John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308)

John Duns Scotus, often known as “The Subtle Doctor” due to the subtlety and immense complexity of his thought, was an influential thinker and considered the greatest of the realists (typically set next to Aquinas and Albert the Great and contrasted to William of Ockham and similar nominalists).  His name “Scotus” designated him as John Duns, the Scot.  His name, “Duns,” designated where he was born (Duns, Scotland), but became a slur, “dunce,” directed to Scotus’ followers who had less rhetorical prowess and followed what became known as their master’s via antiqua, or “old way” of doing philosophy by the later nominalists (their thought and style was considered to embody all that was absurd and ridiculous in scholasticism. 

Realists:  universals have objective existence (e.g., Plato’s Forms are considered a realist doctrine); matter, as the object of perception, has real existence, is not reducible to mind, and does not depend upon a perceiver for its existence. 

Nominalists: universals are merely names without corresponding reality; only particular objects exist; properties, numbers, sets, etc., are only features of the way of considering things to exist. 

John Duns was born in 1265 or 1266 in Duns, Scotland, very close to the border of England.  In 1291 he was ordained in the priesthood in England and was studying with the Franciscans.  By 1300 we know that he was lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences in Oxford and two years later at the University of Paris.  A year later he was forced to leave France, amongst other foreign friars, for siding with the Pope in a dispute with the King of France (Philip the Fair), however, his exile only lasted a year, and in 1304 he was back in Paris and made a Franciscan regent master of theology in 1305.  In 1307 he was sent to Köln, where he died in 1308. 

Duns Scotus’ intellectual energies were focused on an attack against Henry of Ghent, an Augustinian, who was connected to the Condemnation of 1277. 

Condemnation of 1277: The Bishop of Paris (presumably on papal initiative) forbid the teachings of 219 theological and philosophical treatises, however, what exactly was condemned, who, and why is not clearly known.  (This list of condemnations is only one of at least 16 lists of censured theses in the 13th and 14th c..)  Names were not named in the list, although the fact that they were faculty at Paris was noted, which fuels the speculation.  The first seven of the condemnations concern the nature and excellence of philosophy, the following five with the knowability of God, and the following ten on God’s omnipotence.  A particular target seems to have been philosophers who relied upon Aristotle.  Some argue that many of Aquinas’ ideas were included herein, although his thought was later cleared of any heresy.  In addition to the 219 errors, specific works on geomancy (divination), necromancy (communicating with the dead), witchcraft, and fortunetelling were condemned. 

Duns Scotus did not want to attack all of Augustine’s thought, but, rather just the illuminationism therein [the theological doctrine that human thought needs to be aided by God] and defend Augustine against ‘misreadings’ of his theory of knowledge.  

Duns Scotus’ philosophy emphasizes the will as the root of human freedom and our noblest faculty or power.  Human will is not solely caused by intellect’s knowledge, but there is no free action outside of intellectual judgment about what ought to be done.  This emphasis on freedom leads to an abiding concern with differentiating the contingent from the necessary and also a defense of the validity of cognitive activities.  Thus, many of Scotus’ positions seem close to or preliminary to skepticism, although he takes pains to avoid skepticism (Henry of Ghent’s position, he argues, leads inevitably to skepticism) and believes that we can have certainty; his positions are also clearly and deeply critical. 

However, Scotus’ texts are have suffered heated debate and numerous discoveries that attributed works were not his and numerous editions included spurious material.  Most of his known works are on Aristotle, although the most famous is the Ordinatio, his Oxford lectures that he revised and edited for publication.  The first Ordinatio therein is concerned with the nature of self evidence and his proof for the existence of God (at least, of an “infinite being,” which he claims is the most perfect concept of God that humans may have while living, since infinity contains within it all of the other perfections). 

This demonstrates that Scotus is defending natural theology (the opposite of revealed theology), the belief that the existence and attributes of God can be known by arguments that do not rely upon revelation.  Like Aquinas (and many of the Neoplatonists we have read), Scotus believes that our knowledge of God begins from His creation, and with this evidence, we can prove His existence and nature—but with proof that only proceeds from effect to cause—and cannot know His essence itself.  The main difference between Scotus and Aquinas concerns how we apply the divine names.  For Scotus, we can apply some attributes univocally to God (with the exact same meaning); for Aquinas, this is impossible, and the predication of names can only be analogical (the name has a different meaning for God than it has when applied to something created).  Scotus uses Aquinas’ theories against him as well as Anselm to prove the univocal predication. 

John Duns Scotus’ Ordinatio I, pp.567-70: