they cannot be revoked, at the very least. Scotus takes the first two commandments of the Decalogue to belong to the law of nature in the strict sense. The commandment to love God, for example, exemplifies the principle that what is best is to be loved most, which is known through itself.
Even God could not make it licit to hate him. These laws are not known through themselves on the basis of their terms; their truth value is contingent. Therefore, God can grant dispensations from these laws, which include all the commandments in the second table of the Decalogue.
In some texts, Scotus presents a view of moral goodness that appears to be largely naturalistic. To make these judgments about appropriateness, one needs to know only the nature of the agent, of the act, and of the power through which the agent performs the act. The moral law in its broad sense is therefore based on the natures of things and is accordingly rationally accessible to humans.
In other texts, such as Ordinatio 1 d. On this interpretation, however, it is hard to see how human beings have rational access to the natural law. Williams [] suggests that the Biblical assertion that God writes his commandments on our hearts be interpreted to mean that God gives us moral intuitions that accord with his commands, but if that is the case, when God grants dispensations, those very intuitions and the moral and cultural institutions built on them would lead us far astray.
Mediaeval philosophers agree that human acts have their source in the powers of will and intellect, and in articulating their detailed action theories and rich moral psychologies, these thinkers spell out the respective roles of the will and intellect.
They often disagree, however, about what those roles are and, in particular, about the relative priority of these powers in the production of human acts, with intellectualists giving greater priority to the intellect and voluntarists to the will. While most mediaeval thinkers offer nuanced theories, the views of Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Godfrey of Fontaines are predominately intellectualist, while those of Henry of Ghent and Peter John Olivi are predominately voluntarist.
The debates between intellectualists and voluntarists are important not just because they represent disputes over the origination of human acts, but because they also represent deep disagreements on the nature of free will and rationality, on what makes humans morally responsible, and on the role of virtue in morality.
Scotus means to show not just that the will is a higher power than the intellect, however. He argues for the remarkable claim that the will is unique among all created powers because it alone acts freely. Some potentialities have natures that determine what operations they will or will not perform in any given set of circumstances. A degree oven always operates the same way, and so unless there is some impediment, it will roast meat and dry clay, for that is the nature of heat.
The way such human powers as the senses, sensory appetites, and even the intellect operate is also determined by their natures, even if they do have a greater intrinsic value than mere heat. The only power whose nature does not determine its operations is the will, which alone is a self-determining power for opposites. Among created things, the will alone transcends nature, not because it does not have a nature, but because no nature, including its own, determines its acts [Boler ].
The will, then, satisfies one necessary condition for freedom: It determines itself regarding opposites; that is, it determines whether it wills this object or that one, and also whether it wills this object or refrains from willing entirely.
At time T1, the will has a real potentiality for willing a or b, as well as for refraining from willing. At time T2, the will determines itself to one of these alternatives, say, a.
Rather, we must look for some feature of the will at T2 if we are to find an explanation of its contingency. Scotus therefore argues that at T2 the will is really capable of opposites, even when it is determined to one of them. To capture this idea of natural priority within a single instant of time, Scotus employs the device of instants of nature. In a single temporal instant T2 we find instants of nature N1 and N2.
At N1 the will has a real potentiality for either a or b. At N2, the will determines itself to a. However, because all this occurs in a single instant of time T2, it is still true because of N1 that at T2 the will has a real potentiality for b, even though at that very temporal instant it is actually willing a.
Finally, it is worth noting that this view does not imply the absurdity that the will can simultaneously will multiple opposites. For instance, a person cannot at the same time both intend to pursue a college degree and intend to stay out of school forever. Rather, if a person at T2 intends to pursue a college degree, there is at T2 the real potentiality for intending to stay out of school forever, but not for intending both.
However, because one can at least partly determine the constituents of happiness, and because one can pursue happiness by different means, this determination of the will does not introduce any necessitation incompatible with free will and moral responsibility.
Eudaimonism, therefore, is no opponent of the moral life. Scotus, however, finds this line of thought problematic, and in spelling out his alternative to eudaimonism he articulates the third element in his discussion of freedom. Thanks to the affection for advantage, the will can seek things insofar as they benefit the willer. Thanks to the affection for justice, the will can seek things insofar as they are good in themselves.
The precise sort of freedom Scotus thinks the affection for justice affords us, however, remains unclear. He might mean that our having the affection for justice in addition to the affection for advantage gives us moral freedom, that is, the freedom to determine whether and to what extent we will act justly. On the other hand, he might mean that having the affection for justice gives us metaphysical freedom, the freedom of self-determination.
There is some reason to think that Scotus means both. In a famous example, Scotus asks us to conceive of a creature with an intellectual appetite that has merely one affection, the affection for advantage because it lacks the affection for justice, this appetite does not count as a genuine will. Such a being, Scotus contends, would always seek its advantage and seek it to the maximum possible, for there would be no countervailing affection to place any restraints on its pursuit of advantage.
It would therefore lack both moral freedom and metaphysical freedom as well. However, Scotus offers few details, and it is hard to see why such a creature could not have metaphysical freedom, even if it lacks moral freedom.
However, Scotus holds that it is possible, without any intellectual error or misleading passion, to will something unjust that is still less advantageous than an alternative open to the willer. However, these observations still do not explain how the addition of the affection for justice affords the will metaphysical freedom if in fact it does , and Scotus says little to shed any more light on the subject.
Jeffrey Hause Email: jph creighton. Life and Works a. Life No one knows precisely when John Duns was born, but we are fairly certain he came from the eponymous town of Duns near the Scottish border with England. Works Scholars have made considerable progress in determining which of the works attributed to Scotus are genuine. Individuation Humanity is a common nature instantiated in both Socrates and Plato. If the item has no subjective parts, that is, if there is nothing further into which it can be divided in the ways that animal and human being are divisible in this Porphyrian tree then the condition of vertical negation is satisfied.
There is 1 a first efficient cause, 2 a preeminent being, 3 a first final cause. Only one nature is first in these three ways. A nature that is first in any of these ways is infinite. There is only one infinite being. Relying on the common scholastic assumptions that a no being can produce itself, b there cannot be a circle of productive causes, and c every production has some cause, Scotus argues as follows: Argument I: The Non-Modal Argument for a First Efficient Cause 1.
Some being x is produced. Either y is an unproduced, first producer or is a posterior producer. A series of produced producers cannot proceed interminably. In one, he argues as follows: Argument II 1. Nothing can be an essentially ordered cause of itself. Being possessed of efficient causal power does not necessarily imply imperfection. A nature that possesses independent efficient causal power is absolutely first.
Therefore, 6. It is possible that there be an absolutely first efficient causal power. Argument IV: The Modal Version In another objection to what he has written so far, Scotus notes that his argument for a first efficient cause, even if sound, does not count as a genuine demonstration because its premises are merely contingent, even if they are evident. Scotus reworks his entire non-modal argument for a first efficient cause, but he also notes that we may begin with the conclusion of Argument III: 6.
An absolutely first efficient cause cannot exist from another. Therefore, 9. An absolutely first efficient cause exists independently. Univocity, Metaphysics, and Natural Theology a. Background Once he opts for the view that being qua being is the subject of metaphysics, Scotus argues further that the concept of being must apply univocally to anything studied by metaphysics. Likewise, the syllogism No inanimate objects are unfriendly.
Problems Arising from Analogy and Equivocity Scotus finds that unless the concept of being is univocal, both philosophy and natural theology come to ruin, a startling claim in light of the fact that the prevailing mediaeval view up to that time was that philosophy and theology would come to ruin if the concept of being was univocal.
Arguments for Univocity In reply, Scotus offers a barrage of arguments for univocity and disarms the objection that his view would require the dismantling of Aristotelian ontology.
Cognition a. Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition Scotus distinguishes two sorts of cognition. Divine Illumination and Skepticism At the end of the thirteenth century, the theory of divine illumination still had its defenders, although fewer and fewer.
The human intellect, by purely natural processes, can attain it, and in four sorts of cases: 1. Natural Law Scholastic philosophical theologians are taxed not just with solving philosophical problems and creating philosophical systems, but with doing so in ways consistent with Biblical religion. Action Theory and Will Mediaeval philosophers agree that human acts have their source in the powers of will and intellect, and in articulating their detailed action theories and rich moral psychologies, these thinkers spell out the respective roles of the will and intellect.
References and Further Reading a. Primary Texts in Latin Cuestiones Cuodlibetales In ed. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. Opera Omnia , ed. Luke Wadding. Lyons, 12 vols. Vives Paris, 26 vols. Opera Omnia Scotistic Commission.
Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 11 vols. William A. Frank and Allan B. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality Allan Wolter. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Allan B. Once one realizes that we can appeal to connotation theory, and more generally the theory of exposition, without invoking new entities, the door is opened to applying mathematical analyses all of which are exponible, for Ockham to all kinds of things, and in particular to physical nature.
But they were important ones. One recent author, describing the theory as it occurs in Aquinas, puts it like this: [ 40 ]. Depending on the sense modality, it may also be found in an intervening medium. For example, with vision and hearing, the species is transmitted through the air to the sense organ.
Ockham rejected this entire theory of species. For him, species are unnecessary to a successful theory of cognition, and he dispenses with them.
But their theories of intuitive and abstractive cognition are so different that it is hard to see any one thing they are all supposed to be theories of. Nevertheless, to a first approximation, intuitive cognition can be thought of as perception, whereas abstractive cognition is closer to imagination or remembering.
The fit is not exact, however, since authors who had a theory of intuitive and abstractive cognition usually also allowed the distinction at the intellectual level as well. By contrast, intuitive cognition is very much tied up with the existence or non-existence of the object. Here is how Ockham distinguishes them: [ 45 ]. Abstractive cognition, however, is that by virtue of which it cannot be evidently known of the thing whether it exists or does not exist.
This does not prevent God from deceiving any particular creature if He wants to, even when an intuitive cognition is present, but in such a case, God would have to neutralize the natural causal effect of this intuitive cognition this is something He can always do, according to Ockham and directly cause instead a false judgement.
Intuitive cognitions, on the other hand, can sometimes induce false beliefs, too, if the circumstances are abnormal in cases of perceptual illusions in particular , but even then, they would still cause some true contingent judgements.
The latter at any rate is their distinctive feature. Abstractive cognitions, by contrast, are not such as to naturally cause true judgements about contingent matters. For one, it is a will -based ethics in which intentions count for everything and external behavior or actions count for nothing. In themselves, all actions are morally neutral.
Certain things i. But while moral virtue is possible even for the pagan, moral virtue is not by itself enough for salvation. Salvation requires not just virtue the opposite of which is moral vice but merit the opposite of which is sin , and merit requires grace, a free gift from God. In short, there is no necessary connection between virtue—moral goodness—and salvation. For Ockham, acts of will are morally virtuous either extrinsically, i.
On pain of infinite regress, therefore, extrinsically virtuous acts of will must ultimately lead back to an intrinsically virtuous act of will. In his early work, On the Connection of the Virtues , Ockham distinguishes five grades or stages of moral virtue, which have been the topic of considerable speculation in the secondary literature: [ 48 ].
The difficulty in understanding this hierarchy comes at the fourth stage, where it is not clear exactly what moral factor is added to the preceding three stages. And, whether they realize it or not, that is what all human beings are ultimately aiming at in their actions. We are not free to choose for or against our final end; that is built into us by nature.
But we are free to choose various mean s to that end. All our choices, therefore, are made under the aspect of leading to that final goal.
To be sure, sometimes we make the wrong choices, but when that occurs it is because of ignorance, distraction, self-deception, etc.
In an important sense, then, someone like Aquinas accepts a version of the so called Socratic Paradox: No one knowingly and deliberately does evil. Although he is very suspicious of the notion of final causality teleology in general, he thinks it is quite appropriate for intelligent, voluntary agents such as human beings. Thus the frequent charge that Ockham severs ethics from metaphysics by denying teleology seems wrong.
For Ockham, as for Aristotle and Aquinas, I can choose the means to achieve my ultimate good. But in addition, for Ockham unlike Aristotle and Aquinas, I can choose whether to will that ultimate good. The natural orientation and tendency toward that good is built in; I cannot do anything about that.
But I can choose whether or not to to act to achieve that good. I might choose, for example, to do nothing at all, and I might choose this knowing full well what I am doing. But more: I can choose to act knowingly directly against my ultimate good, to thwart it.
For Ockham, this is required if I am going to be morally responsible for my actions. But for Ockham these conclusions are not just required by theory; they are confirmed by experience. The Spirituals, among whom were Ockham, Michael of Cesena, and the other exiles who joined them in fleeing Avignon, tried to preserve the original ideal of austere poverty practiced and advocated by St. Francis himself c.
The Conventuals, on the other hand, while recognizing this ideal, were prepared to compromise in order to accommodate the practical needs of a large, organized religious order; they were by far the majority of the order. The issue between the two parties was never one of doctrine; neither side accused the other of heresy. Rather, the question was one of how to shape and run the order—in particular, whether the Franciscans should or even could renounce all property rights.
The ideal of poverty had been and still is a common one in religious communities. Typically, the idea is that the individual member of the order owns no property at all. Rather it belongs to the order. The original Franciscan ideal went further. Not only did the individual friar have no property of his own, neither did the order.
Anything donated to the order, such as a house or a piece of land, strictly speaking remained the property of the original owner who merely granted the use of it to the Franciscans. Or, if that would not work—as, for example, in the case of a bequest in a will, after the original owner had died—the ownership would go to the Papacy.
Both the Spirituals and the Conventuals thought this ideal of uncompromising poverty was exhibited by the life of Jesus and the Apostles, who—they said—had given up all property, both individually and collectively.
Francis regarded this as the clear implication of several Scriptural passages: e. Of course, if everyone lived according to this ideal, so that no one owned any property either individually or collectively, then there would be no property at all. The Franciscan ideal, then, shared by Conventuals and Spirituals alike, entailed the total abolition of all property rights. Not everyone shared this view.
Outside the Franciscan order, most theoreticians agreed that Jesus and the Apostles lived without individual property, but thought they did share property collectively. Nevertheless, Pope Nicholas III, in , had officially approved the Franciscan view, not just as a view about how to organize the Franciscan order, but about the interpretation of the Scriptural passages concerning Jesus and the Apostles.
His approval did not mean he was endorsing the Franciscan reading as the correct interpretation of Scripture, but only that it was a permissible one, that there was nothing doctrinally suspect about it.
Nevertheless, this interpretation was a clear reproach to the Papacy, which at Avignon was wallowing in wealth to a degree it had never seen before. But, as Mollat [] puts it perhaps not without some taking of sides : [ 55 ]. It was this act that provoked John XXII to issue his first contribution to the dispute, his bull Ad conditorem in There he put the whole matter in a legal framework. For example, it is one thing for me to own a book but to let you use it for a while.
Ownership in that case means that I can recall the book, and even if I do not do so, you should return it to me when you are done with it. But it is quite another matter for me to own the book but to grant you permanent use of it, to agree not to recall it as long as you want to keep it, and to agree that you have no obligation to give it back ever.
There is no practical difference in that case between your having the use of the book and your owning it; for all intents and purposes, it is yours. Notice the criticism here. It is a legal argument against the claim that the Papacy as an institution can own something and yet the Franciscans as an order, collectively, have a permanent right to use it. The complaint is not against the notion that an individual friar might have a right to use something until he dies, at which time use reverts to the order or as the Franciscans would have it, to the Papacy.
This would still allow some distinction between ownership and mere use. Rather the complaint is against the notion that the order would not own anything outright, but would nevertheless have permanent use of it that goes beyond the life or death of any individual friar, so that the ownership somehow remained permanently with the Papacy, even though the Pope could not reclaim it, use it, or do anything at all with it.
John XXII argues that this simply abolishes the distinction between use and ownership. Special problems arise if the property involved is such that the use of it involves consuming it—e. In that case, it appears that there is no real difference between ownership and even temporary use. For things like food, using them amounts for practical purposes to owning them; they cannot be recalled after they are used. In short, for John XXII, it follows that it is impossible fully to live the life of absolute poverty, even for the individual person much less for a permanent institution like the Franciscan order.
Ockham disagreed. Instead, Adam and Eve there had a natural right to use anything at hand. This natural right did not amount to a property right, however, since it could not have been used as the basis of any kind of legal claim. The owners can then give permission to others to use what the owners own, but that permission does not amount to giving them a legal right they could appeal to in a court of law; it can be revoked at any time.
For Ockham, this is the way the Franciscans operate. Their benefactors and donors do not give them any legal rights to use the things donated to them—i. Rather the donation amounts only to a kind of permission that restores the original natural not legal right of use in the Garden of Eden.
For a list of translations to , see Spade [], pp. The following major items deserve particular mention:. The following list includes all works cited in this article, plus several other noteworthy items:. For the update to this entry published in the summer of , Claude Panaccio has become a co-author, having made significant revisions to Sections 3. He will continue maintain and keep the entry current. Life 1. Writings 3. Logic and Semantics 3. Metaphysics 4. Natural Philosophy 6. Theory of Knowledge 6.
Ethics 7. Political Philosophy 8. Life Ockham led an unusually eventful life for a philosopher. Clearly, things had become intolerable for Ockham in Avignon. Book I survives in an ordinatio or scriptum —a revised and corrected version, approved by the author himself for distribution. Seven Quodlibets based on London disputations held in —24, but revised and edited in Avignon — Summa of Logic c. A large, independent and systematic treatment of logic and semantics. A detailed, close commentary.
The Work of Ninety Days — Letter to the Friars Minor Short Discourse — Dialogue c. Several lesser items are omitted from the above list. From Thomas Aquinas to the s. Eric W. Hagedorn - - In Thomas Williams ed.
Cambridge University Press. Giorgio Pini - - In Gyula Klima ed. Tobias Hoffmann - - The Thomist 67 1 — Individuation bei Duns Scotus und bei dem jungen Leibniz. Tobias Hoffmann - - Medioevo Osborne Jr - - The Thomist 74 2 Downloads Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart. Sign in to use this feature. About us. Editorial team. Applied ethics. History of Western Philosophy. Normative ethics. Philosophy of biology. Philosophy of language.
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