Encyclopedia of Philosophy: DuNS Scotus

« form.

According to Aquinas, two humans, Peter and Paul, were distinct from each other not on account of theirform, but on account of their matter.

Scotus rejected this, and postulated a distinct formal element for eachindividual: his haecceitas or thisness.

Peter had a different haecceitas from Paul, and so, presumably, did Browniefrom Eeyore.In an individual such as Socrates we have, then, according to Scotus, both a common human nature and anindividuating principle.

The human nature is a real thing which is common to both Socrates and Plato; if it were notreal, Socrates would not be any more like Plato than he is like a line scratched on a blackboard.

Equally, theindividuating principle must be a real thing, otherwise Socrates and Plato would be identical.

The nature and theindividuating principle must be united to each other, and neither can exist in reality apart from the other: we cannotencounter in the world a human nature that is not anyone's nature, nor can we meet an individual that is not anindividual of some kind or other.

Yet we cannot identify the nature with the haecceitas: if the nature of donkeywere identical with Brownie's thisness, then every donkey would be Brownie.Is the nature really distinct from the haecceitas or not? We seem to have reached an impasse: there are strongarguments on both sides.

To solve the problem, Scotus made use of a new concept, which rapidly became famous:the objective formal distinction (distinctio formalis a parte rei).

The nature and the haecceity are not really distinct,in the way in which Socrates and Plato are distinct, or in the way in which my two hands are distinct.

Nor are theymerely distinct in thought, as Socrates and the teacher of Plato are.

Prior to any thought about them, they are, hesays, formally distinct: they are two distinct formalities in one and the same thing.

It is not clear to me, as it wasnot clear to many of Scotus' successors, how the introduction of this terminology clarifies the problem it was meantto solve.

Scotus applied it not only in this context but also widely elsewhere, for instance to the relationshipbetween the different attributes of the one God, and to the relationship between the vegetative, sensitive, andrational souls in humans.The introduction of the notion of haecceity affects Scotus' conception of the human intellect.

Aquinas had deniedthe possibility of purely intellectual knowledge of individuals, because the intellect could not grasp matter as such,and matter was the principle of individuation.

But the haecceitas though not a form is quite distinct from matter,and is sufficiently like a form to be present in the intellect.

According to Scotus, because each thing has within itan intelligible principle, the human intellect can grasp the individual in its singularity.Scotus extended the scope of the intellect also in a different direction.

Aquinas maintained that in the present lifethe intellect was most at home in acquiring, by abstraction from experience, knowledge of the nature of materialthings.

Scotus said that to define the proper object of the intellect in this way was like defining the object of sightas what could be seen by candlelight.

The saints in heaven enjoyed the intellectual vision of God; if we were totake the future life as well as the present into account we must say that the proper object of the intellect was aswide as Being itself.

Scotus did not deny that in fact all our knowledge arises from experience, but he thought thatthe dependence of the intellect on the senses in the present life was perhaps a punishment for sin.Scotus makes a distinction between intuitive and abstractive knowledge.

Abstractive knowledge is knowledge of theessence of an object, considered in abstraction from the question whether the object exists or not.

Intuitiveknowledge is knowledge of an object as existent: it comes in two kinds, perfect intuition when an object is present,and imperfect intuition which is memory of a past or anticipation of a future object.On the relationship between the intellect and the will, Scotus once more departs from the position of St Thomas inseveral ways.

Historians of philosophy call him a ‘voluntarist', a partisan of the will against the intellect.

What doesthis mean precisely? Scotus asks whether anything other than the will effectively causes the act of willing in thewill.

He replies, nothing other than the will is the total cause of its volition.

Aquinas had maintained that thefreedom of the will derived from an indeterminacy in practical reasoning.

The reason could decide that more than one alternative was an equally good means to a good end, thus leaving the will free to choose.

Scotusmaintained that any such contingency must come from an undetermined cause which can only be the will itself.

Butin making the will the cause of its own freedom, Scotus' theory runs the danger of leading to an infinite regress offree choices, where the freedom of a choice depends on a previous free choice whose freedom depends on aprevious one, and so on for ever.This was not a danger of which Scotus was unaware, and in the course of his discussion of God's foreknowledge offree actions he introduced a new kind of potentiality, uniquely characteristic of human free choice, which holds outthe possibility of avoiding the regress.When we have a case of free action, Scotus says, this freedom is accompanied by an obvious power to do oppositethings.

True, the will can have no power to will X and not-will X at the same time – that would be nonsense – butthere is in the will a power to will after not willing, or to a succession of opposite acts.

That is to say that while A iswilling X at time t, A can not-will X at time t + 1.

This, he says, is an obvious power to do a different kind of act ata later time.But, Scotus says, there is another non-obvious power, which is without any temporal succession.

He illustrates thiskind of power by imagining a case in which a created will existed only for a single instant.

In that instant it couldonly have a single volition, but even that volition would not be necessary, but be free.

The lack of successioninvolved in this kind of freedom is most obvious in the case of the imagined momentary will, but it is in fact there allthe time.

That is to say, that while A is willing X at t, not only does A have the power to not-will X at t + 1, but Aalso has the power to not-will X at t, at that very moment.

This is an explicit innovation, the postulation of a non-manifest, we might even say occult, power.Scotus carefully distinguishes this power from logical possibility; it is something which accompanies logical possibilitybut is not identical with it.

It is not simply the fact that there would be no contradiction in A's not willing X at thisvery moment, it is something over and above – a real active power – and it is the heart of human freedom.The sentence ‘This will, which is willing X, can not-will X' can be taken in two ways.

Taken one way (‘in a compositesense') it means that ‘This will, which is willing X, is not-willing X' is possibly true; and that is false.

Taken another. »