LIFE1 AND WORKS2

Scotus also wrote other valuable treatises: short disputations entitled Logic of Scotus (Logica Scoti); Questions on the Books of Aristotle’s De Anima (Quaestiones in libros Aristotle’s De anima which is probably authentic; On the First Principle (De primo principio), a compendium of his natural theology; Collations (Collationes), forty-six short disputations held at Oxford and Paris; Very Subtle Questions on the Metaphysics (Quaestiones subtilissimae in Metaphysicam Aristotelis), the first nine books being certainly authentic; Quodlibetal Questions (Quaestiones Quodlibetales), representing almost always the definitive expression of the teaching touched upon in these disputations.3

- Faith and Reason. At the end of the thirteenth century, Scotus found himself vis-à-vis the two extremes of theologism and philosophism.4 On the one hand, the theologists tried to understand every part of revelation without the slightest reliance upon natural reason. On the other, Philosophists, like the Latin Averroists, generally investigated only natural phenomena without allowing any influence of faith on pure reason. Aquinas had refuted these extremes by harmonizing reason and revelation. The fact that some of his teachings were proscribed along with Averroistic theses in 1277 suggests that he perhaps overestimated the accord between faith and reason.

Scotus was concerned about the advance of philosophical naturalism. The philosophies of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes, were being introduced as the new ideal of a purely rational philosophy, sufficient in itself and adequate to satisfy man’s desire for knowledge. This philosophism seemed to undermine the Christian doctrine of man’s need of grace and revelation for salvation. As everything colored falls within the scope of sight, so it seems reasonable to conclude that everything intelligible falls within the purview of man’s natural intellectual powers, independently of any supernatural help. Aristotle summed up the state of nature in a nutshell: "Nature is not lacking in what is necessary."5 For Scotus, then, it was a question of determining the limitations of pure reason in philosophy in order to show the possibility and necessity of faith and theology.

- Natural Knowledge. Scotus investigated the scope of natural reason to ascertain the objective value of human knowledge. A conclusion of Augustine that "no pure truth can be expected from sensation"6 was often quoted after 1255. Henry of Ghent and Matthew of Aquasparta avoided skepticism in their distrust of sensation by appealing to the certitude of a special divine illumination. Aquinas found Aristotelian abstraction of the intelligible content from sense data a sufficient guarantee of the truth of natural knowledge. In view of these different theories, Scotus posed the problem in this form: "Can a certain truth be known without admixture of error by the human intellect in this life, naturally and without a special illumination of uncreated light?"7

Viewing knowledge within an ontological context, Scotus investigated the objective value of metaphysics, whether it is a science of real or logical being. Do ontological ideas such as being and goodness, abstractly expressing the essence of things in generic and specific concepts, represent reality as it is, or are they merely logical entities in the mind? As Scotus asked, "What corresponds to metaphysical concepts in the thing itself?"8 Notions such as unity, freedom, and wisdom, are neither the whole being nor some physical part of it. How then can they truly express what reality is? Is this partial knowledge of beings objective?

Whereas Averroes claimed that the object of metaphysics is God, Avicenne considered it to be being as being.9 Granting Avicenna’s position, what is the meaning of being and how can it be applied to both God and creatures? While the Augustinian descent conceptually from God to creatures differs from the Thomistic ascent cognitionally from creatures to God, both agree in their common use of analogy. Analogical knowledge, however, requires previous acquaintance with the terms to be compared. Scotus was convinced that the being and attributes of creatures and God cannot be compared unless there are concepts common and applicable to both. He believed something more than analogy would be needed to avoid agnosticism.

Inquiry into the value of concepts led Scotus to determine the structure of finite beings so as to provide an objective basis in reality to which universal judgments can refer. Is this objective foundation of knowledge universal or individual reality? ln dealing with the composition of individual beings, Scotus will have to take a stand on the medieval problem of the oneness or plurality of forms in things. Aquinas’ theory of one substantial form in a single being was controverted and even censured in the condemnation of 1277. Many Augustinian schoolmen recoiled at the soul’s giving not only rationality and life but also substance and being to the body. This seems to bind the human soul so closely to the body as to endanger its independence from matter and consequently its immortality. Traditional thinkers preferred the safer supposition of at least one other substantial form in man.10

As regards God’s nature, Scotus asked, "What kind of predicates are they which are predicated formally of God?"11 His intent was to evaluate the objectivity of metaphysical statements about God. Implied in this investigation is the need of determining the methodological relationship between rational theology in which human reason alone inquires into the existence and nature of God, and revealed theology in which the mind reflects on what God has revealed to man in faith.

Knowledge of being makes it possible for the metaphysician to grasp real things precisely as essence. The object of metaphysics is not existential being, as Thomas Aquinas affirmed, but quidditative being. In view of the simple Aristotelian axiom that science is of necessary things, Scotus conceived metaphysical being in a quidditative sense, for the essence of a thing contains the element of intelligible necessity and is expressible in an essential definition. Quidditative being is the basic principle of entities and their becoming. As form, it constitutes the reality of the physical world as a dynamic principle that expresses itself in the matter it perfects and orders. In so doing, it achieves its purpose by manifesting God’s exemplary ideas in the material world of concrete things. Becoming is the actualization of form in matter. The highest form that all finite things strive to imitate is the infinite essence. What is "absolutely first in divinity," according to Scotus, "is essence, as essence."12

Scotus analyzed the relationship between philosophy and revealed theology in terms of Aristotle’s distinction between science in the strict and wide senses. Strict scientific knowledge "must be certain, that is, without error and doubt, of a necessary object, based on evidence, and attained by syllogistic reasoning."13 The disclosure that the predicate inheres in the subject leads to a true conclusion by knowledge that is a priori and causal, a demonstration of the reasoned fact (propter quid).

Truth belongs only indirectly to science in the wide sense, or demonstration of the simple fact (quia), which reasons from effects to conclusions about contingent objects.14 Based on objective evidence and certain, such knowledge is scientific without giving a necessary reason why the object is what it is.

Since human knowledge is restricted to the notion of being directly grasped in material things, the primary "subject of metaphysics" cannot be God, the supreme spiritual being.15 Hence, the metaphysician cannot deduce what is proper to the divine essence any more than the geometer can demonstrate the properties of a triangle from the concept of a figure. "In everything which it says about God, metaphysics is purely a science of simple fact (quia)."16 We cannot know God by a science of reasoned fact, "because the middle term of a demonstration of reasoned fact, which is the deity in itself, as this deity, is not self-evident to us, nor is it apt in itself to be known by us, and therefore, this proposition, `God is’, is not self-evident (to us )."17

Metaphysics is only indirectly a science of reasoned fact (propter quid) in its secondary concern for truth about God. Nevertheless, metaphysics culminates in natural theology as "the most lofty way" possible for pure reason to study God.18

As knowledge of first principles and "highest causes,"19 metaphysics is the most perfect science of natural reason, focusing on the most knowable, most common, and most certain truths.20 By analyzing essence into its elements, this highest human wisdom attains the absolutely first and most knowable being, God, the supreme cause. However, since man does not directly intuit intelligible essences in the present life, the metaphysician acquires no more than a science of simple fact, concluding to the existence of causes without explaining why their effects exist.

The limitation of natural reason and the radical insufficiency of metaphysics to achieve a strictly scientific knowledge of God show the necessity of a divine revelation for man to fulfill his supernatural destiny. Greek and Arabian philosophers were ignorant of God as a free cause. "Proper attributes" of God "cannot be known merely from what is purely natural."21 Natural reason is unable to know truths about God in himself; for example, "it is a property of this (divine) substance that it can be shared with three (Divine Persons)."22 In addition, "man can have no definite knowledge of his end," not to mention how it may be attained, "from what is natural; therefore, he needs some supernatural knowledge,"23 some special revelation from God.

Christian theology, treating of God in himself, is a science in itself with necessary truths evident to God, but not to man’s finite mind in its present condition.24 Theological premises, known by faith in divine revelation, cannot be strictly demonstrated. Truths contingent on God’s free decree, for example, his relation to the world in creation and to man in redemption, also resist strict demonstration. Christian theology is a science in the sense that it reasons from principles accepted on faith and authority to true and certain knowledge.

While Christian theology shares its object, God, to some extent with metaphysics, neither is properly subordinate to the other, for they derive independently from their respective principles, the former from principles accepted on faith and the latter from those known by the natural light of reason.25 However, Scotus contended against Averroes that revealed theology is superior to metaphysics.26 The Primary object of theology is God in himself’ whereas the concern of metaphysics is being in general. All those truths the metaphysician demonstrates a posteriori of God, the theologian proves a priori why they are true of God. Metaphysics is a propaedeutic to Christian theologies.

The three coordinates of time, society, and place, converged in the formation of Scotus’ thought. Living at the apogee of the great intellectual expansion of the thirteenth century, he had at his command immense resources of thought from Greek, Arabian,27 Jewish, and preceding scholastic philosophy. Whereas the Dominicans were inclined to adopt the Aristotelianism of Aquinas, the Franciscans, for example, Bonaventure, tended to adhere to the Augustinian tradition. Scotus’ studies at the universities of Oxford and Paris brought him into contact with the mathematical and empirical orientation of the former and the Aristotelian metaphysics of the latter.

Scotus refined Thomistic ideas in a crucible of critique before adopting them. For example, while more or less continuing the Thomistic distinction and complementarity of faith and reason, Scotus, however, in view of his strict notion of demonstration, transferred some Thomistic truths (for example, the immortality of the soul) from the certainty of reason to the certainty of faith. Sometimes Scotus reacted dialectically to Aquinas by adopting a counter-position. For instance, Scotus viewed Christian theology as primarily a practical science, whereas Aquinas considered it chiefly speculative. This difference is rooted ln their preference for diverse traditions. Aquinas, favoring the Aristotelian tradition with its primacy of intellect over will and the emphasis on contemplation of intelligible truths, regarded theology as principally a speculative science. Scotus, however, preferring the Augustinian tendency to the priority of the will and the world’s contingent relation to the divine free will (factors not amenable to theoretical treatment) described theology as mainly a practical science.28

To determine the value of human knowledge, Scotus analyzed the intellect in terms of its primary, natural and adequate objects.29 "Being is the first object of the intellect."30 The first object in the order of nature, fully corresponding to the intellect’s capacity, is also the adequate object. "The proper object, according to its total indifference, is the adequate object."31 In its total indifference, being is not exclusively material or immaterial; it can be either a sensible or an intelligible object.

Scotus criticized Henry of Ghent’s position that God is the prime object of the human intellect, because it "accords too much to the intellect on the knowledge of God" whose infinite essence is adequate only to the infinite intellect. Likewise, he objected to Aquinas’ view that the proper object of the human intellect is the abstracted quiddity of a sensible thing, because it "accords too little;"32 if this were so, the ultimate immaterial cause of things would be beyond man’s intellectual capacity which would be frustrated in its natural desire to know that cause; furthermore, metaphysics as a science of all beings would be impossible, restricting the human intellect to a science of physics.

A. Being. With Avicenna, Scotus affirmed that, as the natural object of sight is color, so "the primary object of our intellect is being, and this according to the total indifference of being to sensible and insensible (imperceptible) things."33 Not determined solely to sensible or intelligible existence, being can be an object in either state. If being were not the primary object of the intellect, it could be described in terms of something more ultimate, which is impossible. As the most common notion, being alone is that formality in view of which everything is known, and which alone is predicable of everything.34 With being in all its fullness, unrestricted to this or that thing, as the adequate object of the intellect, man is naturally capable of knowing anything that is intelligible.

B. Sensible Quiddity. Although the human intellect is de jure capable of grasping being in its entire indetermination, de facto it is restricted to the abstraction of a sensible quiddity given in the phantasm according to conditions willed by God.35 This restriction, according to Scotus, may be either a penalty for original sin or a result of God’s design to harmonize the operation of man’s various powers with sense and imagination apprehending the individual thing and the intellect grasping the universal. While his explanation is not very satisfactory or clear, he, nonetheless, maintained that as a viator on earth, man’s intellect is naturally and immediately moved only by the "quiddity of a sensible thing."36

A. Intuition. In line with the Augustinian emphasis on intuition, Scotus defined it as knowledge of an object as present in its actual singular existence.37 The singular which the senses immediately perceive can be directly understood a fortiori by the intellect, "for a superior and more perfect power knows all that an inferior power knows."38 Intellective intuition is evident in induction, true contingent propositions, and love, all of which concern individual things. Abstraction presupposes intuition. "It is impossible to abstract universals from the singular without knowing from what it was abstracting."39 Intellectual intuition of individual realities directly affecting the senses validates the objectivity of scientific knowledge of universals.

The limitation of intellectual intuition "is not due to unintelligibility on the part of the singular thing itself,"40 being more real as an existent and more intelligible in itself than the specific form, but rather to "an imperfection in its (intellect’s) present state."41 Presently, an object acts on the intellect only to the degree of its nature and not insofar as it is singular. The fact that one does not know why individual characteristics inhere in this thing rather than in that shows one’s nescience of the singular as singular. Reasoning that intelligence is a common characteristic of persons does not explain why, for example, this particular intelligence belongs to Aristotle rather than to Alexander the Great.

If one were to intuit the singular as singular, he could possess full knowledge of its being, a consequence not verified from experience. On account of this limitation of intellectual intuition, science concerns universals rather than singulars, and its definitions express the quiddity of a class rather than the singular as such. Since the intellect intuits an individual, not in its innermost being, but simply as existing, it’s knowledge is confused and imperfect.42

B. Abstraction. Scotus found it necessary to compensate for the limitations of Augustinian intuition by introducing the Aristotelian theory of abstraction. There can be abstractive knowledge of a nonexistent object as well as of an existent object, but there can be intuitive knowledge only of an existent object as existent.43 Naturally capable of intuiting intelligible quiddities, the human intellect, however, in the present condition, knows things in their intelligible quiddity only by an abstractive process which starts with the individual sensible thing represented in the phantasm of the imagination and produces an intelligible likeness (species) by the mediation of the agent intellect. Abstraction enables the mind to arrive at universal knowledge of individual things in their essence and causes.

Aristotle held that scientific knowledge concerns universals. But a nature in itself, Scotus insisted, is indeterminate to universality and individuality. How does an object pass from negative to positive indetermination by which the objects as soon as it is known, becomes completely universal"?44 The cause can be neither the object alone which simply reveals itself as it is nor the intellect as a passive receptive power. the total cause is the intellect as active together with the object’s nature: "the agent intellect, together with common nature makes the object universal."45 Scotus reaffirmed Aristotle’s agent intellect as producing in the possible intellect the universal likeness of the nature presenting itself.

But how can abstraction discover a universal which is not at least potentially in the individual thing? The objectivity of intellectual knowledge depends, in addition to the individual, on the reality of its common nature receiving its ultimate actuality as a universal from the intellect. Scotus found in Avicenna’s theory of common nature the basis for knowing reality as it is in itself. The intellect can discover directly in the common nature, not individual in itself, the capacity for being universalized, without any need of stripping the quiddity of individuating notes as in Thomistic thought. Intellectual abstraction, therefore, is an apprehension of the common nature plainly presented in the phantasm and a universalization of it as a positive indifference to this or that thing.46

Relying on Averroes’ teaching that universality is the work of the intellect, Scotus reasoned that the process of universalization consists in the agent intellect’s endowing common nature with a new modality as the intelligible likeness produced in the possible intellect. To know the universal, the intellect must be determined by an object that is real and present, otherwise it remains indifferent to knowing and unmoved. The common nature, really present as a universal in the intelligible likeness, is "formally caused in the possible intellect" which is moved to understand.47 The intelligible likeness represents as universal what the sensible presents as similar. To understand, Scotus agreed with Aquinas that the human intellect must turn to the phantasm in the imagination which represents the individual thing, not because of the nature of the human intellect as Aquinas held, but because of its present condition in the world.48

On the one hand, Scotus criticized Henry of Ghent’s "opinion that attributes the whole activity of understanding to the soul alone"49 without respecting the causality of the object. If the intellect were the total cause of knowing, it would always be actually knowing, at least itself — a conclusion not verified by experience. On the other, he was dissatisfied with the theories of Godfrey of Fontaines, Giles of Rome, and Thomas Aquinas, who emphasized the intelligible content of the phantasm from which the intellect removes individuating conditions without giving due justice to the subject’s power to initiate knowledge and to elaborate on the object by reasoning, reflecting, and establishing relations of reason or logical intentions."50

While favoring the Augustinian tradition of emphasizing the intellect’s causal power in effecting the activity of understanding, Scotus held that both intellect and object "taken together are the integral cause of knowledge,"51 each exercising a causal efficacy proportioned to its own nature. They collaborate as two partial efficient causes essentially related to each other in producing the single effect of understanding. In the unity of understanding both are perfect and independent of one another insofar as their own causality is concerned."52

Intellection manifests the three characteristics of inequality, specialization, and complementarity. First, the intellect exercises a superior causality as an active power that can perform an unlimited number of acts, whereas the object is limited to the production of that act referring to it.53 Second, the human intellect, lacking within itself the whole of being, is finite and consequently needs a special determination of an object to actualize its power for a particular act of understanding.54 Third, the causal complementarity between the formal content of the object and the intellect’s efficient activity is natural inasmuch as thought by its nature is ordained to being which is knowable in itself.55

A. Rejection of Illumination Theory. In view of the intellect’s intuitive and abstractive grasp of objective reality, Scotus affirmed that "a truth, certain and without mixture of error, can be known by the human intellect in this life, naturally and without a special illumination of the uncreated Light."56 Henry of Ghent argued that, since the intellect’s certainty concerning unchangeable truths cannot be derived from mutable sensible objects, an immutable light is required. Scotus rejected Henry’s Augustinian theory of a special divine illumination with the criticism that if changing sensibles of themselves are not open to certainty, no divine light can assure one of them without representing them other than as they are and leaving one in error.57

B. Truth. Without a special divine light, the human intellect can naturally acquire certitude of truth in both the abstract and concrete orders. The intellect, on understanding the nexus of simple terms that compose first principles, for example, being is being and not nonbeing, and the whole is greater than any of its individual parts, can be sure of their truth.58 By syllogistic reasoning, the intellect can deduce certain conclusions from first principles. Scientific knowledge rests on these principles. Even if the senses furnishing the terms of comparison were constantly deceiving one, the truth of such propositions would not change, because the evidence of the nexus between subject and predicate is caused, not by sensation, but by the intelligible terms abstractly "present to the intellect."59

The intellect can also be certain of cosmological and psychological truths of the concrete order. The intellect infallibly intuits sensation and the existence of singular objects.60 Certitude regarding the nature of things is based on a self-evident principle: "Whatever happens regularly and does not depend on a free cause, is a natural effect of that cause."61 It would be contradictory for a cause which is not free to produce generally effects contrary to those which follow normally from its nature. A natural cause regularly produces the effect to which it is ordained by its being and not by chance.

Since the terms of this undeniable principle and their nexus are abstracted from intuited sensible objects, the principle can be used to guarantee the validity of sensation. The sense power is regularly modified by a sensible species which is always the same in the presence of the same object. Therefore, a sensation regularly produced by a sensible thing must be the natural effect of that cause, "and thus the external thing will be white or hot as such as it naturally appears to be according to the image so frequently produced."62 When the senses regularly perceive the same object, the intellect can be sure that it is as one perceives it. On the basis of first principles, the human intellect can critically judge with certitude what sense data report the physical world as it really is.

- Induction. Certainty about sensible natures can be advanced scientifically by induction. From a limited number of experienced oases, inductive science formulates general laws which are accepted as universally valid for all cases of the same kind. The ground of their universality is the first principle already invoked, namely, "Whatever happens in most cases (the observed cases) does not proceed from a free cause, but is the natural effect of the cause."63 On the basis of this principle, it suffices that one experientially knows that some beings generally behave in a definite manner to be sure that such is generally so in all beings of the same kind. The principle of uniformity and constancy of effects leads to the conclusion that they are natural, not fortuitous.

Certitude of psychological truths arises from the intuition of interior acts whose evidence equals that of first principles. Upon the intuitive certainty of human operations rest all other certainties and the whole edifice of scientific knowledge. "And just as our certitude of being awake is like that of self-evident propositions, the same is true of many other acts in our power such as `understand’ or `hear’"64 when understanding "is functioning properly. And when it is not it is something self-evident, otherwise nothing could be known for certain."65 Though one experiences an illusion and is unsure of seeing something as it really is, one is certain, at least, that he is seeing.

ln the present state, "our soul is not known by us, nor our nature, except under some general notion, able to be abstracted from sensible things,"66 and understood in terms of being. With no intellectual intuition of his soul in the present state, man knows his soul indirectly by reasoning from its acts to its powers to the soul itself. The need for indirect reflection arises, not from the soul which is eminently intelligible and immediately present to itself, but from the present condition of the intellectual soul which is restricted to being moved immediately by a sensible quiddity.67 The intellective soul intuits the existence of its own acts and by abstracting the quiddity of these functions arrives at a knowledge of its own nature.

Metaphysics68

Because the intellect "comes to know something through the characteristic of being in general,"69 it can engage in the science of metaphysics whose "primary object is being inasmuch as it is being."70 But how is this object to be understood? Is it logical or real? If it is real in the physical sense, what need is there of metaphysics? Scotus replied, on the one hand, that because the metaphysician completely abstracts from matter and motion and disregards the individuating conditions of sensible beings, he transcends physical things to contemplate being as such with everything pertaining to it.71

On the other hand, he goes beyond the purely logical being (second intentions) constructed by the mind to real being (first intention) abstracted immediately from singular things and essentially predicable of them. The consideration of real things simply as being is identified with neither physics nor logical metaphysics. As the primary concept to which all truth of metaphysics are reduced and the virtual notion containing all things knowable by this science72 inasmuch as they are known in virtue of being, being is the unifying object of metaphysics.

As Avicenna noted, being first falls in the intellect, because it is the most simple, common notion. Everything that is not nonbeing is being. Being admits of no reality beyond itself. Opposed to nothing except nonbeing, the notion of being is "an absolutely simple concept . . . which is not resolvable into several concepts,"73 and cannot be conceived except distinctly. One either knows being or is totally ignorant of it in the sense of knowing nothing; there is no halfway stage. Irreducible to simple concepts and allowing of nothing more readily known to elucidate it, being can be neither properly defined nor explained in the strict sense, but simply described.74

Being, signifying that which includes no contradiction, can be distinctly conceived apart from any other concept. Every kind of being, because it includes the notion of being in its conception, cannot be conceived distinctly apart from being. Utterly simple, indeterminate, and "most common,"75 being embraces all reality within its scope, common to the categories yet transcending them. With its object surpassing that of all other natural sciences, metaphysics is the highest science.76

In line with the Aristotelian conception of science as concerned with necessary things, Scotus viewed being in a quidditative sense, for the essence of a thing contains an intelligible necessity which is expressible in a definition.77 A definition expresses what a being is, namely, its essence or quiddity. Being is "that to which to be is not repugnant,"78 or intrinsically impossible. Now the only real being that can exist or already exists is quidditative being, the object of metaphysics. Since metaphysics abstracts from actual existence, it is understandable that it treats mainly of essence.

Not merely a nonrepugnance to existence, being of itself is profoundly positive. To be the primordial element of distinct knowledge, being must primarily include the quidditative subject of existence rather than actual existence, since existence cannot be conceived except in reference to a subject. In its reference to actual existence, being can be described as a quidditative capacity for a determined grade of existence in things. "It is form, or has form."79 Since metaphysics abstracts being from actual existence, it is open to all beings as quidditative. "Because the quiddity of a thing is the per se entity of a thing, therefore first philosophy considers the thing according to its entity."80 Quidditative entity is the formality under which metaphysics embraces the principles of being.

Any real notion which "cannot be contained under any genus"81 and rises above the categories of substance and accident is said to be transcendental. As the most simple and common notion par excellence, being is the "first of the transcendentals."82 With the help of Avicenna and Averroes, Scotus built Aristotle’s metaphysics into a scientific edifice of coextensive and disjunctive transcendentals.83 For Scotus, metaphysics is "the science of the transcendentals."84

A. Coextensive Transcendentals. "`Being’ possesses . . . attributes which are coextensive with it, such as `one’, `true’ and `good’,"85 which are convertible with being in such a way as to be inseparable from it; by the fact that everything is being, it is one, true, and good. For that reason they are predicable of everything of which being is affirmed. While unitively contained in a real indivisible whole of a physical entity, these transcendentals, from the objective standpoint, are formally distinct in virtue of their different quidditative entity. From the viewpoint of concepts, these properties presuppose the quidditative notion of being as the primary subject which they formally modify without being explicitly or implicitly contained in that subject.86 "So to be one or many, act or potency, is exterior to the essence of anything insofar as it is being, or essence in itself."87 Without entering into the formal definition of each other, each coextensive attribute adds its own proper entity to being.

- Unity. Every quidditative entity enjoys its own proper transcendental unity whereby it is "undivided in itself and is divided from all else."88 The most perfect form of transcendental unity is individuality, designated by the pronoun "this," and possessing an irreducible simplicity forbidding its multiplication. "Less than numerical unity"89 is the unity of kind arising from common nature which is indifferent to pertaining to one or many individuals.

- Truth and Goodness. What is one is also true and good. Truth is the intelligibility of being, or the being manifestive of itself according to its proper grade of being.90 The first object the mind grasps is the quidditative entity of which intelligibility is an attribute. Ontological goodness bespeaks "perfection in itself and in reference to itself"91 by means of a being’s form. In addition to its primary transcendental goodness, a being can be desired by another. "The perfection of a thing is twofold, namely, intrinsic as a form, extrinsic as an end"92 which is desirable. The appetibility of good as an extrinsic goal is grounded in the primary, intrinsic goodness. As the mind grasps being under the aspect of truth, so the will seeks it as goodness.

B. Disjunctive Transcendentals. Being also has "attributes which are opposed to one another such as `possible-or-necessary,’ `act-or-potency,’ and suchlike."93 The primary differences of real being are the disjunctive transcendentals. Together as a disjunctive pair, they are coextensive with being as such. Every being is either contingent or necessary, substance or accident, absolute or relative.94 To show that these disjunctives have real content, for example, that contingent and necessary beings exist, recourse must be made to experience. Disjunctives are either contradictorily opposed, as actual and potential, infinite and finite, or are correlatives, as prior-posterior, cause-caused, leaving open the alternative of a being that is neither cause nor caused.95

The disjunctive attributes follow a metaphysical law: "In the disjunctive attributes . . . as a universal rule, by positing the less noble extreme of some being we can conclude that the more noble extreme is realized in some other being."96 The validity of the law of disjunction is based on the essential order between the members which can be related in terms of eminence — for example, nobility — or dependence. Among disjunctions, contradictorily opposed, the existence of the imperfect member implies the reality of the more perfect member, but not vice versa. With correlatives, the existence of either member implies the other. For Scotus, the metaphysician’s principal task is to study the disjunctive transcendentals.

C. Being’s Primacy of Virtuality and Commonness. Being holds virtual primacy over its attributes and ultimate differences. They are contained virtually in being inasmuch as they are predicable necessarily of those things of which being is predicable essentially. The subject enjoys a natural priority over that which modifies it. As the ultimate subject of which the attributes and ultimate differences are predicable as modifications, being holds a virtual priority over these notions. Because they are simple qualifications of being, being can be predicated only denominatively of them. "For whatever is of itself intelligible either includes essentially the notion of `being’ or is contained virtually or essentially in something else which does include `being’ essentially."97

As the determinable element to which every concept not irreducibly simple can be reduced, "`being’ has a primacy of commonness in regard to the primary intelligibles, that is, to the quidditative concepts of the genera, species, individuals, and all their essential parts, and to the Uncreated Being."98 This means that quidditative being is essentially predicable of anything that can be grasped by a complex concept, for example, finite being and infinite being.

In view of his notion of being, Scotus assimilated the common Franciscan doctrine of formal distinction. Being and its transcendentals are formally and objectively distinct. The formal objective distinction is more than a purely logical distinction made by the mind, for example, between "man" and "rational animal," and less than a real physical distinction between one thing and another thing, for instance, between a man’s two arms. A distinction is objective insofar as it exists in real entities prior to any act of the intellect, and formal inasmuch as it obtains between formalities of things.99

Although these formalities have their own proper entity and are not contained in each other, they are not totally diverse like different physical things which have a really distinct existence. In fact, different formalities are so unitively contained within a single subject that they constitute one indivisible thing, inseparable even by the power of God.100

In view of the formal distinction, Scotus concluded that the concepts of being with its attributes and the concepts of the perfections in God and creatures are grounded in objective reality, because they represent formalities of things as they really are and can be predicated of them.101 In this way Scotus maintained the objectivity of knowledge without impairing the unity of the object. He applied this distinction in his metaphysics by formally distinguishing between being and its attributes, the grades of quidditative being (substantiality, materiality, animality, sensitivity, rationality), the metaphysical essence and its properties, the common nature and the individuating difference, the attributes of God, and the soul and its powers.

Having explained the objectivity of metaphysical notions in view of his theory of formal distinction, Scotus accounted for their conceptual character in terms of univocation.102 On the one hand, he rejected Henry of Ghent’s opinion on the equivocity of being as undermining knowledge of God; if the concept of being comprises two different meanings, then every argument from creatures to God would be nullified by the fallacy of equivocation. On the other, Scotus believed that the theory of analogy in Augustinian and Thomistic philosophy is unsatisfactory, since the meaning of the same concept cannot be partly the same and partly different, partly itself and partly not itself. In Scotus’ view, analogy needs to be grounded in the univocity of being, because creatures can be compared with God as the imperfect with the perfect, not insofar as they differ, but inasmuch as they have something in common expressed in univocal concepts.

For Scotus, univocation is required to explain the conception and predication of being. "I call univocal a concept that is so one that its unity suffices to make it contradictory to affirm it and to deny it, at one and the same time, of one and the same thing."103 An analogical concept lacks that basic unity allowing for a contradiction. Because the notion of being has a unity whereby it is contradictorily opposed to nonbeing, it is a univocal concept which can be predicated of God and creatures in the same sense.104 In virtue of its singleness of meaning constituting it the opposite of nonwisdom, the concept of wisdom, for example, can be validly applied "as a syllogistical middle term" in a univocal sense to God and creatures, free of the fallacy of equivocation.105 The syllogism would run as follows:

Scotus endorsed the arguments of Avicenna for the univocal concept of being. First, since the human intellect can know every reality only in view of being, the notion of being must be the same and common to everything, with a real unity of meaning and predication.106 If being were not univocal to creatures and God, and substance and accident, it would mean that, not being, but nonbeing, is the primary object of the intellect — an unacceptable consequence. Second, one may be unsure whether something is substance or accident, but one cannot doubt that the thing is being. One would not have this assurance unless the concept of quidditative being, which abstracts from all modes of being and is indifferent to all of them, could not be affirmed of reality as a whole in one and the same sense.107 Finally, reasoning from finite to infinite being would not be valid unless the sheer formal notion of being is common to creatures and God.108 In Scotus’ judgment, no metaphysical knowledge of God is possible, unless the concept of being is univocal in relation to God and creatures.

Some remarks of Scotus have given rise to the question of whether or not he restricted the univocal concept of being to the logical order. On the one hand, he said that the "one common concept which is expressed by this word ‘being,’ . . . is one logically speaking, although it is not (one) naturally and metaphysically speaking."109 Likewise, in asserting that God and creatures are completely different in the real order,110 Scotus seemed to be confirming the univocal concept of being to the logical order as a being of reason (ens rationis). But how can objective knowledge of God be guaranteed if univocal concepts are purely constructions of the mind?

In another place, Scotus stated that "existence (esse) belongs primarily and principally to God in such a way that it yet belongs really and univocally to the creature; and similarly, with goodness and wisdom and the like."111 What is mainly in God is found univocally in a real way in creatures. How can this statement affirming something in reality corresponding to the univocal concept, be reconciled with the other statement restricting it to the logical order?

While the formal distinction explains the objectivity of common univocal concepts, such as being, the modal distinction accounts for the objectivity of proper concepts, such as infinite being. A modal perfection exists between a formal perfection and the intrinsic modes by which it inheres in its subject.112 The quidditative perfection of being, though not formally identical with its primary modes of finiteness and infinity, is really inseparable from them. A formal notion such as truth conceived without its mode is said to be imperfect and common, whereas with its mode, for example, infinite truth, it is perfect and proper.

An intrinsic mode, for instance, finitude, qualifies a nature by contracting it to its inferiors without formally changing the quidditative perfection of being, unity, and truth, just as an increase in the intensity of a luminous ray makes light brighter without adding to its nature. Because the intrinsic mode is virtually included in the concept of being and its transcendentals such that an individual entity with the formal perfection necessarily has the mode also, it does not perfect being,113 but simply determines the way it exists.

"Whatever concept we conceive, whether of good, or of truth, if it is not contracted through something that is not an absolutely simple concept, it is not a concept proper to God."114 In the contraction of being to the various entities which it embraces, the inner modes of infinity, necessity, and eternity proper to God, and those of finiteness, contingency, and temporality proper to creatures, do not formally alter their respective essences. Both the essence of God and that of creatures virtually contain the intrinsic modes proper to their individual entity.115 Thus God and creatures are formally similar in the conceptual order but morally different in their individual entity.

- Essence and Existence. Scotus rejected both Henry of Ghent’s intentional distinction and Giles of Rome’s physical distinction between essence and existence in creatures. "The being of essence (esse essentiae) is never really separable from the being of existence (esse existentiae)."116 If they were physically separable or distinct, essence would exist without existence and existence would have an essence without essence — a self-evident contradiction. A purely logical or intentional distinction is inadequate, because existence is a determination of essence and formally outside the definition of the individual essence.117

Though Scotus was not explicit, a modal distinction of essence and existence seems to represent his mind. Whereas existence appears as a modal qualification of essence, and includes, both in thought and definition, the notion of the subject of which it is a mode, essence can be conceived and defined without introducing actual existence.118 Finite essence can be conceived apart from actual existence. Evidently, actual existence is an intrinsic modality of essence. However, since existence belongs to the concept of God’s being, infinite essence cannot be thought of as not existing.

- Physical Level. Scotus synthesized the Aristotelian teaching that individuals exist and the Avicennian theory of common nature by viewing nature as both common and individual.119 A nature is singular insofar as it is found in individuals and, consequently, not apt by itself to be predicated of many. However, if human nature, for example, were of itself individual, there would be no foundation in reality for universal statements. The abstraction of universal concepts presupposes as an objective basis, a formal distinction without physical separability between nature and the individual.

To establish a secure objective ground for universal judgments, Scotus characterized a nature as common insofar as it enjoys a unity of genus or species which, while less than numerical unity, makes things similar. As a real unity of generic or specific being, common nature is formally indifferent to the universal and individual, both of which it virtually contains.120 Because of its unity of being in countless individuals, the common nature objectively grounds universal concepts of physical things and is appropriately called the physical universal.

- Metaphysical Universal. The aptitude of a thing’s common nature to be predicated of many is conferred by the agent intellect in its abstracting and universalizing. Averroes provided Scotus with an explanation of universality as a work of the intellect. In virtue of its formal indetermination, common nature can receive a singular mode in concrete things or a universal mode in the intellect. The intellect abstracts the common nature by making its potential indifference in things, or predictability of many individuals, an actual indifference in concepts.121 The concept is "indeterminate in act, so that something which is intelligible and one is predicable of every subject and is truly universal."122 Since the metaphysician defines things insofar as they are actually indeterminate, the common nature as first intended by the mind is fittingly called a metaphysical universal.

- Logical Universal. The de facto predication of a universal concept requires a second intentional operation of the mind. Reflecting on the metaphysical universal and analyzing it into its constitutive notes, the intellect discovers that it can actually be predicated of many individuals, and constitutes its concept as formally universal or actually predicable of many. This logical relation of predictability is the work of the intellect. "Effectively, the universal is from the mind, materially or genetically it proceeds from a property in the thing."123 As the common nature grounds the objectivity of concepts, so the mind guarantees their universality.

Scotus strengthened the foundation of objective knowledge in his investigation of the cause which singularizes a common nature.124 What makes the common nature, which in itself is no more singular than universal, to be individual? He rejected the following: Henry of Ghent’s negative principle as inadequate to account for the positive perfection of individual unity; Giles of Rome’s theory of quantity, because an accident can make substances differ only accidentally;125 prime matter, because an indeterminate principle cannot be the primary reason of distinction; Aquinas’ theory of matter and quantity together, because two insufficient principles cannot make an adequate one;126 and form, because it is common to the individuals of a class.

What then makes "an individual," or something "one in number" so that "it is not divisible into many things, and is distinguished from every other according to number"?127 How does being pass from specific to individual unity? Evidently, finite common nature with no intrinsic repugnance in itself to being multiplied, requires a determinant formally extrinsic to the nature to individuate it. An axiom of Scotus is that a more perfect unity demands a more perfect entity. For Scotus, that entity which is extrinsic to common nature and intrinsic to being itself, is haecceity (haecceitas) or "thisness,"128 the individual entity, which is the final, positive perfection in the order of quidditative being.

- Haecceity. Although the logical unity of the species, for example, rational animal, excludes a division into essential parts without destroying the species itself, it does not exclude division into "subjective parts,"129 whereby the representatives of the species can be numerically multiplied indefinitely.

Haecceity, a new entitative act, contracts the indeterminate specific nature to singularity and intrinsically determines a being to be just this being and none other.130 It is not a specific difference added to a genus, but an entity which actualizes the potential reality of the species. Nor is it a perfection within form, but rather a new mode of being affecting the whole composite of matter and form, transforming the nature from specific to individual unity. Because every individual entity is radically different from any other entity, no haecceity has anything in common with another haecceity.

Scotus developed Aristotle’s hypomorphic theory within the transcendental structure of individuality. Analysis of quiddities abstracted from individuals reveals that they are composed of act and potency. According to these disjunctive transcendentals, every being is either act or potency, or a composite of both. Thus all material beings are composed of matter, the potential principle of indetermination, and form, the actual principle of determination. Following the Augustinian conception of the reality of matter in itself, Scotus viewed it as an entity whose potency, prior (at least logically) to formal determination, is actualized to constitute it a being in its own right.131 When potential being receives act, it stands as an individual existent outside its cause.132 Without act, matter would not exist as a reality distinct from form. As a reality with its own proper existence, matter has a real capacity to receive form.133

- Substantial Union. Although matter and form each has its own distinct reality, each is naturally ordered to the other as complementary potential and actual entities in a substantial union to constitute one physical composite.134

- Causality and Eminence. Metaphysical reflection on quiddities abstracted from experience discloses an essential order of prior-posterior, cause-caused, and exceeding-exceeded — three correlative disjunctive transcendentals.135 First, every being is ordered by its essence so that it is either prior or posterior. A being can be prior or posterior in terms of dependence and eminence.

Second, in the order of dependence, it is of the essence of two beings to be unequal, the posterior owing its being to the prior. This essential dependence is a relationship of cause and caused.136 Though formal and material causality exist in an essential order, both types involve imperfection preventing them from applying to all being. Relevant in this order are efficient and final causation which imply no imperfection on the part of the cause. The final cause moves the efficient cause to exercise its productivity in such a way that the agent gives being to its effect. Thus Scotus adapted Aristotle’s four kinds of causes to meet the demands of his own metaphysics.

Natural Theology137

Although the human intellect de jure has a natural capacity to know everything intelligible insofar as it is being, de facto it is moved directly only by the quiddity of sensible things. With no intuitive, or "self-evident" knowledge of the divine essence, man’s intellect has no proper concept of God’s essence from which he could a priori deduce his existence. Man must rise by abstraction to an indirect knowledge of immaterial beings and God.138

- Demonstration. Within the framework of human knowledge, Scotus analyzed Anselm’s argument for God’s existence. From an understanding of the word "God" as the "self-existent" or the "infinite," one can form the self-evident proposition, "God exists."139 However, the terms of this proposition are merely logical. To proceed from the simple possibility of a thing expressed in a merely logical concept to its actual existence affirmed in a real concept, is invalid. The proposition, "God exists," is logically self-evident but not metaphysically proven. Since God’s existence needs to be demonstrated, Anselm’s proof offers only persuasive value. It is necessary to show that the term "God" signifies an essence to which the predicate "existence" really, not merely logically belongs.

A posteriori demonstration of God’s existence must not originate from physical things, the proper study of the natural philosopher who, like Aristotle, reasons from moving bodies to the prime mover not transcending the physical order. "The most perfect concept of God possible in physics is prime mover; however the one possible in metaphysics is first being."140 One needs to go beyond the horizon of sensible things to establish that a cause is first in the order of being. "How should a physicist prove that a mover is first without being more of a metaphysician to prove it first than of a physicist to prove it a mover?"141 A first mover is more metaphysical as first than physical as mover.

A posteriori demonstration from contingent sensible effects which may or may not exist, is confined to establishing the hypothetical necessity of the prime cause. The probative force of proof from contingency falls short of rigorous demonstration from the absolute necessity inherent in the real possibility of caused beings. For a being to be produced, it is absolutely necessary that it have a cause. In metaphysical demonstration, the major must express necessity in the order of quidditative being, the minor a necessary relation between essence and existence, and the conclusion the necessity of actual existence.142

The disjunctive transcendentals supply the necessary principles of a metaphysical proof. On the basis of the universal law of disjunction, "by positing the less noble extreme of some being, we can conclude that the more noble extreme is realized in some other being."143 For example, "if some being is finite, therefore some being is infinite, and if some being is contingent, therefore some being is necessary."144

- Proof from Efficiency. "Some being is producible."145 But the producible must be caused by another, and ultimately, by a primary cause. Therefore, there exists a primary cause. Observation shows that some natures can be effected from the fact that some beings are contingent; they are possible to be after not being. It is possible for some being to be produced insofar as there is some being which effects.146 Causality and effectibility are a disjunctive transcendental of quidditative being as such.

The producible must be effected ultimately by a primary cause. "Now it cannot be produced by nothing, for what is nothing causes nothing. Neither can it be produced by itself, for . . . nothing ever makes itself or begets itself."147 Nor can the distinct cause of a producible being be an infinite series of causes which are essentially ordered.

"In essentially ordered causes, the second depends upon the first precisely in its act of causation."148 The essence of the former is less perfect than that of the latter. All the members in the essential series are simultaneously present, otherwise there would be no direct dependence of posterior upon prior, and consequently, no actual causality required to produce the effect. For example, a pen in the hand of a writer who is by nature more perfect can actually cause its effect only because it is here and now moved by the hand.149

It is impossible for some being to be ultimately produced by a distinct, infinite series of essentially ordered causes.150 Because the sum total of essentially ordered causes is composed of effects, the entire ensemble of effects must have been produced by a primary cause which is extrinsic and prior to the series. "Even if the group of beings caused were infinite, they would still depend upon something outside the group."151 Since the totality of effects is not the cause of itself, an infinity of essentially ordered causes cannot exist simultaneously.152 Hence, the effectibility of being is really possible only if an absolutely first cause is really possible.

The first efficient cause is really possible only because it actually exists. If it were not actually existing, it would only be because the first cause is really impossible, that is, capable of being caused. "Anything to whose nature it is repugnant to receive existence from something else, exists of itself if it is able to exist at all."153 The first cause, as absolutely first, cannot be effected, and no being is producible unless it is really possible.154

- Proof from Finality. Some beings are finalizable. But the finalizable must be caused by another, and ultimately, by an absolutely final cause. Therefore, an ultimate final cause exists.155

In this proof, the metaphysician abstracts the real possibility of finality from the empirical fact of existing things acting for an end, and considers being as finalizable. Some being is effectible only if it is ordered to an end. Inasmuch as any being acts, it acts for an end. Hence, every effect of an efficient cause must have a final cause.156

An infinite series of essentially ordered final causes is an impossibility. The sum total of final causes, like the individual causes, cannot be essentially ordered to itself and, consequently, cannot be simultaneously both prior and posterior, both end and that which has an end — a clear contradiction. The end of every producible being must be extrinsic to the universe and "simply ultimate, that is, it can neither be ordained to something else nor exercise its finality in virtue of something else."157 Not able to be finalized, "the ultimate end cannot be caused in any way."158

"The being which can be an ultimate end actually exists and . . . this primacy pertains to some actually existing nature."159 If the primary end were not existing, it would be on account of its real impossibility. The primary end would be a real impossibility (1) if it were ordered to an end — inconceivable, because it is essentially ultimate in the order of finality; (2) if it were ordered to itself — unthinkable, inasmuch as it is strictly uncausable; (3) if it were from nothing — impossible, for nothing comes from nothing. Hence, the ultimate final cause is really possible only insofar as it actually exists.160

Quidditative beings, excelling one another in perfection, are essentially ordered to one another. The root of eminence is the perfection of a form or end which exceeds that of another form, without necessarily involving dependence either ln the order of efficient or final causality.161

The hierarchy of perfection is really possible only insofar as there is a real possibility of an absolutely first eminent being. Since nondependent beings can be more perfect than one another, it is really possible for a being to be totally independent, and perfect in being. The totality of an infinite series of hierarchical perfections, like each member of the series, enjoys only relative independence. In the order of perfection, posterior is really possible only inasmuch as the prior is really possible. Hence the exceeded totality of hierarchical perfections is really possible only because "some eminent nature . . . simply first in perfection,"162 is really possible. Since "the supreme nature cannot be caused,"163 nor ordered to an end, the supremely perfect being holds absolute primacy of eminence.164

If the supremely perfect being were not actuality existing, it would be for one of these reasons: (1) its possibility is from nothingness — impossible, for nothingness is prior in perfection to nothing; (2) its possibility is from something else — inconceivable, because it is prior in perfection to all things; (3) its possibility is from itself — impossible, inasmuch as the prior in perfection cannot be posterior to itself in total perfection. "The supreme nature," then, "actually exists,"165 totally perfect and independent.166

The prime cause, ultimate end, and first being are one and the same primacy. Proportionate only to itself in being, the ultimate end of the first efficient cause is itself.167 "For if the end were anything apart from the agent intending the end, it would be more noble than the agent."168 Cause of all effects, the first efficient and final cause is supreme eminence, more perfect than all producible and finalizable things.

"Since this triple primacy is found together, . . . there is but one first efficient cause according to essence and nature."169 This single first being cannot be destroyed either intrinsically by a contradiction inasmuch as it is really possible, or extrinsically annihilated by a cause, for its nature is supreme. Its quidditative being necessarily demanding existence, the first must be. One in essential being, the first necessary being is one existent.170

B. Infinite Being. For Scotus, the proof of a primary being is incomplete unless its infinity is demonstrated from efficiency, eminence, and the rational faculties. Aristotle stated that the first cause moves by an infinite motion inasmuch as it has infinite power. Scotus interpreted this statement as meaning that God’s supreme causal power can produce by motion an infinite number of beings. Not limited by any cause, the first efficient cause can produce all possible effects. "But whatever has an infinite effect in its power at one and the same moment is infinite."171 Since the most perfect being cannot become more perfect, be equalled, or be exceeded by another being, it must be infinite in eminence,172 and one alone.

Scotus reasoned from the fact that "something is caused contingently"173 to contingency in the first cause in the sense that does not operate necessarily so as to exclude the possibility of the opposite effect. From internal experience, man is aware that the only Principle of contingent operation is free will which always implies intelligence. The freedom of some secondary causes can be due only to the first cause freely and intelligently causing.174

Since the object of the human intellect is being in its unlimited intelligibility, the intellect can experience an unlimited series of intellectual acts to grow in the knowledge of reality. Being’s unlimited intelligibility, which a limited intelligence understands in a potentially infinite series of successive intellectual acts, requires an actually infinite intelligence to be understood simultaneously in one act. "That intellect is infinite which, at one and the same moment, has actual knowledge of all these things."175 The first intelligence, embracing in itself an infinity of intelligible being with perfect simultaneity, must be actually infinite in being.176

The human will naturally tends beyond all finite objects incapable of completely satisfying its drive for perfect repose, "to love an infinite good to the greatest degree possible."177 The will would not incline naturally towards, nor find fulfillment in, an infinite good if its nature were contradictory and could not exist. An infinite good is a real possible object of the will because it exists.178

"This notion of God as an infinite being is the most perfect absolute concept we can have of him,"179 compatible with infinity. It is the most perfect concept, because infinite being virtually includes infinite truth, infinite goodness and every perfection. It is the simplest concept, since it signifies, not an attribute such as the concept of goodness which is predicated of the being, but rather the very intrinsic mode of that being.

Knowledge of God’s existence implies some awareness of what he is. From the proofs of God’s existence, it is clear that the ultimate modality and actuality of the divine essence is infinity, the most basic source of all his perfection, radically differentiating him from all other beings whose innermost mode is finitude. The quidditative being of the infinite absolutely demands existence and all perfection. The essence of the infinite is to exist. That is why God called himself, "He who is" in the Book of Exodus. "Divinity is formally infinity."180

A. Perfections. The infinite being enjoys all pure perfections which, having no limitation in their formal notion, are better to have than not to have. "Every pure perfection is predicated of the highest nature as necessarily existing there in the highest degree,"181 namely, in an intensively infinite manner. Accordingly, pure perfections predicable of infinite being are being, its coextensive attributes, the nobler member of its disjunctive properties — prior, cause, exceeding, actuality, substantial, simple — and simple perfections such as life, free will, intelligence, and power. These divine "attributes . . . are perfections simply spoken of God formally."182

Natural reason, however, cannot demonstrate with certainty God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, justice, mercy, and providence.183 While recognizing with Avicenna the demonstrability of God’s infinitely extensive power to produce every possible effect, immediately or mediately, Scotus was not so sure about God’s omnipotence. The imperfection of the effect may require a finite cause for its explanation. Consequently, although the first cause eminently possesses the causality of the secondary cause, it does not necessarily follow that the first cause is omnipotent in the sense that it can immediately produce the effect of the latter without its cooperation.184

Likewise, though it can be shown that God is present to all effects, it is not certain that he is immediately present to them. The greater the efficacy of the agent, the greater its power to act at a distance. "Therefore, since God is the most perfect agent, it cannot be concluded concerning Him through the nature of action that He is together with any effect caused by Him, but rather He is distant."185 Scotus’ reasoning regarding the divine presence and omnipotence seemed to have been influenced by Avicenna who followed Plotinus’ theory of emanation in explaining God’s peculiar transcendence; it is such that he can create only one being immediately, the highest intelligence, which in turn produces subordinate intelligences and material things.

Since the soul’s immortality cannot be proven strictly, the justice of God cannot be rationally demonstrated as rewarding and punishing in the next life.186 Similarly, with human reason unable to justify all the ways of God to man, the mercy of God, in the sense of forgiving sins and foregoing the exaction of punishment, cannot be philosophically demonstrated. Divine providence, especially in relation to intelligent creatures, cannot be metaphysically established by unaided reason which can fathom neither God’s election of the just nor a special providence without the mediation of secondary causes.187 Indemonstrable to natural reason alone which can at most give probable arguments, these divine attributes are properly objects of revelation and faith.

- Formal Objective Distinction. The divine attributes are formally distinct from each other in the individual essence of God, yet physically inseparable even by God’s absolute power. Were these formalities only logically distinct, God would be unintelligible to himself and there would be no objective ground for the human intellect’s distinct concepts of God.188 Formally and objectively distinct, one perfection of God does not enter into the essential definition of the other. The univocal concept of wisdom formally differs from the univocal concept of goodness in their predication of God.

The mode of infinity constitutes God’s essence and attributes as really, physically one without suppressing their formal distinction. "Goodness and greatness and other (attributes) of this sort are the same as it were by mutual identity, because each is formally infinite, and owing to this infinity each is the same as the other."189 The divine attributes are morally and substantially the same in the infinite being. "So I allow that truth is identical with goodness in reality, but not, however, that truth is formally goodness."190 Infinity makes God absolutely simple and one in himself.

- Intelligence and Ideas. Infinitely perfect in essence, God is infinitely intelligent with an infinity of ideas. In their quidditative being they are formally distinct from the divine essence. However, since they have no distinct proper existence, they are morally identical with the divine essence in the simple existence of the infinite. The objects of God’s intelligence are distinguishable according to a formal order of priority and posteriority. "God first knows His essence," which as infinite is proportionate to his intelligence, "and in the second instant He understands creatures by means of His essence,"191 expressing them as an unlimited number of ideas. In the third moment, the divine intellect relates its essence with other intelligibles by comparing them. In the fourth moment, God’s mind knows this relationship by reflecting upon it.192 All intelligible natures or possible beings, therefore, originate from the divine intellect.

Infinitely fertile, the divine intellect, "logically prior to the act of the divine will," naturally and eternally" produces those objects in their intelligible being,"193 the ideas which are as necessary as his essence. Existing only as known in relation to the divine intellect, the whole being of ideas is cognitional or objective. The ideas are related to the divine mind, not in the order of causality as existents, but in the order of priority and posteriority as objective beings. The ideas are perfectly true representations of the essences of possible creatures, because they conform to the productive and knowing mind of God. In fine, possible beings are intelligible imitations of the divine essence because God knows and produces them in their intelligible being.194

- Will. The divine intellect and ideas sufficiently explain the necessity of possible beings and God’s perfect knowledge of essence, such as humanity. However, they are inadequate to account for the existence of an essence and God’s definite knowledge of contingents, for example, a particular man. A contingent being is one whose opposite could have been when it came to be,"195 whereas "necessity deprives completely all possibility that the opposite of what is should be."196 A contingent being can have actual existence after nonexistence. To make an essence actually exist and to enable God to have definite knowledge of contingent beings, his intellect requires the concurrence of the divine will.

"Will in God is His essence really, perfectly and identically."197 Whereas God necessarily wills his own being which alone is the infinite good, he has no need of willing any finite essence not necessarily related to his infinite being. Willing all change, God himself never changes his will which is immutably one with his infinite essence. However, it does not follow that what God unchangeably wills eternally must necessarily exist eternally: "The operation (of the will) is in eternity, and the production of the being of existence is in time."198

The divine will causes creatures contingently inasmuch as their nonexistence could have been when they came to be.199 Creatables, finite goods freely chosen from among possibles, are individualized quidditative entities. Only through recourse to the free decisions of the divine will and the creatable does God’s intellect know contingent beings.

The infinite will possesses the pure formal perfection of liberty by which every object is freely chosen, every act of divine love is free. The liberty of the divine will lies in its being the absolutely first source of choosing. "The will is the total (efficient) cause of volition in the will."200 Because God freely loves himself in the sense of being the sole source of his self-love, he wills his own infinite essence necessarily. The less perfect is grounded in the more perfect. In the order of divine willing, the formality of liberty in choosing is logically prior to and more perfect than the formality of necessity in appetition. The liberty and necessity of divine self-love are identical in the infinity of God’s being.

The divine willing of every finite essence is an absolutely gratuitous act of freedom and love. Its existence is contingently willed.201 The sole reason for transforming a possible into a creatable is God’s will. With the exception of the principle of contradiction and of the intrinsic necessity of the intelligible forms in themselves, the divine will is absolute master of the decision to create or not to create, as well as of the choice and combination of essences to be created. Once laws have been decreed, God’s will preserves them unchangingly. Willed by God, an entity is good. "Because He willed it to be, therefore, it is good that it should be."202

The divine will chooses what the intellect knows as possible and efficiently causes as necessary, and gives it contingent existence outside of God. "Anything that receives its total being from another, so that by its nature it has existence after nonexistence, is created"203 by God’s power, a pure perfection formally distinct from the will. Whereas "uncreated reality, of itself (se), infinite and necessary is God, created reality, from another, possible, and finite, is spoken of by the common name, `creature.’"204

A. Power. Creating is the causality of the divine essence as power. Infinite in being, God enjoys infinite power, or better, omnipotence, an active causal power of immediately bringing from nonexistence to existence every creatable without the concurrence of any intervening secondary cause.205 Having received its whole being, the creature is really related to the creator. whereas the creator who suffers no entitative determination is only logically related to the creature.

B. Temporal or Eternal Creation? Creation in time is philosophically indemonstrable, because nothing depending on God’s absolutely free decision is rationally deducible. The logical priority of nonbeing to being implied in creation does not seem to involve necessarily a temporal priority. "It does not seem to be necessary that nothingness should precede the world logically."206 Creation in time is possible, perhaps probable, yet creation in eternity is not impossible, as far as natural reason can see. Scotus, therefore, rejected Bonaventure’s opinion and inclined more towards Aquinas’ view, though with some hesitation, and for somewhat different reasons.

Scotus extended his metaphysics into a science of finite beings. He conceived the created universe as a hierarchy of angels with subsistent intellectual forms, inanimate things, and man as the mediating incarnate soul. In bringing a creatable into existence, the creative act constitutes all its formalities in the existing whole. The unity of every existent is quidditative inasmuch as all its forms are composed without losing their proper distinction. and existential insofar as all the distinct quidditative entities numerically co-exist in the one individual.207

A. Form of Corporeity. The form of corporeity constitutes the body with its own proper actuality, enabling it to have a real potentiality to receive a soul. Transcending the purely material composition of an inanimate body, a living being requires the form of life, in addition to the form of corporeity, to account for the being’s organization and its vital activities.208 The form of corporeity, disposing a body to be informed by the soul as the form of life, retains its own proper quidditative entity apart from the formal being of the soul. At death, the physical integrity of the corpse, the binding of its manifold elements and the preservation of its appearance, can only be due, not to the soul which is separated from the body, but to the form of corporeity actualizing the body.209

B. Intellective Soul. Reflection on man’s acts make it possible to arrive, by way of causality, at their adequate principles. "The intellective soul is the specific form: of man," as is evident from the "function proper to man."210 Now, "man formally and properly understands,"211 and chooses. Human understanding with universal being as its object and its ability for self-reflection transcends sensation which is confined to particular beings and unable to turn perfectly back upon itself. The will’s freedom to choose or not to choose different things surpasses an organic appetite determined by this or that sensible good. The source of these rational and volitional activities must be an intellectual form. Each person can say that he knows or he wills because he possesses the formal principle of these activities as his own. and not as an Averroistic separate intelligence. As the proper form of man, the spiritual soul differentiates him from the brute and confers existence on him.

Unity follows quidditative being. The unity of the human composite comes from the one intellective form which unifies the lower forms. The plenary substantial form, involving its highest actuality, haecceity, contains all the forms entering into the composite. As potentiality is naturally subordinate to and complemented by actuality, so the body with its form of corporeity is naturally ordered to the intellective soul as its ultimate and most perfect form to constitute one complete substance.212 "Only the composite is a being per se . . .; the intellective soul, however, is not said to be subsistent," except insofar as it participates in the "existence of the whole."213 The partial forms — form of corporeity, vegetative and sensitive souls — -are formally distinct from each other in the intellective form of the whole which virtually includes them and communicates them to the human composite.214 Man, then, is a substantial union of an intellective soul and a living organized body. Consequently, the individual human composite subsists with soul and body as partial entities within the whole being and for the good of tho person. In view of his emphasis on the individual, Scotus was critical of Aquinas’ giving the soul — a partial being — its own proper subsistence and conferring existence, absolutely speaking (esse simpliciter), on man.

The human soul is physically identical but formally distinct from its faculties. As principles of understanding and willing, the powers are not physical entities apart from the soul, but rather "are contained unitively in the essence"215 of the soul as properties of a superior "container." Since the soul is the source of the powers and contains their partial perfections in a unitive identity with its total perfection, it is the immediate eminent principle of operation. The plurality of formalities are quidditatively distinct from the individual soul with which they are existentially or physically one.216 Likewise, the active intellect and possible intellect are formally distinct yet physically identical.

- Pre-eminence of the Will. In the spirit of Bonaventure, Scotus found the will formally distinct from and nobler than the intellect. First, the will which alone is free,"217 a free power (potentia libera) — is formally more perfect than the intellect, a natural power determined by its object to assent to clearly evident truth, for example, the whole is greater than the part.218 Though the will in its natural appetition for good is like the intellect in its necessary determination to truth, yet the formal notion of the former lies more in its essential freedom than in its natural inclination. Second, the will’s freely elicited act of love is more excellent than the intellect’s necessary natural love. That is why "no ignoring of God, not even that of unbelief," can be worse than "hatred of God, if the will could entertain such hatred."219 Finally, happiness comes more from loving than from knowing finite goods and especially the infinite good.220 "Beatitude," lies "formally in an act of the will by which the supreme good alone is absolutely attained and enjoyed."221

In contrast to the intellect which is "irrational" in the sense of automatically assenting in the presence of evident truth, the will is "rational" insofar as it freely chooses an object known through the intellect. "If rational means to act with reason, then it is the will that is properly rational and it is concerned with alternatives both as regards its own actions and the actions of the powers it controls, but the alternative it selects is not determined by its nature (as is the case with the intellect which could not determine itself to act otherwise), but it acts freely."222 Thus the will is not capricious or arbitrary in the exercise of its freedom, but radically rational in nature.

- Love. Scotus interpreted Anselm’s distinction between affection for the advantageous (affectio commodi) and the affection for justice (affectio justitiae) as a twofold inclination of the will towards the good. Whereas the former tendency is a love for what is to one’s advantage, the latter is a love of a thing for its own sake. "This affection for what is just . . . is that liberty which is native or innate in the will, since it provides the first tempering influence on the affection for what is advantageous"223 so that the will need not seek that towards which the latter affection inclines. The essential freedom of the will lies in choosing good for its own sake. Whatever decision is for one’s own benefit should be rooted in the choice of something good in itself. The drive for self-perfection, then, should be channeled towards the love of God and others in themselves.

Neither the soul nor the body, but the human composite properly exists through itself (esse per se). Though the soul is entitatively distinct from the body, its partial being is not definitive and ultimate, for, as the specific form of the body, it is quidditatively ordered to the "composite as a whole" which "is perishable."224 In view of the evident fact that the individual man, the proper subject of existence and activities, corrupts, it is not logical to reason that his soul, once separate from the body, enjoys a natural capacity to exist in itself.

The Augustinian argument from the natural desire for perpetual existence presupposes that human nature, the basis of the desire, is capable of immortality — the question at issue. A highly probable argument for this capacity can be found in the soul’s spiritual activity. The fact that the soul exercises its proper operations of intellectual and free volitional activity independently of the body, persuasively, though not demonstratively, argues to its independence in being apart from the body. The immortality of the soul, therefore, is "a more probable conclusion than its opposite."225

Scotus developed his ethics by an analysis of good. First, transcendental goodness is a property of all beings to the extent that they have any positive entity in themselves. "The secondary (or natural) goodness of being, which is accidental and accruing to being, is its integral harmony with other things to which it is necessarily related."226 The moral goodness of a human action depends on man’s acting in harmony with the exigencies of his nature in given circumstances and his respecting the necessary relations he has to other beings.

- Primary Morality. Morality is grounded in reason and freedom. "Primarily, then, the moral goodness of the act consists in its conformity to right reason, dictating in full concerning all the circumstances (power, object, end, time, place and manner) that are appropriate to this act."227 No human action can be morally good unless it originates from the power of free will which enjoys autonomy, dominion, and responsibility for the action. "An act is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy unless it proceeds from the free will"228 which enables the action to be completely conformed to right reason.

A human act derives its basic ethical meaning from the object to which it refers. "The primary (moral goodness) belongs to the volitive act insofar as it directs itself towards an object which is proper to it, not only according to the natural order of things, but also according to the dictates of right reason."229 Murder (the killing of an innocent person), for example, is contrary to right reason. The object conformable to right reason confers the actuality of moral goodness on a free act, as beauty adds to the substance of a body. As to love, God is the only act good in virtue of its object alone, so to hate the infinite good is the sole action evil by reason of its object alone with no possibility of being rendered good by any circumstance.230

- Secondary Goodness. "Secondary moral goodness belongs to the volitive act inasmuch as it is performed by the will having due consideration of all the circumstances"231 of place, time, way of accomplishing, and especially the intention of the will. "Goodness, as far as circumstances are concerned, depends primarily on the end"232 qualifying the whole act. However, a good end cannot justify evil means: "evil things must not be done that good may eventuate,"233 for example, to hate God to save one’s life from persecutors. To love God for his own sake, the ultimate end, is the supreme human action. In fine, a human act is completely good only when all its elements — object, end, and other circumstances — conform with right reason, just as a body is beautiful when it possesses all those characteristics of size, color, shape, and so on, which befit the body itself and harmonize with each other.

- Indifferent Actions. A human action lacking some circumstance necessary for complete moral goodness can be morally indifferent.234 An action not ordered, at least indirectly, to the ultimate end, can be good generically but fall short of the specific goodness of the end. He who loves God, the infinite good in whom object and end are identical, tends towards his due end and performs a morally perfect act. However, "man is not bound always to refer his acts to God by an actual or virtual intention, for God did not oblige us to do so."235 For example, almsgiving not referred either actually or virtually to the infinite good is neither completely compatible nor completely incompatible with the love of God, but simply an indifferent action.

Right reason is founded on the natural law grounded in God’s will. "The divine will is the cause of good, and so by the fact that He wills something it is good."236 This does not mean that God ever wills in a purely arbitrary or capricious manner. With his infinite essence as the primary and necessary object of his will and its supreme norm, God cannot will evil, a contradiction of his being. What God wills is good because God of his very nature cannot will anything but what is good. "God wills in a most reasonable and orderly manner"237 as his will completely conforms to the dictates of his perfect intellect.

- Obligation. God wills both the obligatory force and content of the moral law. Moral obligation arises from the divine will inasmuch as "to command pertains only to the appetite or will."238 In the human sphere, the intellect judges the truth or untruth of practical as well as speculative things, while the will dictates what ought to be done or ought not to be done to conform to the divine command of the moral law. A finite will is morally obliged to do good and avoid evil insofar as it is bound by the command of the infinite will.

- Necessary Content. God wills the content of the moral law in two formally different ways. First, in willing his own infinite essence as the only necessary object, God wills that laws directly referring to the Godhead be as necessary as his being, and necessary for man to attain his ultimate end. To conform to God’s will, man should follow the primary moral principle, "God is to be loved"239 in himself as the supreme good, and its implicit, necessary consequences which include the worship of God alone and the reverence of his holy name, regardles