Footnotes

¹ The divisions of this third part have been expanded from what the Vatican Editors have on their contents page by the addition here of some of the divisions they give in the body of the text.

² The question ‘what is?’ can be asked about a chimaera, which is not real, or is not an ‘is’, but a fiction. Color and whiteness are similar in that color is said of more things than whiteness is (just as ‘is’ is said of more things than exist, as of chimaeras). But if whiteness is said of the color that whiteness is, ‘whiteness’ and ‘color’ are the same. Of course, whiteness is only part of a white thing, or only a partial perfection or reality of the thing. But the ‘what’ in ‘what is’ is about the whole of that of which the name or word ‘what’ is said, because ‘what’ signifies the quiddity, the ‘whatness’, of whatever it is said of. But to know that the name or word ‘what’ relates to anything whatever, including fictional things (like chimaeras) and partial perfections (like whiteness), precedes knowing that it relates to the whatness of things that are supposits and not qualities (as whiteness) or fictions (as chimaeras).

³ ‘What’ said of a chimaera is said of an incompossible, because chimaeras are imaginary beings combining incompatible features, and have no real ‘what’ or quiddity. But this fact is not known in knowing merely the name or word ‘what’; it is known when the ‘what’ is referred to supposits that are really possible and have a real quiddity to describe and define. Dinosaurs, for instance, unlike chimaeras, are possible things, and have a real quiddity, even though they do not exist now.

⁴ A science, strictly speaking, proves properties of its subject through the definition of the subject. The science of geometry proves the properties of a triangle through the definition of triangle, and therefore, qua science, it assumes that there are triangles and what they are. So with any science. Knowing that there is such a subject and what it is (say triangle) is prior to science and belongs rather to intellection.

⁵ Therefore (to anticipate), ‘being’ as it is the subject proper of the science of metaphysics is not analogical; for if it were it would not be simply simple. That, nevertheless, being is said in many ways is a truth proved in metaphysics, and proved of something that, in its first apprehension, is simply simple, that is, univocal.

⁶ Any concept can be questioned as to ‘if’ it is and ‘what’ it is, including God, because, as Scotus immediately says, the simply simple concept of being, whose ‘if’ and ‘what’ are beyond question, does not distinguish God (or anything) from anything else. So the concept of God too raises, for us, the questions if God is and what God is. God cannot,     therefore , be the first subject of metaphysics, since the first subject of metaphysics is beyond all ‘ifs’ and ‘whats’.

⁷ In the idea of being is included, as convertible with it, the simple properties of good, true, one etc     ., and the disjunctive properties of actual or potential, first or derivative, finite or infinite, uncaused and caused, etc.

⁸ The disjunctive properties of being, as actual and potential, infinite and finite, caused and uncaused, are divided into the more and less perfect, and while being can be without the less perfect disjunct, it cannot be without the more perfect. So if only God existed and no creatures, there would still be uncaused being but no caused being.

⁹ Light is the actuality of the transparent; color is the limit of the transparent in a determinate surface. Light is thus not so much what we see as what we see through, but we see it in a sense first, because if there were not first transparency nothing would be seen.

¹⁰ The Vatican editors remark that Scotus actually wrote ‘three ways’, but five is necessary because of parts of the text Scotus added later without being able to revise the internal references accordingly.

¹¹ An implicit reference to the famous Tree of Porphyry, where the branches, after substance, are: material substance or body, then living body, animal, man, and finally these and those individual men.

¹² When one is actually knowing an insect, like an entomologist actually studying an insect, one is knowing it under the idea of this kind of living sensitive body, for this is the more potent concept, the concept that is driving one’s actual knowing. So one is not actually knowing it under the idea of sensitive body (for then it would not be distinct from a bird) or of living body (for then it would not be distinct from a plant) or of material body (for then it would not be distinct from a stone), though of course one is not denying, whether actually or habitually, any of these realities. But when one knows an insect virtually, then included simultaneously in the concept of insect thus virtually known (though according to a certain order) are the concepts of sensitive, living, material, substance.

¹³ An eclipse of the moon is the interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon [cf. n.236], and an eclipse of the sun is the interposition of the moon between the sun and the earth blocking the sun’s light on the earth. These definitions are the principle of demonstration, as in: ‘there is an eclipse of the moon; an eclipse of the moon is the interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon; therefore, there is an interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon’. An eclipse seen without knowledge of the cause is knowledge of the eclipse but not perfect knowledge (primitive peoples, for instance, saw eclipses but are said to have thought the reason was some god or a dragon or the like). The intellect’s knowledge of the cause is thus necessary for the most perfect knowledge of an eclipse. Of course, until we perceive an eclipse with our eyes, we do not know that the cause is in place. So the two powers, intellect and senses, are necessary to know an actual eclipse (they together are the precise cause of knowing the eclipse). But the intellect provides a more perfect knowledge than the senses do, for the senses know only the fact, while the intellect knows the reason for the fact.

¹⁴ The Latin word here ‘imparticipato’ is from a deponent verb ‘imparticipor’; so it means ‘un-participating’ and not, as might first appear, ‘un-participated’.

¹⁵ Until modern times material bodies were typically explained (at least by those who, unlike the ancient atomists, followed the elaborations of Aristotle) in terms of elements that were not parcels of matter or energy (like protons, electrons, quarks etc.), but the realized sense qualities of the hot, the cold, the wet, and the dry. All material bodies were various mixtures of these realized sense qualities, as water was a mixture of the wet and cold, fire a mixture of the hot and dry etc. All other bodies, including living bodies, were various mixtures of these first mixtures. But since such mixed bodies, however good their mixing may be, are composed ultimately of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry), and since contraries act against each other, these bodies have a natural tendency to dissolve into their elements, or they are corruptible. The heavenly bodies, by contrast, are not corruptible, because they are not composed of contraries but of a distinct and single element without a contrary (sometimes called ‘ether’), which was a fifth element beyond the previous four, or in Latin a ‘quint-essence’.

¹⁶ For these two occurrences of the symbol - inserted by Scotus, see n.124, second paragraph

¹⁷ At the same symbol above in n.123. See previous footnote.

¹⁸ The Vatican editors report that a like symbol, corresponding to this one, is not found in Scotus’ manuscripts.

¹⁹ A predication is per se in the second mode when the subject falls into the definition of the predicate, as ‘man is capable of laughter’, since laughter is expulsion of sound on the apprehension of the ridiculous, and only a man, a rational animal, has both a mind to apprehend the ridiculous (which is a sort of incongruity apprehended in things) and a physical mouth to expel sound on that apprehension. Angels, by contrast, can apprehend the ridiculous but do not have mouths to produce sound; their laughter is virtual. Brute animals have mouths to produce sound but no apprehension of the ridiculous (at least qua ridiculous). A predication is per se in the first mode, by contrast, when the predicate falls into the definition of the subject, as precisely in ‘man is a rational animal’.

²⁰ The term ‘one’ states a property of being (it states being as undivided). So if ‘being’ belonged to the quiddity of ‘one’, and if therefore the predication ‘one is being’ were per se in the first mode with ‘being’ falling into the definition of ‘one’, then the ‘being’ which falls into the definition of ‘one’ would be the definition of a property of being, and being would be a property of itself. So if, to avoid this, ‘one’ is said to include being and something else in its definition, as in ‘one is undivided being’, then the something else, namely ‘undivided’, either includes being in its definition or it does not. If it does, then ‘undivided’ is defined as ‘undivided being’ and wherever ‘undivided’ appears one can replace it with the definition ‘undivided being’. Consequently, to say ‘one is undivided being’ is to say ‘one is undivided being being’, and then to say ‘one is undivided being being being’, and so on ad infinitum. So if, alternatively, one makes a stop at ‘undivided’ and does not define ‘undivided’ as ‘undivided being’, and if therefore in the definition of one as ‘undivided being’ the ‘being’ is excluded from the definition of ‘undivided’ but is still included in the definition of ‘one’, then this ‘one’ is, after all, not the relevant property of being but rather the ‘undivided’ is, and this ‘undivided’ cannot now, ex hypothesi, include ‘being’ in its definition.

²¹ In other words, the intellect is certain that all the stated concepts of being are beings but in doubt as to how or what differentiates or contracts them. So the intellect has a concept of being common to, and undifferentiated from, all the kinds and categories of being whose differences it is doubtful of. So the concept of being it has is, as far as it goes, the same for them all, that is, univocal.

²² This act of seeing is known to be sure, but by the interior common sense, not by the exterior sense of the eyes, which see the visible object but not themselves.

²³ Error or deception is possible in two ways in general. Either terms are combined in a statement in a way they are not combined in fact, as when the cat is said to be in the garden although it is in the house. Or a single but complex term combines in itself what is not or cannot be combined in fact, as a round square or the thirty third day of June. The first kind are actually false or deceptive because they actually state what is not the case. The second kind are virtually false or deceptive because, while they actually state nothing (they are terms, not combinations of terms), they imply a false statement, as that some square is round or that a certain day is the thirty third of June. However, if there are concepts that are simply simple, and do not combine several elements and are not placed with other terms in a statement, then these can in no way be false or deceptive; for they neither state anything nor combine anything. Such concepts are either known fully or not known at all.

²⁴ A genus is asserted of a species through the difference proper to each species, as the genus ‘animal’ is said of the species ‘man’ through the difference ‘rational’. Accordingly, the difference cannot already be included in the genus, because then the genus would be the genus only of things with that difference. For if ‘animal’ included ‘rational’, then ‘animal’ could only be the genus of man and of no other animal. If ‘being’, therefore, is a genus, and differences are outside the genus, then differences cannot be being, which would mean they could hardly differentiate anything. To avoid this result and to allow differences also to be being, the solution seems to be to deny that being is a genus. But if being is a common term predicated in the ‘what’ of the things that fall under it (as ‘animal’ is a common term predicated in the ‘what’ of the several species of animal), then being does seem to be a genus. Therefore, being cannot be such a common or univocal term.

²⁵ If ‘being’ were univocal to all beings, as ‘man’ is univocal to all men, then the statement that being is one would no more be to say that being is this one being or that one being than the statement that man is one would be to say that man is either this one man or that one man. Rather, it would be to say that being is one species as man is one species.

²⁶ A genus is divided into species through the addition of a difference, as animal, say, is divided through the differences ‘winged’ and ‘footed’ into winged animals (birds etc.) and footed animal (horses etc.). So if being is a genus divided into the categories of substance and accidents by differences in the same way, and if these differences include being (as the differences ‘in-itself being’ and ‘in-another being’), then substance will have to be defined, say, as ‘in-itself being being’, and accidents as ‘in-another being being’, and so on, which is trifling repetition. Alternatively, if the differences are not beings, then substance and accidents will be defined by differences that are not beings, or by things that do not exist.

²⁷ The argument is of the form, ‘if contrary, then same science; but not contrary; therefore not the same science’, which is to infer a denial of the consequent from a denial of the antecedent. The inference is fallacious, as is clear in this example of Rover the dog: if Rover is a cat, Rover is an animal; Rover is not a cat; therefore Rover is not an animal.

²⁸ The Vatican editors helpfully refer to Topics 4.6.127a28-30: “If then we assign being as a genus, it will plainly be the genus of everything by the fact it is predicated of them; for of nothing is a genus predicated save of its species.”

²⁹ If the difference ‘rational’ includes being in its whatness then ‘rational’ is equivalent to ‘rational-being’, and the genus ‘animal’ (which also includes being in its whatness on this view) is equivalent to ‘animal-being’, and then to say ‘man is a rational animal’ will be equivalent to the trifling repetition, ‘man is a rational-being animalbeing’. Also and incidentally (as in the earlier footnote to n.136), if ‘rational’ means ‘rational-being’, then to say ‘man is a rational animal’ amounts to saying ‘man is a rational-being animal’ and then, by repeated substitution of ‘rational-being’ for ‘rational’, to saying ‘man is a rational-being-being animal’, and so on ad infinitum.

³⁰ ‘Beingal’ is a made-up adjective from ‘being’ and the suffix ‘-al’, mimicking Scotus’ own made up adjective ‘ent-ale’ from ‘ens’.

³¹ In other words, the argument of the Philosopher against Parmenides and Melissus fails regardless of any question of the univocity of being, because it fails by taking the predicate ‘one’ determinately when the argument takes it confusedly (which is to take in one figure of speech what is meant in another figure). If however there is no fallacy of figure of speech but ‘one’ is meant determinately not confusedly (as Parmenides and Melissus did seem to mean it), then the Philosopher’s argument does not fail. In either event, the matter of the univocity of being is irrelevant.

³² No reply is given by Scotus to the objection of Henry in n.157, but the reason is probably that it was effectively answered in the discussion of the first objection [nn.152-161], that there will be no trifling repetition when the thesis about how being is said of things is properly explained.

³³ The habit or science of physics, which is a habit in the power of the intellect, has for first object being as movable or changeable (what today we might call the elemental energies of things). Living beings are movable or changeable things under that general heading, but they are extraneous as such to the first object of physics. Similarly, the property of living objects that is their character (as tame or wild) is extraneous to the first object of physics.

³⁴ The science of metaphysics is a habit in the intellect, the power of knowing. The first object of metaphysics is being. Being is prior to the true, for the true, like one, is a property of being, and a property of the first object of a science cannot be the subject that that science first deals with. So, if the first object of the power of the intellect were the true, the first object of the habit of metaphysics would precede the first object of the power. The consequent is false;     therefore etc     . [NB. The punctuation of the translation of this paragraph does not entirely follow the punctuation of the Latin text printed by the Vatican editors.]

³⁵ In the second mode per se the subject falls into the definition of the predicate, and in the first mode per se the predicate falls into the definition of the subject. So, in the statement ‘the object of sight is the visible’, if it is per se in the second mode, the term ‘visible’ is being defined by ‘object of sight’ and not ‘object of sight’ by ‘visible’. But if the statement is meant per se in the first mode, as it will be if the formal idea of the object of a power is a relation to that power (which is the claim of the third argument, n.170. being rejected here), then ‘object of sight’ is being defined by ‘visible’, and defining objects of powers becomes easy, in fact, directly verbal, as ‘the object of seeing is the seeable’     etc . But things are the other way round, and the object of a power precedes and is understood before the power is, as Scotus shows from Aristotle.

³⁶ The syllogism being criticized is (to put it schematically): each thing is disposed to knowledge as it is disposed to being; a being by participation is from un-participating being; therefore      a being by participation is known from un-participating being’s being known. The error is the addition of ‘being known’ to ‘un-participating being’ in the conclusion, which was not in the second premise and so gives four terms to the syllogism whereas a syllogism is only valid with three. Remove that addition (which addition is what produces the fourth term) and a revised conclusion follows:     therefore a being by participation is known from un-participating being. But this conclusion no longer supports the thesis, namely that God is the first object of the intellect’s knowing.

³⁷ The Vatican Editors note that ‘ .. .leave the wax’ is in the text of Scotus but ‘leave the ring’ in Augustine’s original.

³⁸ Sensibles are typically divided into proper sensibles, which belong to one sense only (color proper to the eyes, sound to the ears, etc   .), common sensibles, which are common to more than one sense (as shape, size, number), and accidental sensibles, which are perceived immediately with the proper or common sensibles but are not as such sensible (as that this black thing is Cuddles the cat, or that white thing is Snowy the poodle). Senses cannot be deceived about proper sensibles but can be about common and accidental sensibles. The ‘secondary object’ mentioned here, about which deception is possible, is primarily, one assumes, a reference to the accidental sensibles, since the common sensibles have just been discussed earlier in this note. The point, then, seems to be that if someone is deceived as to all accidental sensibles, as to whether this black or white thing (or anything with any color between the extremes of white and black or, by extension, anything identified by any sensible proper to any of the five senses) is a cat or a dog or is this cat or some other cat, then the intellect will have no certainty. If it has certainty it will only be in some other person who is not so deceived.

³⁹ See footnote to n.122.

⁴⁰ 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.”

⁴¹ 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.

⁴² The Vatican Editors note that in place of the (here) italicized three Scotus put ‘six’, and in place of the first italicized one he put ‘first two’, and in place of the second and third italicized one he put ‘two’, in each case. The reason the Vatican Editors give for their correction is that there are in fact only three ways that Scotus gives, but the three ways together have six arguments, two each. Scotus’ numbering seems thus not so much wrong as less perspicuous perhaps than it is on the numbering of the Vatican Editors.

⁴³ Instead of ‘first way’, Scotus wrote ‘first member’; see footnote to n.351.

⁴⁴ Instead of ‘second way’, Scotus wrote ‘second member’; see footnote to n.351.

⁴⁵ “Just like someone skilled in many disciplines, the things he knows are contained in his memory, and there is not anything from it in the grasp or his mind save what he is thinking from it; the others are hidden in a certain secret knowledge which is called memory. Therefore, the trinity we were thus commending, as that from which is formed the gaze of the thinker, we would locate in the memory.”

⁴⁶ The Vatican Editors helpfully explain the same point about the remaining three cases in n.418 as follows: “Intellection is not the active cause of volition but the will is, nor is it the receptive subject but the soul is. The phantasm is not the active cause of intellection but the intellect is, nor is it the receptive subject but the supposit is. Light in the air is not the active cause of light in water but the sun is, nor is it the receptive subject but water is.” Hence, to complete the criticism, the claim in n.418, that the major ‘a perfect agent proximate to its passive subject and not impeded is able to act’ is sometimes false, is itself false. And the four examples given to illustrate it fail, because they are misdescribed; when they are correctly described the relevant major is seen to remain true.

⁴⁷ The six are at nn. 407, 422, 450, 451, 456, 460.

⁴⁸ See footnote to n.122 above.

⁴⁹ No reply seems to be given to the second question in n.484.

⁵⁰ See fn. to n.120.

⁵¹ See fn. to n.120.

⁵² In medieval and ancient physics of the Aristotelian and some other traditions, the heavenly bodies are incorruptible and impassible because not made of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry) or their mixtures (fire, water etc.). They suffer no change save change in place. They do, however, have effects in the sublunary world, as that the sun warms the earth because, although not actually hot, it is virtually hot, or has the power to heat other things.

⁵³ These ‘numbers’ are characterized as progressive (pronouncing of words), sounding (sounds), occurring to us (hearing), memorable (memory) and judgeable (judgment of sensing).

⁵⁴ For a reply to the sixth opinion, nn.461-462 (no separate reply is given by Scotus), the Vatican Editors refer to nn.505-506, 535, and the note added to n.493.

⁵⁵ See fn. to n.122.