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Modern Theology 21:4 October 2005

ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)


ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

RE-SITUATING SCOTIST THOUGHT

MARY BETH INGHAM

In “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance”, Catherine


Pickstock presents several levels of a critique against Scotist thought, first
from its contemporary interpretation (by scholars like Cross, Honnefelder
and Boulnois) and following this, from its basic assumptions that are more
central to her negative assessment of the Subtle Doctor. In this essay, I focus
less upon the first element (although I treat it briefly) and more upon the
assumptions that ground her critique. In sum, I think that Pickstock’s argu-
ment errs on two counts. First, she moves from interpretations about Scotus
to affirmations about his thought. Second, she (like many others) views
Scotist thought not from within his Franciscan assumptions (which I refrain
from calling “voluntarist”), but rather from within the assumptions of a
Thomistic perspective (which I likewise refrain from calling “intellectual-
ist”). As I hope to show, while her contemporary critique may be better
lodged upon the interpreters and not the Franciscan himself, her much more
elaborated critique of Scotus is not well founded. I intend to show this with
a few textual pieces of evidence. I conclude my response with a few com-
ments about the danger of historical categories such as “voluntarism” or
“intellectualism” for any authentic retrieval of a medieval thinker.
At the outset, however, I wish to state how important such scholarly
debate is, especially for Scotus, since there is so much misinformation about
his thought at large, fueled for the most part by histories of philosophy
written before the critical editions were available. Because of this, I wish to
begin by thanking Catherine Pickstock for her thoughtful and detailed treat-
ment of this important issue.

Mary Beth Ingham


Philosophy Department, Loyola Marymount University, One, LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA
90045, USA

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350
Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
610 Mary Beth Ingham

I. The Critique of Contemporary Interpreters of Scotus

In her opening paragraphs, Pickstock identifies four reactions among con-


temporary scholars to the development within the history of philosophy. The
first attempts to reconcile modern thought (Kantian and Scotist) with the
Christian vision. The second involves the French phenomenologist interpre-
tation, focused on univocity of being and the primacy of charity. The third
emphasizes univocal ontology as more basic to modernity than epistemol-
ogy and the shift to the subject. The fourth (her own) is critical of the uni-
vocal ontology and the centrality of efficient over final causality. We can
group her overall critique in terms of these four reactions. Her critique of
contemporary interpretations focuses on the second and third points. Her
critique of Scotus is centered on the way in which the fourth position raises
serious objections to the first position.
The second and third reactions, the French phenomenologists and so-
called post-modern thinkers, both center on univocity and the rejection of
analogy. This, it turns out, is really the crux of Pickstock’s argument with
Scotus. Thus, once she has raised objections to these two approaches, she is
able to move into her more central critique of Scotist thought, which is basi-
cally a critique of univocity of being, but also involves other aspects of his
overall vision.
I prefer to let contemporary scholars (such as Cross, Honnefelder and
Boulnois), whose interpretation of the history of philosophy and Scotus’s
place in it are the focus of the initial critique, answer for themselves. I do
question, however, the way in which Pickstock (and perhaps all scholars
mentioned in her article) view the history of philosophy. It is clearly the
“grand narrative” of broad categories that assists in a clear and systematic
view of history. It also fuels the “great man” approach to the history of phi-
losophy. If Kant and Descartes are “great men”, then the men who inspired
them are also “great men” and so on, back to the greatest men of all: Plato
and Aristotle. This view, despite its clarity, does not take into account the
historical details of an individual thinker, his response to thinkers with
whom he is in dialogue, and the way in which some aspects of his thought
are contextualized by others. My point here is simply to state that the isola-
tion of the univocity of being (by Pickstock or any other scholar) from other
aspects of Scotist thought (such as the formal distinction and formal modal
distinction) contributes to a misunderstanding of his philosophical and the-
ological perspective. Whether or not any particular element of a thinker’s
vision (isolated from the original context) plays a key role for later thinkers
in the history of philosophy or contemporary interpreters, may be grounds
for attribution but no more than that. I do not think the history of philoso-
phy has trajectories that are “set” by any one thinker in isolation from other
thinkers who use his work. To this extent, I would say that the reference to
Deleuze, Badiou and Derrida as “appealing to Scotus” moves too quickly to
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Re-situating Scotist Thought 611

the affirmation about what Scotus did, “flattening out of actual necessity
. . . to pure virtuality, and of being to the bare fact of existence”.1
That several contemporary scholars appeal to Scotus is not disputed here.
That they accurately capture the entirety of his vision, however, is something
of which I am not convinced. To isolate the univocity of being from all other
aspects of Scotist thought and to use it to ground a philosophical perspec-
tive is to do something with a piece of Scotus’s thought that Scotus did not
do. But, by the same token, to take this piece from contemporary discourse
and apply it to Scotus himself misses a key historical and methodological
point. Pickstock presents Thomist analogy as the counter to Scotus’s focus
on univocity. Historians of Scotist thought know well that the Franciscan’s
discussion of being as a univocal concept (and not a term) was in direct
response to Henry of Ghent’s neo-Augustinian illumination theory. It was
not a response to Aquinas’s position on analogy and its key use in language
about God. In fact, Scotus points out that his defense of the univocal concept
being is precisely what is needed for theology to have anything coherent to
say about God. So, rather than destroy theology, or even reduce it to imma-
nence, his defense of univocity aims at the same goal as Aquinas’s discus-
sion of analogy, i.e., a defense of language about God.
On this point, Boulnois has shown quite effectively that Scotus himself
distinguishes between the univocity of being required by the logician and
the analogous use of being that appears with theological discourse.2 Thus,
when Pickstock claims that Scotus defends a strict separation between
logical abstraction from spiritual ascesis, she misses the point that, for the
Franciscan, the separation is not between logic and spirituality, it is between
the categories used by a logician and those used by a theologian in their
discourse about God.
But this may in fact point to a key area where Scotus does indeed distin-
guish himself from Aquinas. He labors to make clear that the categories of
being found in Aristotle’s metaphysics (or even those present in Platonic
thought, to which he had an indirect access via Augustine) do not exhaust
the domain of Christian theology. This is because Christianity contains rev-
elation not known to the Greeks. And while, like Aquinas, he affirms that
there is coherency between what natural reason can know and what is
revealed, he also notes the qualitative difference between what philosophers
can say with certainty about God and what theologians are able to say. In
their respective disciplines (logic and theology) the concept being functions
differently. In the domain of logic it functions univocally (since the alterna-
tive offered by Henry of Ghent was equivocation disguised as analogy). In
the domain of theology, and particularly in regard to the names of God, the
term functions analogically.
If one were to contrast Scotus’s affirmation of the univocity of being with
Aquinas’s affirmation of analogy, it would be necessary to say that Aquinas
(in contrast to Scotus) affirmed the analogous use of the concept being.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
612 Mary Beth Ingham

Aquinas affirms the analogous use of terms, not of concepts. It is difficult to


imagine an analogous concept that is not equivocal. This is Scotus’s point.
When she asserts that Scotus “implies that being as a semantic or logical unit
is also a formal element of the makeup of any existential reality”, Pickstock
goes beyond what the Franciscan has actually said. She notes this in the sen-
tence that follows: “although Scotus does not explicitly speak of a ‘formal
distinction’ between being and essence, later Scotists developed a clear logi-
cist formalisation”.3 This may be true, but then the correction should be
directed at later Scotists, not at Scotus himself. Scotus himself refused to
accept the distinction between essence and existence; he called it a fictio
mentis.
Indeed, in her first set of critical arguments, Pickstock focuses on the “nar-
rative” of modernity, pre-modernity, proto-modernity and post-modernity.
She rightly notes the failure of these categories to capture what the scholars
using them are attempting to show. But then she relies on the very narrative
that is so problematic in order to attack Scotus, whether that be a move from
the narrative itself or from the contemporary scholars who use Scotus to
present their position. Her use of sweeping expressions, such as “Pre-Scotist
Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophical Realism” or the “Western Catholic Syn-
thesis” leave me wondering to whom she refers. It may be Thomas Aquinas.
And, if this is the case, then it is better simply to say that Scotus does not
share the perspective of Aquinas on many of these issues. No one would
debate this point.
Pickstock’s position is clearly based upon the centrality of a Thomist per-
spective: the essence/existence distinction, the analogy of being as Thomas
presents it, the nature of the transcendentals. Perhaps this is due to the
present state of discourse and the way her opponents may use Scotus to cri-
tique Aquinas. I leave this to others to sort out. I simply point out here that
to criticize Scotus on the basis that he is not a Thomist is as unwarranted as
criticizing Aristotle for not being Plato, or any thinker for not being someone
else. The key for an accurate retrieval of a central voice in the Christian tra-
dition is, in my opinion, to give them a hearing on their own basis, and not
on that of another. It is a tragedy that two such great minds as that of Aquinas
and Scotus can only be discussed in competition with one another, by
members of one perspective who reject the other on the basis of small points
of divergence. A far more helpful approach would be to understand the
entire vision with its intricacies.

II. The Critique of Scotus


It is in the third portion of her article, “The Theological Dimension of Uni-
vocity”, that Pickstock turns to her direct critique of Scotus. Here we see both
her assumptions about Scotist thought and the way in which her Thomistic
perspective dominates her entire essay. Because she views Scotus through
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Re-situating Scotist Thought 613

the eyes of a Thomist, Pickstock is unable to see what is truly going on


in the Franciscan’s thought: an alternative orthodox Christian intellectual
approach to key human questions.
Pickstock asserts that her “present critique of Scotus has more to do with
the separation of faith from reason, grace from nature, will from reason and
theology from metaphysics and physics”.4 As I hope to show in this section,
these are caricatures of Scotus, caricatures taken from the historical narra-
tive about the history of philosophy she alludes to earlier in her essay, cari-
catures framed entirely from the Thomist perspective and meaningful only
if one views reality in the particular way that she does.
But of course, this sort of critique cannot work as well as she would like,
for one must transform Scotus into someone he is not in order to justify the
critique. In what follows, I will present four key elements of Scotus’s philo-
sophical and theological approach that show how, both in the historian’s
view and in Pickstock’s, the Scotus they critique cannot be established from
the textual evidence at hand.
The first key element in Scotus’s view of reality and of the relationship of
philosophy to theology is the centrality of the Incarnation. Because his vision
is so predominantly Christocentric and so affirming of the sui generis nature
of Christian revelation, Scotus both critiques the natural capacity of human
reason to grasp everything about God and moves his consideration of cre-
ation (both in its contingency and in the logical categories used to discuss it)
to a secondary status. Thus, he would not hold (with Aquinas and Aristo-
tle) that this world is the only one possible, nor (with Aristotle) that its
unique existence points to a single, necessary prime mover. Nor would he
hold (with Aquinas and Aristotle) that the life of natural virtue and the
philosopher’s goal of happiness (felicitas) are sufficient reasons to demon-
strate immortality. This is not because he holds that reason cannot demon-
strate the soul’s immortality. Rather, he holds that natural reason cannot
(alone) demonstrate the sort of immortality promised by Christianity (cf. 1
Cor. 2: “eye has not seen nor has ear heard . . .”).
Scotus’s critique of philosophical arguments based upon necessity is
grounded on his view that the necessity of which philosophers speak is a
determinist necessity. In light of revelation about creation and, especially, the
Incarnation, the Franciscan works to defend a notion of freedom that avoids
any strong determinism. This is the metaphysics behind his defense of
freedom in the will. I have argued elsewhere5 that the impact of the devel-
opment of philosophical/theological discussion in a post-1277 university
context cannot be overlooked in any attempt to identify authentic Scotist
positions on these central human issues. Regardless of the power of Aris-
totelian thought for Scotus (and his critique of Henry of Ghent is based upon
his commitment to Aristotelian logic and epistemology, corrected by the
insights of revelation), Aristotle was not a Christian, nor had he access to
sacred texts. This is a significant element for the Franciscan in a post 1277
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
614 Mary Beth Ingham

academic world, where the centrality of Aristotelian thought (especially for


human free choice) was under growing scrutiny. Scotus’s treatment of the
relationship of philosophy to theology in the Ordinatio Prologue clearly
demonstrates both his respect for and his criticism of the Aristotelian tradi-
tion as it was defended by members of the Faculty of Arts in Paris at the end
of the thirteenth century.6 What Pickstock calls the “separation of theology
from metaphysics and physics” can equally be called the “affirmation of the
centrality of revelation for any Christian thinker”. Indeed, from Scotus’s per-
spective, one might criticize Aquinas for his “overly naturalistic” approach
to key human questions, odd for a Christian thinker, indeed, equally odd for
a religious.
It is clear that such a critique of Aquinas would be a caricature of the
Angelic Doctor, based upon the selective use of several texts, themselves a
small portion of a much larger corpus. But the point I am trying to make
here is that the very same sort of approach is being taken with Scotus. The
centrality of creation is no less important to Scotus than to Aquinas; he
defends it in a different way. Scotus defends the dignity of creation in his
discussion of the principle of individuation (haecceitas), the centrality of the
human person and the powers of human reasoning, which need no light of
glory to experience the beatific vision. It is Aquinas who views human nature
in an inferior light, not Scotus.7
The second element of Scotus’s vision has to do with his optimistic anthro-
pology. This flows, I have argued elsewhere,8 from his Franciscan spiritual-
ity. He endows human rational nature with enormous capacity for knowing
and loving God, and he minimizes the effects of the Fall. His defense of the
Immaculate Conception and position on the Incarnation were counter to the
commonly held positions of his day, but entirely orthodox and consistent
to positions taught within his own religious family.9 Thus, when Pickstock
accuses Scotus of a separation of grace from nature, she misreads the intri-
cate way that grace and nature are at work within Scotist thought from the
divine act of creation. Nature is not opposed to grace; rather nature is graced
in its most basic being. This is how, for Scotus, the contingency of creation,
the Incarnation and the Immaculate Conception function as a coherent set
of doctrinal positions that are fundamental to the Franciscan’s vision. To
present Scotus’s position on the contingent nature of creation independently
of his position on the Primacy of Christ and the Immaculate Conception
removes a central insight from a larger body of thought and offers it as a
self-standing proposition. Creation, Incarnation and the Immaculate Con-
ception all belong to the order of execution that follows upon the divine ordo
intentionis, or God’s desire (as revealed in Scripture) from before the foun-
dation of the world.
The third element involves the claim that Scotus separates the will from
reason. This, along with the univocity of being, forms the central target for
Pickstock’s critique of the Subtle Doctor. Indeed, Scotus’s position on
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Re-situating Scotist Thought 615

freedom in the will has been and continues to be an area of much discussion
among historians and philosophers. Much of the criticism, in my opinion,
stems once again from a misreading of the Franciscan’s position. Scotus’s
early death (at 42) is responsible for the fact that he left numerous texts
incomplete. There is much scholarly debate as to whether or not Scotus’s
affirmation of the will’s freedom is dangerous, proto-modern or classic in its
formulation. There are two texts central to the debate that contributes to the
confusion. The first, his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book 9,
question 15, offers textual evidence that Scotus taught that freedom is simply
the will’s exercise of choice, independent of the intellect. The second, from
his Ordinatio Book II, distinction 6 offers a careful analysis of Anselm’s two
affections (the affectio commodi and affectio iusititae) showing that the central-
ity of choice and self-control requires an external world of objective goods.
It is the interaction of the two affections in the will that explains freedom as
a substantive exercise, not an empty act of spontaneous willing.10
In a recent article, I have argued that it is in a Parisian text, his Reportatio
II, distinction 25, that we find evidence that Scotus’s treatment of the ratio-
nal will integrated the powers of cognition, rather than separated them from
rationality or the intellect.11 While this point is far too complex to be treated
at length in this short essay, it is important to note that, pace Pickstock and
many other readers of Scotus, the development of Book II, distinction 25 of
the Sentences Commentary (in its Lectura, Ordinatio and Reportatio versions)
demonstrates quite clearly that, during his teaching career, Scotus moved
from a position that identified reason with the intellect toward a position
that affirmed the will’s rationality. This means that he did not, as is claimed,
separate the will from reason. Rather, he worked continuously to integrate
rationality into willing.
What this means for his position on freedom is, I think, clear enough.
Scotus does not defend an exercise of freedom that takes for granted the
absence of intellection or reason. He does, however, defend an exercise of
rational freedom in the will that is free from any determinism on the part of
the intellect, or any other force outside the will. The will is the seat of ratio-
nality for Scotus, just as, for Thomas, the intellect is the seat of reason. Since
both hold that freedom and reason are fundamental to human action, it is
no surprise that Aquinas affirms true freedom to be where rationality is not
determined by anything outside intellectual deliberation (such as the pas-
sions). Scotus, for his part, affirms true freedom to be where rationality is
not determined by anything outside voluntary self-mastery. The object as
known by the intellect is within the will’s power of choice, and is not seen
as separate from the exercise of freedom. Scotist thought focuses on the exer-
cise of practical reason (the will) as central to the exercise of the fullest form
of human agency and its perfection in freedom.
If one is not aware of the key role played by the Condemnation of 1277,
of the shift in discourse around notions of nature as determined and will as
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
616 Mary Beth Ingham

self-determining and directive of choice, then one might easily conclude that
Scotus removes rationality from willing and contributes to an understand-
ing of freedom that is an exercise of a power having no objective content,
other than that determined by the subject. On the contrary, it was precisely
in response to an overly naturalistic vision of human behavior, based upon
an Aristotelian perspective, that Scotus offered his critique of philosophical
categories and his defense of freedom, both in God and in the human person.
The final element of Pickstock’s critique of Scotus is the affirmation of the
univocity of the concept being and its lethal consequences for any defense of
transcendence and a spiritual ascent. This point deserves a more careful
treatment. Scotus sets forth his argument for the univocity of being in Ordi-
natio I, distinction 3, question 1.12 The text deals specifically with the pos-
sibility of knowledge about God and, by implication, of the existence of
theology as a science. Here, the Franciscan develops his position on the uni-
vocity of being in tandem with a discussion of scientific knowledge of God.
Together, both constitute the sine qua non condition for any possible theol-
ogy: human cognition must have some natural basis from which to reflect
on the divine. This natural ground is, in Scotist thought, the univocity of the
concept of being. If, in his argument, Scotus can show that the human mind
has foundational access to reality, and if that reality provides adequate basis
for natural knowledge of God, then theology can be understood as a science,
whose content does not exhaust the truth about God.
Scotus reasons from the discussion of language about God to the deeper
consideration of the sort of foundation that would explain how such lan-
guage is possible (namely, that being rather than quidditas is the first object
of the intellect). In this, he follows his usual methodological procedure,
moving from experience to what grounds the possibility of that experience.
In addition, Scotus bases his argument upon the Aristotelian cognitive
model, where sense knowledge, mental species and agent intellect form the
constitutive parts. Finally, the Subtle Doctor rejects Henry of Ghent’s pro-
posed illumination theory, along with its argument from analogy. For Scotus,
Henry’s position on analogy without an underlying univocity of concepts is
simply equivocation. The Franciscan argues that when we conceive of God
as wise, we consider a property (wisdom) that perfects nature. In order that
we might do this and in light of the cognitive structure Aristotle provides,
we must first have in mind some essence in which the property exists. When
we consider properties or attributes such as wisdom, we do not understand
them as pure abstraction, but as belonging to an essence. This more basic,
quidditative concept is a type of conceptual whatness that grounds the act of
cognition. Were such a concept not univocal, theology could not be a science,
nor would language about God be meaningful.
The formal modal distinction is key to understanding the way in which
Scotus presents the relationship of cognition to the natural world and then
to language about God. The formal modal distinction is related to but not
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Re-situating Scotist Thought 617

identical with the formal distinction. This modal distinction applies not to
different attributes or aspects of a being (as does the formal distinction), but
to the distinction between a subject, such as intelligence in humans, and its
mode, such as finite. The significance of the formal modal distinction
becomes clear when we understand its role as foundation for those concepts
that are predicable univocally of God and creatures. Consider, for example,
the concept wisdom as predicable of God and creatures. Scotus asks, “How
can the concept common to God and creatures be considered real unless it
can be abstracted from some reality of the same kind?”13 In response, he
explains the difference between the modal distinction and the strict formal
distinction. A perfection and its intrinsic mode, such as infinite wisdom, are
not so identical that we cannot conceive of the perfection (wisdom) without
the mode (infinity). We can, indeed, conceive of wisdom independently of
whether it is finite (human wisdom) or infinite (divine wisdom). The per-
fection and mode are not really distinct, however, because they cannot be
separated in reality; nor are they formally distinct, because they are not
two formalities each capable of terminating a distinct and proper concept.
Nonetheless, they are still not identical, because the objective reality signi-
fied by the perfection with its modal intensity (infinite wisdom) is not pre-
cisely the same as that signified by the perfection alone (wisdom).
The formal modal distinction, then, actually safeguards the reality of those
concepts, such as being, that are predicable of God and creatures. Without
the mode, these sorts of concepts are common and imperfect. They function
semantically in a confused manner, designating in a general way. With the
mode, the concept is called proper, and has a more focused, specifying role.
The referent (that is, the being designated as infinite) emerges more clearly
within the field, like a figure against a background. The formal modal dis-
tinction, in a manner similar to the formal distinction, is linked to the activ-
ity of abstractive cognition. The modal distinction’s specificity can be clearly
seen when we reflect upon the experience of the beatific vision. The blessed
in heaven, states Scotus, perceive the infinite perfection of divine infinite
wisdom intuitively, not as two formal objects, but as one.14 By contrast, no
intuition in heaven erases the formal distinction between the divine persons
and the divine essence, or between the divine intellect and the divine will.
In short, the formal distinction is such that it remains even in the beatific
vision, while the formal modal distinction does not.15
In her critique of Scotus’s affirmation of the univocity of being, Pickstock
isolates that affirmation from those aspects that both contexualize it for
Scotus (i.e., Henry’s arguments) and those aspects that inform its use in the-
ological reflection (the formal modal distinction). In isolation, the position
on the univocal concept being is contrasted to Aquinas’s position on the anal-
ogous use of the term being and how it functions semantically to enable
natural reason to speak of God in ways that safeguard transcendence and
the link between natural reasoning and the spiritual journey. Such a contrast
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
618 Mary Beth Ingham

is unfair to Scotus, since the univocal concept being and the formal modal
distinction achieve the same sort of transition from natural reasoning to lan-
guage about God.
Aquinas and Scotus have two distinct and systematic ways of approach-
ing reality, the spiritual journey and language about God. Both seek to
defend the content of Christian revelation with logical and metaphysical
tools. They defend that content differently, however, and such difference is
a richness for the tradition.

NOTES
1 Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance”, pp.
543–544.
2 See Olivier Boulnois, “Duns Scot, Théoricien de l’Analogie de L’Etre” in John Duns Scotus:
Metaphysics and Ethics, edited by Ludger Honnefelder, Riga Wood and Mechthild Dreyer
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 293–315.
3 Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance”, pp.
546–547.
4 Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance”, p. 553.
5 “The Condemnation of 1277: Another Light on Scotist Ethics”, Freiburger Zeitschrift für
Philosophie und Theologie, Vol. 37 Heft 1–2 (1990), pp. 91–103.
6 On this, see my “Duns Scotus, Morality and Happiness: A Reply to Thomas Williams” in
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 74 no. 2 (2000), pp. 173–195.
7 Aquinas’s insistence on the light of glory (lumen gloriae) needed for the beatific vision is
challenged by Scotus as a diminishment of the natural powers of the human person. When
he presents and defends the key role of intuitive cognition, Scotus notes that it follows from
the natural constitution of the human person as created by God. It was known to Jesus and
thus belongs to human nature. With his Franciscan insight of viewing the person as imago
Christi (a perspective shared by Bonaventure), Scotus does not hesitate to attribute to the
human person any perfection that does not contradict Scripture or right reasoning.
8 See Scotus for Dunces: An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 2003).
9 Both his position on the Incarnation and Immaculate Conception were held by Scotus’s
teacher, William of Ware.
10 See Allan B. Wolter, “Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus”, in Allan
B. Wolter and Marilyn McCord Adams, eds., The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 148–162.
11 “Did Scotus Modify His Position on the Relationship of the Intellect and the Will?”
Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales, Vol. 69 no. 1 (2002), pp. 88–116.
12 An English version of this text can be found in Duns Scotus, Metaphysician, translated and
edited by William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University
Press, 1995), pp. 108–133.
13 Ordinatio I, d. 8, q. 3, n. 137 (ed. Vat. 4: 221–222).
14 Ordinatio I, d. 8, q. 3, nn. 137–142 (ed. Vat. 4: 221–224).
15 Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1946), pp. 25–27.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

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