B. About Ratification and Somethingness

1. Opinion of Others

302. As to the third article [n.285], it is said [cf. Henry of Ghent infra], according to Boethius On the Hebdomads, that “what a thing is by and what it is are diverse,” because that which a thing is ‘by’ is called its ‘ratification’, and that which it is ‘what it is’ by is called its ‘somethingness’ [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 11 q.3]. On this understanding it is said that the respect of footprint in a creature is not founded on the ratification of the thing, but only on its somethingness, and it [sc. the respect of footprint] is formally the ratification of it [ibid., 5 q.6, 11 q.3].a

a.a [Note by Scotus, cf. Ord. II d.1 qq.4-5, n.17] This is important in the second book, in the question about the relation of a creature to God.

303. The way of positing it is this: according to Avicenna Metaphysics 5 ch.1, “humanity is only humanity;” therefore the idea of humanity is not the ratified thing; therefore, humanity must be a ratified thing by something else outside the formal idea of humanity.

304. The argument is also made that what its ratification is formally by is the footprint relation, and this first as follows: whatever is included in the per se understanding of something, insofar as that something is of the sort it is, is that by which it is of that sort, or is the same formally as what it is insofar as it is of that sort; but the respect of footprint is included in the idea of any ratified being;     therefore etc     . Proof of the minor: there is a being that is ‘to be’ itself, as is God; there is a being that ‘to be’ belongs to, as is every other being besides God, which is not of itself ‘to be’ but only a being to which ‘to be’ belongs [cf. Henry, Quodlibet 5 a.2, Summa a.2 q.6]. From this the argument goes as follows: any being that is not of itself ‘to be’, but is that to which ‘to be’ belongs, is not a ratified being save by participating that very ‘to be’, or insofar as it does participate that very ‘to be’ [cf. n.109]; everything other than God is that to which ‘to be’ belongs and is not ‘to be’ itself;     therefore it is not ratified save to the extent it participates ‘to be’; therefore by that participation is it formally ratified.

305. Secondly [cf. n.304] as follows: nothing other than God can be perfectly known without knowledge of all the intrinsic and extrinsic causes, Physics 1.1.184.14-17, “Then each thing etc     .” [Henry, Summa a.1 q.5]; but if the essence of anything of this sort were absolute and were not to include a respect essentially to an extrinsic cause, it could be perfectly known without knowledge of the extrinsic cause; therefore it is necessary that it include such a respect [ibid., a.27 q.1].

306. Augustine On the Trinity 8.3 n.4 is brought in here [“you will see God, not good with another good, but the good of every good.” Cf. Henry, ibid. a.24 q.8].

307. Again, Boethius On Hebdomads , “If little by little you take away, through the intellect, the good itself, then, though there may be good things, yet they will not be good by the fact that they are.”     Therefore , the idea of good is taken away from them when the first good is, through the intellect, taken away; and consequently goodness in them states a relation to, or participation in, the supreme good.

308. If argument is made against the opinion [n.302] from Averroes Metaphysics 12 com.19, that relation has the weakest being, so there is not and cannot be a ratification formally of ratified being [Henry, Quodlibet 9 q.3 etc     .] - the reply is made that relation is double: one accidental, one substantial. And this distinction of relation is taken from Simplicius On the Categories (‘When’), where he maintains that some cases of ‘in’ do not constitute categories as other things do, because of the fact that some respects are essential or substantial, some are not but accidental [Henry, ibid. Henry, Quodlibet 9 q.3, “The reason why ‘being in’ does sometimes constitute a proper category is because, namely, that which is in another is not completive of that in which it is, and because it could subsist as separate without something else in which it is. For when either of these is lacking ‘being in’ does not constitute a proper category.” ⁴⁰]. They say, therefore, that the statement of the commentator [Averroes] is true of accidental relation, not of substantial relation.

309. And if it is objected that every relation presupposes a foundation in ratified being, therefore it is not itself the ratification of the foundation [nn.295, 323] - the reply is made that this is true of a relation that comes to a foundation, but not of a relation that constitutes a foundation.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

a. A First Rejection of the Opinion

310. Against these points.

So that these words may be understood, I distinguish three things according to the doctor [Henry of Ghent] on whose statements this opinion seems to be based. For, according to him ‘thing’, res, is in one way said to be from reor, reris, which means to ‘think’; in a second way ‘thing’ is said to be from ratification. In place of these words I take plainer words: for ‘thing’ as said from ‘think’ I take ‘thinkable reality’, which is common, according to him, to figments and non-figments; for ‘thing’ as said from ‘ratification’ I take, according to his intention, quidditative reality, because he posits that a quidditative thing is ratified by the fact it has an exemplar, which does not belong to figments. Beyond these two there only remains the reality of actual existence. We have, therefore, three things in order: thinkable reality, quidditative reality, and reality of existence.

311. I ask, then, what he means by ‘somethingness’? [n.302].

For if he means thinkable reality, since that is common to something and to nothing, it is of itself nothing. Therefore. if ratification be founded on somethingness taken in this way [n.302], it is founded on nothing; therefore it is nothing, because what is nothing relative to itself is nothing relative to another thing, On the Trinity 7.1 n.2 [“Wherefore if the Father is not something in relation to himself, he is altogether not one who may be said in relation to anything”]; therefore ratification is nothing; therefore, the total thing, composed of ratification and somethingness, is two nothings.

312. If somethingness be called quidditative reality, I ask what he means by ratification, either quidditative reality or reality of existence. If quidditative reality, then to say that ratification is founded on somethingness [n.302] is to say that quidditative reality is founded on quidditative reality, which is to say nothing, because then the same thing would be founded on itself according to the same being. If he means reality of existence -on the contrary: then ratification is presupposed to it, because a thing, according to this opinion, has ratified being truly before being of existence, and so the first ratification of it cannot be the being of existence.a

a.a [Interpolated text] Or better:
If by ratification you mean the reality of actual existence - on the contrary according to you: presupposed to that reality of actual existence is, according to you [n.302], somethingness, on which ratification. or the reality of actual existence, has to be founded, as on a foundation, so that it may be this sort of ratified somethingness. If, therefore, somethingness is presupposed as foundation for ratification (and so somethingness will, as such, have being of existence and ratified being before ratification gives it ratified being), then it follows that ratification, taken for the reality of actual existence, cannot give to somethingness itself first ratified being, or first being of existence, since it would have that from itself, just as a foundation has ratified being and being of existence before what is founded on it does. So neither does the respect give ratified being to anything, for it presupposes a subject in ratified being and in being of existence on which it is founded.

313. If you say that the somethingness that is opinable reality is a ‘what’ common to something and nothing, but there is another somethingness that is proper to a thing that is able to be and that does not belong to figments (from which somethingness, and from being as from its own ratification, a thing having somethingness is composed) - on the contrary: this is to say that there is a double somethingness, one of something and nothing, and another of something only, just as if it were said there is a double whiteness, one of white and black, another of white only. And in addition to this, as to the somethingness proper to possible being, I ask: either it is a respect only and is founded on the somethingness that is common (because that alone precedes it), and then it will be founded on nothing, as was said [n.311], and then it will be nothing; or the somethingness that is proper is an absolute, and thereby, for you, the thing that has it is distinguished from fictions; so this is the first ratification of a thing and is an absolute, and thus a respect will not be the first ratification of a thing.

314. Further, second [n.313], as follows: humanity has of itself a concept to which it is not repugnant that something falls under it in fact, or to which it is repugnant of itself that something falls under it in fact, or to which of itself something does fall under it in fact. Not in the third way, according to every opinion, for the reason that this is proper to God alone.

If it be granted that it is repugnant of itself to the concept that something falls under it, then by no respect that comes to it from without can belong to it that something could fall under it; for what is repugnant to something by some part of it cannot not be repugnant to it while its nature remains, and so cannot become non-repugnant to it by any respect that comes to it from without. Therefore, the concept of humanity is such that to it of itself is not repugnant that something in fact falls under it; but such concept is a concept of a ratified thing, according to the opinion of this master [Henry of Ghent], because to be in fact is repugnant to the concept of a figment [cf. n.310].

315. Besides, third: the Philosopher, Metaphysics 4.6.1011a19-20, infers from the opinion of those who say that all appearances are true this impossibility, that everything will be relative to something. And he does not mean this only by way of denomination, because in that way is it true that everything is relative to something, at least every other than God; therefore he means to infer it as something maximally unacceptable that everything is essentially relative to something. But this opinion posits that everything is essentially relative to something; therefore, this conclusion, namely that all things are relative to something, is more unacceptable than that all appearances are true.

316. If you say that the Philosopher is saying that all things will be relative to another, surely “relative to opinion and sense” - on the contrary: in an argument a conclusion leading to something impossible must be equally or more impossible than the premises; the inferred conclusion here, insofar as it is inferred, does not differ from the premise that posits all things to be true on account of their appearing to sense or to opinion - save in this that it infers ‘everything is relative to something’ [cf. n.307]; therefore if in anything it has a greater impossibility than the premises, it is this impossibility, that all things are relative to something simply.

317. Fourth as follows: humanity, insofar as it is humanity, either has only the ‘what’ of the name or it has the ‘what’ of the real thing that is repugnant to figments [cf. Henry, Summa a.24 q.3]. If in the first way, then there is knowledge of humanity, as it is humanity, no more than there is of a chimaera, and consequently metaphysics, which is about quiddities, will no more be a science than if it were about figments that are unintelligible because of the contradiction included in them. But if humanity, as it is humanity, has the ‘what’ of a real thing that is repugnant to figments, then humanity, whence it is humanity, is a ratified thing [cf. n.303].

318. The reply is made that humanity, whence it is humanity, has a definition, but the definition does not indicate a ratified being because figments can have genus and difference; but, in order to get the complete idea of a ratified being, one must add a respect to unparticipating being [cf. n.304].

319. This [n.318] does not make reply to the argument [n.317] without making metaphysics to be a non-science. Likewise too, what it says about figments (that they have genus and difference) is false, because all such things have an idea that is in itself false, because including a contradiction, because one part contradicts the other; but such parts are never a genus and difference, for a difference is per se determinative of a genus and is, consequently, not repugnant to it.

b. Another Rejection of the Opinion

320. Second, argument is made against the opinion [n.302] from his own statements [n.310].

First as follows: each thing is active formally by its ratification,a the proof of which is that by ratification is it formally in act; but nothing is in itself formally active by a relation, because a relation is not a principle of acting [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.39 qq.3,4]; therefore ratification is not a relation.

a.a [Interpolated text] But according to him [Henry] God is ratification only and yet supremely active; therefore, a thing is active by its ratification, not by its somethingness.

321. Again, according to him no creature, insofar as ratified, differs in species from the being that is God [Henry, Quodlibet 7 qq.1-2]; but the very being that is God, according to every opinion, is absolute; how then does that which is formally a relation differ from that which is absolute?

322. Again, according to him, a being of reason participates ratified being or first being, but is not formally a ratified being [ibid., 5 q.2]. Therefore, this sort of participation is formally ratification itself [n.304].

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

323. As concerns this article [n.285] I say that no respect is a ratification, or what a thing is a firm or true or certain being by, in the case of any entity at all. For every respect has something that it is founded on, which something is not in itself related to another thing; and if in that first something, where it is essentially for itself, there is not essentially a being that is certain, that is firm, it is not capable of any respect by which it may become a ratified being, because if a non-ratified thing become ratified, either it will become ratified from itself, which includes a contradiction (for whatever is of itself a somethingness is necessarily such), or it will become ratified by something causing it so; and if this latter, something absolute can be the term of the action naturally before a relation can be, because the formal idea of whatever is the first term of something produced is not, necessarily, a respect.

4. To the Reasons for the Rejected Opinion

324. To the reasons for the opposite opinion [n.302-307] as concerns this third article.

To the remark of Avicenna about humanity [n.303] I say that, through the statement he makes that “horseness is only horseness,” he does not exclude things that belong per se to the idea of horseness (of which sort is ratified being), but he excludes things that are properties of being, as ‘one’, ‘act’ etc., as is plain there from his text.

325. To the second [n.304], both the major and the minor are false; the major because animal is in man formally or per se or essentially, insofar as he is man, yet animality or animal is not formally man; but if it were added in the major ‘whatever is per se included in the understanding of something as being ultimate in it’, the major is true, and the minor false in this way is false.

326. When proof is given [n.304] through the other prosyllogism, “what ‘to be’ belongs to,” I say that the major of this prosyllogism is false, if by the ‘insofar as’ is understood that something is redoubled ‘per se in the first mode’, or if ‘participating’ in the major is taken as a gerundive. The major of the prosyllogism (a syllogism used to prove another syllogism) is “any being that is not of itself ‘to be’, but to which ‘to be’ belongs, is not a ratified being save by participating that very ‘to be’, or insofar as it participates that very ‘to be’.” This major, says Scotus, is false if, first, what the ‘insofar as’ doubles, namely the participating (“save...insofar as it participates that very ‘to be’”), is taken as falling into the definition of the subject, because the subject is not defined by that fact, though the fact be true. The major is also false, second, if the ‘participating’, or the Latin ‘participando’, is taken to be a gerundive, for then the predicate would become something like ‘save by that very ‘to be’ needing to be participated’, which commits the same error, because the ‘needing to be’ makes the participation part of the definition of the subject when it is not. ⁴¹ And, insofar it is explained by a ‘because’, the major (if a causality pertaining to the first mode per se is understood) is in the same way false, because participation itself in the first mode per se is not that by which a being is ratified formally. But if by the ‘insofar as’ be understood causality pertaining to the second mode per se (of the sort that is in a subject with respect to its proper property), I concede that in this way ‘such a being insofar as it is such a being’ (for example a stone insofar as it is a stone) does participate ‘to be’ itself. However, the proposition is not true conversely, namely that ‘insofar as it participates it is a being’. An example: this is false properly speaking, ‘man insofar as capable of laughter is man’, understanding this both in the second mode per se, and much more in the first mode per se; but this is true ‘man insofar as he is man is capable of laughter’ in the second mode. And yet the other, the first, can be conceded in some way, because a stone insofar as it is a stone participates ‘to be’ itself, such that a stone, posited in ratified being, has by necessity and in the second mode per se the respect of participation, without which the ‘to be’ includes a contradiction - just as does being a subject without its proper property, or being the foundation necessary for a relation without the relation when the term of the relation has been posited. Then I understand it thus, that in the first instant of nature there is a being which is its ‘to be’, namely God. In the second moment, a stone is a ratified being, an absolute, which is understood as then neither participating nor non-participating. In the third moment, there is the participation itself, a certain respect, consequent to the stone.

327. To the next argument from the Physics, about causes [n.305], I say that it is one thing to be a relation prior to knowledge of the caused through the cause, and another thing for the cause itself to be included in the knowledge of the thing caused. For although the stone has a respect to God before the stone is known (and so it is not known if God is not known, perfectly [cf. n.277]), yet the stone is known when the respect to God is not known; and from this follows that the respect is not of the essence of the stone, because nothing is known unless that is known which is of its essence.

328. To Augustine [n.306]: I concede that every other good is good by participation, but the authority does not maintain that participation is of the essence of that good.

329. As to Boethius [n.307] it must be said that the authority proves the opposite, because in it he posits a removal of the first good by the intellect and, speaking about creatures with that in place, he says that when speaking of the ‘to be’ of them, “although they are and are good, yet they are not good insofar as they are.” So he himself, when, as to the intellect, he removes the first good, speaks of creatures according the ‘to be’ of creatures. But if the ‘to be’ of creatures were a respect to the supreme good, it would not only be a contradiction to remove the first good and to speak of the ‘to be’ of creatures, but it would not be intelligible; for it is not intelligible to posit a respect by removing the term of the respect. Therefore he understands that the ‘to be’ of creatures be absolute. But goodness, for him, states a certain ‘flow’ from the first good, and it is true that this term states a respect, and so it cannot belong absolutely to a thing. Therefore, if things in their ‘to be’ were not from the first good, they would not be good insofar as they are, because insofar as they are they did not flow from the first good. They would, however, be good per accidens, if they were to flow from the first good according to another ‘to be’ - just as a stone, if it did not exist by the will of the first good according to itsself but according to its hardness, it would be good insofar as it is hard (because by the will of the first good), though not insofar as it is a stone or insofar as it is a being. It is plain, therefore, that

Boethius is taking ‘good’ for the respect of flowing from the first good, and in this way too is the goodness in other beings not from God save because they are from the will of the first good. But this is not the absolute and intrinsic perfection of a creature, and therefore goodness, according to another absolute idea, does not state a respect to the creator, although goodness as Boethius takes it there does state a respect to the creator.