2. Scotus’ own Opinion

a. Action is not anything Absolute

27. To understand this difficulty about whether action, in the way it is distinguished from relation, belongs to God intrinsically or extrinsically in general, and thereby whether it belongs specifically in the matter at issue, there is need to consider the idea of ‘action’ as it is set down to be distinct from ‘relation’. For ‘action’ cannot be set down as something absolute, in the way it is one of the distinct categories among the ten categories. The proof is that it would be something new, and then two unacceptable consequences would follow.

28. One is general, that there would an action for action, and so ad infinitum; the reason is that of the Philosopher in Physics 5.2.225b13-14, whereby he proves that there cannot be a motion for action. And how this result holds is plain, because every new form can have an action for it, since the form is not from itself or from nothing, therefore it is from an agent.

29. The second unacceptable consequence is particular, namely by division, for in what category would the action be put? If it is in the agent then every agent would be changed in its absolute form before the thing acted on was changed by it, for the thing acted on is not changed save by an agent already possessing action - but for the agent to possess the action, since the action is a new absolute form, it would have to change so as to possess it.

30. The response is made that it would change, because change is an act of what is in passive potency, while an active thing is, before it acts, in active potency; and so its passing from this potency into act is not motion or change.

31. On the contrary: if action is an absolute and new form in an agent, the agent must have some receptivity for that form, because the new form is not self-subsistent (for then nothing would be formally an agent by the new form, just as neither is something said to be formally a quantum by a quantity separate from it); but something receptive has some receptive or passive potency with respect to what it is receptive of; therefore the active thing will, before the action, be in passive potency to action. And because it has this passive potency sometimes without the form and sometimes with the form, it is properly changed; so the conclusion intended follows, that an agent properly undergoes a change.

32. As for the addition that action is the act of an active potency [n.30], this indeed is true simply, but it is difficult to save this fact on the hypothesis, namely on the supposition that action is something absolute in the agent. For it cannot belong to the active power as receptive, for this is contrary to the idea of a receptive or passive power. Nor can it belong to the active power as elicitive; the proof is that it does not come from it because it belongs to its being as it is active, for then the active thing would actively change itself for this action by a prior absolute form, and then there would be a further question as to what changes it for this prior action, and so on ad infinitum.

33. But if one does hold this hypothesis one must say that action, although it belongs in some way to active potency, is yet the act of some passive potency, for this is universally true of every form that is not separate from the receptive thing.

34. If it also be said, against this hypothesis, that action is in the thing acted on, then something unacceptable follows, namely that nothing acted on can be acted on according to a form in the category of quantity or quality without being acted on at the same time, or perhaps acted on prior in nature, according to a form in another category, namely according to the action that is posited in it as another and absolute form, a form different from quantity and quality. This consequent seems unacceptable, especially about prior and posterior forms, because the subject cannot be acted according to an absolute prior form unless it is acted on according to a posterior form that will not be a proper being acted on by the prior form (the thing is plain, because whiteness can remain in a subject after the action that makes it so is over).

35. So the negative proposition is therefore proved, that ‘action as it is posited to be a new category distinct from other categories is not a new absolute form [n.27], either in the agent or the patient’.

b. Action cannot be posited to be an Absolute Form contemporaneous with that in which it is

36. Action cannot be an absolute from, though a new form, or rather a form contemporaneous with that in which it is, for the two reasons given above [nn.28-29].The first is universal, that then it would be action and not action about anything that is acted on - which seems unacceptable and against the idea of ‘action’, for, according to the author of Six Principles ch.2 n.16, ‘action requires not what it may do but what it may act upon’.

37. The point seems also to be proved by reason, that action does not seem to be of the same single form when nothing is acted on and when something is acted on; for if, when nothing is acted on, the agent acts just as much as when it acts on nothing, then there is no greater reason why the action is done later rather than now; for something is not done unless an agent acts, and, according to you, it is acting now just as much as it is later when the thing is receiving being.

38. Hence, in brief, one does not seem to be understanding the idea of action when one posits it as thus absolute, because then it simply has no respect to a thing acted on or produced; indeed, there is not even action in divine reality without someone or something always receiving being through the action; nor does God always act by extrinsic action as much before the creation of the world as in the creation of the world.

39. Secondly, an argument is made by drawing a division as before [n.29], that if action is posited as being an absolute that is not contemporaneous with that in which it is, and therewith in the agent, it follows that no action ever begins to be or ceases to be save because the form that acts for the action begins to be or ceases to be; and then, as long as a hot thing is hot, the heating remains, and so, when a hot thing is impeded by a contrary, there is as much acting as when the hot thing is not impeded - and after the term of the action has been introduced into the thing acted upon, the action remains afterwards as much as before when it was introducing the term.

40. But to posit that action is an absolute form and contemporaneous with itself in the thing acted upon is altogether irrational, because the same action would still remain in the thing acted upon after the agent has been destroyed; also the same thing would undergo contrary actions if it can be acted on by contrary agents successively.

c. Action is an Extrinsic Respect added to a Thing

41. From these points the result is that, if action is a distinct category, then it per se states as such only a respect or relation. Further, if all respects o relations have one quidditative idea common to relations, then only one category of relation would be posited, and so there are only four categories.The first four of the ten categories are substance, quantity, quality, and relation. The remaining six, namely when, where, action, passion, position, being clad, all involve relation or reference to something, so that if everything involving relation belongs to the category of relation, these six categories would not be distinct categories after all but members of the category of relation. ⁵⁸

42. Therefore if this famous division of categories is to be saved (for, according to Avicenna Metaphysics 3.1, 1.4, we are compelled to hold to the division whereby there are said to be ten most general categories - compelled, I say, because of the ancient authority of the philosophers, which it should not be easy to contradict), one must say that respect or relation does have enough formal ideas, enough, I say, for distinction of categories.

43. But this difference sufficient for this purpose, which is collected with more probability from the words of the authors, is an intrinsic and external respect coming to a thing, so that that is called ‘an internal respect coming to a thing’ which necessarily follows both extremes posited as actual, or which (and this is the same) necessarily follows its foundation, the term being included or not excluded; and so that that is called ‘an extrinsic respect’ which does not necessarily follow the extremes, even when both are posited as actual. And then the six principles, which the author of Six Principles is dealing with, are not, to this extent, species of relation, because relation states a respect coming intrinsically to a thing, but the six principles are called respects that come extrinsically to a thing. Action then will be an extrinsic respect coming to a thing.

45. But to what thing?

To the thing acted on, it seems, according to the Philosopher, in Physics 3.2.113b-114a, when he maintains that action and passion are founded on motion, but motion in the thing acted upon, and motion is not distinct formally save as to being ‘from this’ and ‘in this’.

46. But the contrary seems to be the case. Because the respect and the foundation will be in the same thing, and the idea of foundation seems to make the fact clear; but active power is in the agent, and is the foundation of the respect.

47. Again, opposite respects do not exist in the same thing, at any rate not qua the same, nor are they universally necessarily simultaneous; passion or the respect of passion is universally in the thing acted upon; therefore the opposite respect is not necessarily in the same thing.

48. Again, whatever thing some form is in, that thing is simply of the sort that accords with the form; for it seems altogether irrational that a form should be in something and not make that thing to be informed by the form; therefore, if action is formally in the thing acted upon, the thing acted upon is formally the agent.

49. It will be said, then, that action is an extrinsic respect coming to a thing, and that it is in the agent as in the supposit or subject, and in the form, which is called ‘active power’, as in the proximate foundation. And passion states the opposite respect, corresponding to the former, and it is in the thing acted upon as in a subject, and it is in the passive power as in the proximate foundation.

50. Further, in particular, a created agent has a respect to the first or total term, which is called the product, and a respect to the term that is called the produced or introduced form, and a respect to the subject of that form, which is the thing acted upon or changed.

51. Now, that these respects are different is proved by the fact they are to different terms.

52. It is also proved by something else, because the corresponding converse respects are altogether different; for the respect of product to producer is as that of dependent on that on which it depends, and this simply according to its being, as ‘being’ is taken simply. But the respect of changeable to changer is not a respect of something dependent simply as to being, for the changeable, in its being simply, goes along with the agent as co-cause, and it does not receive from the agent its being simply but only its being according to the form introduced. The respects too of product and form introduced are plainly different, although both are respects of dependent to producer, because that depends first which receives being first, and this is the product, but that depends secondarily and per accidens which receives being secondarily, and this is the form educed or introduced.

53. Of these three respects on the part of the agent, the first two are not extrinsic respects coming to the agent, for either the agent does not have a real relation to the thing produced or introduced (as is true of God when he produces creatures or produces something in creatures), or, if the agent does have a real relation, yet the relation necessarily follows the foundation once the term has been posited. But this is more manifest of the respect that follows in the thing produced or educed, which namely is not an extrinsic respect coming to it, because it necessarily follows the foundation once the term has been posited.

54. But the respect that is a respect to the thing acted upon is an extrinsic respect coming to the agent, since it is very well possible for the active and passive thing to be next to each other and yet not to have this respect, because the agent may not be that by which the passive thing is changed, and the passive thing may not be changed by it, if for instance there is something preventing the action. Therefore action, since it is an extrinsic respect coming to it as it has been drawn out, will be a relation of the agent to the changed passive thing.

55. And there is confirmation of this from the Philosopher, Metaphysics 5.12.1019a15-16, 20a4-6, who defines active power to be ‘a principle of changing another insofar as it is other’; but just as active power is a principle, so action - which is the act of an active power - will be the changing of another, that is of the passive thing, insofar as it is other. But the two other respects, namely of production and introduction, or eduction, and that whether they are active or passive, will belong to the category of relation properly speaking, because they are intrinsic respects coming to a thing.

d. Five Meanings of ‘Action’

56. From what has been said it is plain there is a multiple ambiguity in the term ‘action’. For in one way the word is said of ‘operation’, as intellection or volition are called operation, and yet in the truth of the matter it is a quality, as is plain in Ord. 1 d.3 n.601.

57. In another way ‘action’ states per se a relation or respect. And sometimes the word ‘action’ is taken for the respect of producer to product, the way a father is said to be agent cause of a son.

58. Sometimes ‘action’ is taken for the respect of introducer or educer to thing educed, as a hot thing is said to be agent cause of heat in a piece of wood.

59. Sometimes it is taken for the thing done, though including the respect that is expressed by the phrase ‘from another’, as in Physics 3 [n.45].

60. Sometimes too it is taken for the respect of transformer to thing transformed, as in the description of Six Principles 2.16, “Action is that according to which we are said to act on what is subject to us.”

α. On the first four Meanings of ‘Action’

61. Action in the first sense [n.56] is an absolute form and is in the category of quality, as was said.

62. In the second and third sense [nn.57-58] it is an intrinsic respect coming to a thing, and in this way it is properly in the category of relation.

63. In the fourth sense [n.59] it is precisely a distinct category, as was proved by the Philosopher in Metaphysics 5 (above n.55), and distinct because of the distinction of ‘respects that do not belong to the genus of relation’ from relations properly speaking that are in the category of relation, as is plain from the description added [n.54].

β. On the fifth Meaning

64. In the fifth sense [n.60] (if however it is a sense of this term, as the Philosopher is here generally expounded [e.g. Thomas, on Physics 3 lectio 5]) 12 ‘action’, as to the thing connoted, pertains to some absolute category in respect of which the thing acted on is changed (as quantity, quality, and the like); and so the Philosopher says there about action that it is the work or the end of the active thing (Physics 3.3.202a24); now the work or end is an absolute form in the thing acted on, although as something flowing - speaking of an agent acting by motion. Hence the Philosopher first says there that ‘motion is the act of the active and passive thing’, the active thing being that from which and the passive that in which. But the motion, according to the Commentator (Physics 3 com.19, 5 com.9), is really the flowing form. So ‘action’ is said to be the very act or work or end of the agent insofar as it is from the agent. And because these two, namely the thing done and the ‘being from’, do not constitute any per se single thing, then, if the term ‘action’ in this fifth sense signifies a per se single concept, it will not signify both but one of them. And it is reasonable that principally it signify more formally and connote that which is material, as is in the case of other terms that import such diverse elements; and then there is no need to ask to what category it belongs by reason of what is connoted, because it can belong to as many categories as the form belongs to that is caused in the thing acted on by the agent.

65. But this respect ‘from another’, which is formally imported by the term ‘action’ in this fifth sense, still seems to be equivocally understood; namely whether the ‘from’ or is as from the producer and introducer or as from the transmuter. Taken in the first way it belongs to the category of ‘relation’, as does also the passive production or induction, as was said above [n.55]; taken in the latter way it belongs to the category of ‘passion’, as does also passive change.

66. If you object that this is contrary to Aristotle in Physics 3 [nn.59, 64], who maintains that what is formal in action, as action is distinct from passion, states ‘being from another’, so it does not state a respect of the category of passion - I reply that Aristotle is not speaking there of action as it is a distinct category from passion but according to another sense of the term, namely the sense ‘act’, and not as product but as induced; for after he had prefaced there, about the act of the active thing and the act of the passive thing, “for this is action (namely the act of the active thing), but that is passion (namely the act of the passive thing),” he first adds by way of proof, “but work and end are the act of the former, and passion the act of the latter” [n.64]; so he is taking ‘action’ there for the work and end of the agent; but this is the form brought about in the passive thing, which, as flowing, is motion.

67. From this is apparent the solution to a certain objection made before from the text [n.48]; for when the Philosopher concedes that action is in the thing acted on and not in the agent, because then the agent would be moved, he is speaking of action in this fifth sense [n.60] and not as action is a distinct category from passion; for, when taking action in this way, something is an agent formally by action as a related thing is by relation; and then it is necessary that the ‘from which’ be intrinsic to what is said to be such by it (as being a likeness is in the thing that is like).

68. One can also say that the ‘from this’ can be taken as equivocal: In one way as it is a relation opposed to that which is ‘other by it’, and then something prior must be understood which is specified by the ‘from this’, as the ‘who by this’ or the ‘what by this’; and in this way the ‘from this’ does not belong to the category of action but is rather the opposite respect, namely the ‘by which it is other’. In another way the ‘from this’ is not taken as it determines something prior, and then it is the same as the respect ‘by which’; and in this way one can concede it belongs to the genus of action. But in this way it is not the motion that is in the thing acted on, save only as to the term of the action. And this is enough to save the words of Aristotle there [n.45]; for he means that action and passion are the same motion, just as “the way from Athens to Thebes” and the reverse is the same.

69. But I do not mean that here ‘way’ is taken for the space over which the motion goes but for the motion ‘from here to there’ and the reverse - as is plain from the other example Aristotle sets down about the distance ‘from here to there’ and ‘from there to here’ over the same space, where he means that they are the same materially, because of the identity of the space, but different formally. So here, motion is that by which the agent is said to be agent by the respect ‘from this’, meaning by the ‘from this’ the respect ‘by which’; and conversely in the movable is founded a respect to the agent. And these two respects have something materially the same, namely the motion, but formally they are different and in different subjects; for he said first there, at the beginning of the section on action, that “the act must be in both (namely in the mover and the movable), for the movable is in the ‘being able’ and the mover in the ‘operating’”; so he means that the act of the mover, which he sets down as ‘operating’, is in the mover itself.

70. And if you object that at the end of the chapter he says, “what these (namely, action and passion) are in is motion,” one can say that another text has, “motion is present to what...” Or the text can be expounded thus: not as ‘what these are in as in their subject and foundation’, because passion in the category ‘passion’ is not in motion as in its subject, for the respect to an agent, the respect founded in motion, is an intrinsic relation coming to passion, since motion is the form induced or educed; but it must be expounded as ‘what these are in, the one as term (namely action) and the other as quasi subject’, for they are together in the same subject as acted on.

71. Because, however, Aristotle seems to speak in varying ways there about action and passion, his intention cannot easily be grasped with certainty save by expounding the whole chapter in order. So look there, because it would be too long to insert here.

e. What must be said if the Category of Action is transferred to Divine Reality

72. To the matter at issue in particular I say that if any categories are to be transferred to divine reality (as expounded in Ord. 1 d.8 nn.95-115), yet no action of the category of action is transferred, that is, internal action; so that, as to all things intrinsic to divine reality, this proposition is simply true, namely, that there are only two categories there, substance and relation. Nor, further, does there belong to God any action of the category of action with respect to anything that is produced as a totality, that is, when no potential part comes first.

73. The proof, common both to intrinsic production and to total extrinsic production (as creation), is as follows: where there is a total production that is not from any passive or potential thing, there that which is required for action properly speaking is lacking, because action properly speaking is always in the thing acted on, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.12.1019a15-20 and the author of Six Principles. But neither does the Father produce the Son from anything potential or quasi-potential (as was said in Ord. 1 d.5 nn.93-97); nor does he create from any passive thing that is transformed.

74. The other common proof is that to action corresponds passion properly speaking, namely passion that is an extrinsic respect coming to it, as does also action itself. But in divine reality intrinsically there can be no extrinsic respect coming to it, because any respect arises, with absolute necessity, from the nature of the foundation; nor can there be in divine reality or in creation an extrinsic passion that comes to it, because the product, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, is referred, with absolute necessity, to the producer.

75. There is no doubt on this point as to intrinsic product. But as to creatures I prove it because it is impossible for any relation to be more intrinsic to a creature than the relation that is to the Creator, insofar as the relation to the Creator is really the same as the foundation, as was shown in Ord. 2 d.1 nn.261 -271.

76. There is however some divine action, both intrinsic and extrinsic, in a total production when understanding action not for anything in the category of action but for something corresponding to action in the category of action - just as there is, in a product, no passion of the category of passion but a passion stated equivocally corresponding to action in the category of action, and this is an equivocation in the term ‘action’, as was said before [nn.67-68], to which something similar can correspond in the term ‘passion’.

77. Hence active production or action in divine reality is merely action, but it is a real relation; and likewise with production as passion. Extrinsic production as action however is a relation of reason, while passive production, by contrast, is a real relation, as was said in Ord. 1 d.30 nn.41, 49-51.

f. What sort of Action is to be posited in God in the case of Transubstantiation

78. But as to conversion in the case of the Eucharist, is any divine action to be posited here?

I say that there is, when one takes action as a relation of reason.

79. But as to action corresponding to action in the category of action there is more doubt. If substance is converted only into substance, so that nothing is transmuted, then passion properly speaking cannot be saved in this case, and consequently not action either.

80. But if, according to the second way, what I posited above is set down [d.11 nn.166-167], that this conversion is of the substance of bread as here into the body of Christ as here, and if the body of Christ as here be passive receptive of a new presence -then one can say that there is passion properly here in the body, and thus action here corresponding proportionally to action in the category of action.81. Nor is this repugnant to God; for God can transmute any passive thing just as nature can, and the passive transmuting is properly passion, and the active transmuting is action corresponding to the category of action, and is not just relation. And then one should say that the category of action can, according to proportional predication, in some way be transferred to God, but not intrinsic action.

82. Of these two opinions the first seems more difficult; indeed it seems barely intelligible how a new action without a term, a real action, may exist without there at least being some new relation without an absolute form in a term; but here, apart from destruction of the bread (whose term ‘to which’ is the nonbeing of bread), the action does not have, insofar as it is some positive change, an absolute form in the body of Christ as term, as all agree; so one must at least posit a new real relation there, and a relation to the agent; nor does it appear that the action could be new unless there is something in the body really new whereby a real action of God may be said to have a term more now than before.