Endmatter

Footnotes

¹The Church’s teaching that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven does not by itself determine whether she died first or did not die first.

²The antecedent is “man understands by a non-organic act of knowing” and the argument it is the antecedent of is an enthymeme because the premise that a non-organic act is an act of understanding properly is left unexpressed. This premise itself is proved by the statements that understanding properly is knowing that transcends the whole genus of sensation, and that sensation does not so transcend because it is the act of an organ and an organ is tied to a determinate class of sensibles. The inadequacy of this argument is shown in what follows.

³There is no ‘not’ in the Latin but it seems to be necessary, unless ‘sensible qua sensible’ means ‘sensible under the idea of sensible’, for sense perceives the sensible thing and not the idea of what it is to be a sensible thing.

⁴That is, presumably, no making of a soul by creation.

⁵See above n.49. “Of those indeed who tried to find these things out by human argumentation scarcely a few, endowed with great genius...and educated in the most subtle doctrines, were able to attain to tracking down the immortality of the soul alone. But that the whole man, who consists of soul and body, will be immortal, and for this reason truly blessed, is promised by this Faith, not with human argumentation, but by divine authority.”

⁶Thabit ibn Qurra, died 901. His rejection of the position held by Ptolemy position is reported by Roger Bacon, Communia Naturalium 2 p.5 ch.19.

⁷I.e. the passive subject does not cooperate with the agent in bringing action contra or against itself as passive subject.

⁸Scotus is proceeding on the assumption, common to the ancient and medieval world, that the elements of matter are the four of fire, air, water, earth (of which fire is naturally at the top and earth at the bottom and the other two in between), and that material bodies are mixtures more or less of these four.

⁹“Have you not taught me, O Lord, that before you were forming and distinguishing this unformed matter it was not anything, not color, not figure, not body, not spirit? But it was not altogether nothing; it was some unformed-ness without any appearance.”

¹⁰No response by Scotus is given for this objection, and the Vatican editors provide no explanatory note. Perhaps the answer would be that it does not matter, as to the fact of punishment, where evil spirits are detained or afflicted, provided they are so; but it does matter as to the fittingness of this ‘where’ within the whole universe, namely that it should be a lower and debased place (so not the sun or empyreal heaven) with an active force (so not a stone).

¹¹The term ‘animal’ is here being used broadly for any living thing that moves about, and therefore it includes flies and snakes, although we classify flies more properly as insects and snakes as reptiles.

¹²Punctuating the Latin as in the translation. The punctuation in the printed text seems misleading.

¹³Intellection without a phantasm, while simply more perfect, is not more perfect in man’s case than intellection with a phantasm.

¹⁴A thing cannot operate unless it exists, but the precise reason it has the operation need not be its existence. So the soul, which is not the existence of man but a part of that existence, can yet be the precise reason man has the relevant operation.

¹⁵The translation given here rejects the punctuation and grammatical markings in the printed text, which are hard to decipher. The sense of the argument seems to be that if an infused species is only given to a separated soul that does not have the species already, then first: the separated soul that does not receive the infused species (because it already has the species acquired from things) will lack this perfect infused species, though other souls will have it, which seems unreasonable; and second: this separated soul, which does not receive the infused species (because it has the acquired one), will understand, if it understands, through the acquired species, and this is opposed to the opinion being defended here, that separated souls understand only through infused species.

¹⁶“What is understood from each of two sources is perhaps single, but the things it is understood from are different, as that if the name of ‘the Lord’ be written in gold and in black ink, the first is more precious the second more cheap, but what is signified by each is the very same.”

¹⁷“For one must suppose that when this intellect, which is in potency, is declared to be eternal and of a nature to be perfected by material forms, it is of greater dignity than to be naturally perfected by non-material forms that in themselves are understood.”

¹⁸The second kind is intuitive intellection and the first kind is abstractive, and the first depends on the second.

¹⁹“John says therefore, ‘Are you he who is to come or do we wait for another?’, as if he were to say openly, ‘As you deigned to be born for men, indicate whether you deign also to die for men, so that I who have arisen as precursor of your birth am also to be precursor of your death, and am to announce that you are to come in hell whom I have announced are already come in the world’.”

²⁰The word ‘save’ seems necessary for the sense though the printed text omits it, probably through a typographical error.

²¹That is, pastness of proximate and remote object. For we have memory of learning them (proximate object), but we have knowledge, not memory, of them (remote object), n.130.

²²“You, Lord, who have bestowed so much on your people.. .that you considered us worthy to be fellows also of your Spirit, now too hear from heaven and see our works, if yet they are worthy of you. Why do you turn your face from us?”

²³Punctuating the Latin as in the translation and not as in the printed text, whose sense is obscure.

²⁴Latin has two ways of negating ‘to will’ or velle’, namely non velle and nolle. Scotus uses the first to mean simple negation, or not having an act of will, and the second for positive negation, or having an act of will against something. The English ‘I do not want/will’ is ambiguous as between these two. To bring out the difference where it is relevant for Scotus’ meaning (for nolle can sometimes connote simple negation), the translation uses, perhaps a little awkwardly, ‘will against’ for nolle and ‘not want/will’ for non velle.

²⁵The square brackets here indicate my sense of what ‘this’ and ‘that’ in this passage must refer to. They do not represent anything in the Latin text.

²⁶There are four penalties of sadness, corresponding respectively to the two penalties of privation and the two of detention [nn.97-99]).

²⁷This argument assumes the premise of the example, namely that the proportion of the inequality is the same on the side of both cause and effect. For if so and if there is no such proportion between God’s action and creatures, then there is an overplus on the side of God’s action that remains to be accounted for, namely the overplus that creatures are unable to receive. This overplus would therefore have to be explained away either by saying that the cause must always have many more things to work on, or by saying that the cause has an effect that stands by itself and is not an effect produced in anything. Both these results seem absurd and ad hoc.

²⁸The minor is: “Agent and patient always correspond to each other proportionally, such that the agent is related to action as the patient to passion.” The major is: “Now things unequal among themselves do not have the same proportion to other things unless the other things are unequal among themselves.”

²⁹An obscure point and argument.

³⁰The three points [per n.26], which are not expressly explained by Scotus, seem to refer to the three parts of the topic: future, general (universal), judgment. So the first point is about what is meant here by judgment [nn.11-19]; the second is about its generality; the third [n.26] is about its future being, or about how it will be carried out.

³¹See previous note.

³²The first possibility, n.27, is particular only. The next two, nn.28-30, are both particular and general. Hence this next way, n.31, is fourth in particular and third in general, provided the distinct understandings in question are of merits shown either in particular or in general.

³³If ten parts of air are assumed to produce, on conversion, one part of water, then nine parts of air will produce, on conversion, something less than one part of water.

³⁴Scotus follows the prevailing view, derived from philosophical tradition, that the elements of the physical world are the four of earth, water, air, and fire, with earth being the grossest and fire the subtlest, and with earth at the center and the others round it (in progressive order of subtlety) at different levels or spheres. His example is complex, nevertheless, in expression, but it seems to amount to the following. The whole of the existing air is divided into ten parts and one of these parts is converted into fire. The converted fire itself has ten parts and, being less dense than air, these ten parts together fill up the space of all ten parts of air even though only one part of air was used to generate the ten parts of fire. So, there are nine parts of air remaining that have no place left to exist in. Either then they occupy the same place as the generated fire (so that more than one body is in the same place), or the air is compressed, or other surrounding bodies are, until the nine parts of air no longer fill up the same place as before. If this compression happens by conversion of the nine parts of air into water, and this water fills the same place as one part of air or a bit less (and so the same as one part of fire or a bit less), there will be a flood of water that exceeds any pre-existing water by a part that is equivalent to a tenth part, or a bit less, of the generated fire.

The oddity here is that this new water will be in the same place as a tenth part, or almost, of the fire. For the fire converted from one part of air occupies the place of all ten parts of air, so that the nine parts of air not converted into fire and now assumed to be converted into one part or less of water (and so compressed into the equivalent of the place previously occupied by one part or less of air) must occupy the place occupied by one part or less of fire. The flood will indeed be a flood.

³⁵According to the traditional theory of the disposition of the four elements in their pure state, earth is naturally below water which is naturally below air which is naturally below fire. Impure air is impure by containing earthly elements, but when earthly elements (body) are burning, they take on the quality of water (dissipating and becoming fissile, even exuding water), and so rise from the earthly to the watery element, that is, to the element next to the element of air. The previously impure air is now without most of its grosser elements and also now next to the element of air, by contact with which it becomes at once pure air. Thus can fire purify air of its grosser elements so that it becomes pure air.

³⁶The observation at any rate of irregularities among the regularities has led to the replacement of this philosophical and Aristotelian system of necessities with our modern quantum mechanical and Einsteinian relative system of necessities. There is still necessity and still system, but a different system. The possibility of thinking a different system, however, was provided, not so much by different observations, as by the theologians next discussed who thought that this system, however consistent with observations, was not inevitable but optional and could, by divine omnipotence, be otherwise.

³⁷Sc. if there were generation but no corruption, the increase in the amount of material bodies would mean either that several bodies were in the same place or that they were excessively compressed together.

³⁸One of the propositions condemned by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, in 1277.

³⁹This extra ‘not’ is a variant noted by the Vatican editors in the apparatus criticus but not inserted in the text. The context of the argument, however, suggests it should be so inserted.

⁴⁰A concession, however implicit on Scotus’ part, that the motion of heavenly bodies, however circular these bodies are or appear to be, need not by nature, or at all, be circular (and in fact it is not).

⁴¹The Latin says simply ‘he is beatified’, where the ‘he’, in grammatical context, would refer to God. The text can be read in this way, since God as subject may be said to be beatified by himself as object. However, it seems it might be better read, in logical context, as about any creature who is beatified by God.

⁴²“Hence, I observe that it is one thing in them that they are good, another thing that they are. For let one and the same substance be posited to be good, white, heavy, round. Then the substance itself would be one thing, its roundness another, its color another, its goodness another; for if these were individually the same as the substance itself, heaviness would be the same as color, color the same as good, and good the same as heavy, which nature does not allow to happen.”

⁴³In the first mode per se the predicate falls into the definition of the subject (as in ‘man is a rational animal’), and here the abstract formulation (‘humanity is rational animality’) does follow the concrete one. But not so in the case, say, of the description ‘man is capable of laughter’, which does not entail the abstract formulation ‘humanity is capability of laughter’. So, just because the blessed has everything he wants and wants nothing badly [n.3], it does not follow that blessedness is the having everything that is willed or wanted well. Some things wanted well (e.g. a blessed body) are not part of the definition or essence of beatitude but do accompany the blessed in fact.

⁴⁴The act of a habit, or the form here, falls into the definition of the habit, since a habit is the habit of such and such an act. But what falls into the definition of a thing is essentially prior to it.

⁴⁵That is, beatitude could consist in two operations if each of the two operations was individually sufficient for the beatific operation, so that, though in fact both go together, each would be enough by itself.

⁴⁶Anselm, “For this purpose has man received the power of discriminating, so that he might hate and avoid the bad and love and choose the good... For otherwise in vain would God have given this power of discriminating, because man would discriminate in vain if.he did not love the good and hate the bad.”

⁴⁷“For if two people, equally affected in mind and body, see the beauty of a single body and, when it is seen, one of them is moved to illicit enjoyment, the other perseveres settled in chaste will, what do we think is the cause that a bad will come to be in the former and not in the latter?”

⁴⁸“God has subjected us and what is in us to the will, so that on its command we not be able not to move and do what it wills. Indeed, it moves us as its instruments and does the deeds that we are seen to do. Nor are we able to resist it by ourselves, nor can the works that it does not come to be. The mistress, which God has given us, we neither should, nor can we, not obey.”

⁴⁹The term ‘white’ in the phrase ‘a white animal’ inheres in the term ‘animal’ more than ‘white’ in the phrase ‘a man who is white’ inheres in the term ‘man’ (for in the first the noun is directly qualified and in the second only by apposition); but the white animal is not thereby said to be a whiter thing than the man.

⁵⁰Or, more colloquially, ‘to will’ and ‘to refuse’. Not to will at all, or to be indifferent, which is possible, is not an act but an absence of act.

⁵¹“For a miser, when he wants to keep the coin and prefers bread, which he cannot have unless he gives the coin, first wants to give it, that is, to give up the coin, before he does not want to keep it.”

⁵²Paragraphs 294-296 are an added extra in Scotus’ own ms.

⁵³The Latin here is obscure. The sense seems to turn on what it means for a subject to have a privation, namely that a subject can only be deprived of something if it is of a nature to receive that something. A blind man, for instance, is deprived of sight because a man is of a nature to receive sight, but a stone is not deprived of sight because it is not of such a nature. So, if a form is to take away a privation from a subject, the subject must first be posited as being of a nature to receive that form. The only other way of removing a privation would be to remove from the subject its being of a nature to receive the relevant form, for then the absence of the form would no longer be a privation.

⁵⁴There is a view, derived from Aristotle, that the matter of the heaven is matter only for the form of the heaven, in which case the heaven would be incorruptible because its matter would be incapable of receiving another form. But then the analogy between the form of the heaven and beatitude would cease to hold, since the argument says that beatitude, like the heaven, is incorruptible because it includes everything else one could want just as the form of the heaven is incorruptible because it includes all forms. But the heaven will not be incorruptible for this reason if its matter is incapable of other forms.

⁵⁵The form of the heaven does not remove privations by supply of what is lacking, for it does not contain simply or eminently the inferior forms that the matter of the heaven is of a nature to receive. Neither does the form of the heaven remove privations by taking from the matter of the heaven its being of a nature to receive other forms (for the aptitude for other forms remains in the matter). So the heaven remains corruptible in principle, because it remains still of a nature to receive forms other than the form it has. The heaven is only incorruptible, then, in the sense that no natural agent could corrupt it (no natural agent could remove from the heaven its form), but not in the sense that the heaven is intrinsically incorruptible. For its matter still has a nature to receive other forms and so, in principle, to lose the form it has in favor of those other forms.

⁵⁶An intrinsic end is the condition in the subject that joins it to the extrinsic end. This paragraph and the next ones are about arguments to show that an intrinsic end joining one to an extrinsic end that is without defect will itself be without defect. The arguments, their responses, and the Latin are obscure in their terseness.

⁵⁷Sc. the extrinsic end is not the intrinsic end for the subject - nor is it an intrinsic end supplying all defects of any extrinsic end.

⁵⁸It is easy enough to see how an extrinsic barrier can prevent the damned from seeing the heaven, though they have the intrinsic power to see it. It is less easy to see how God’s extrinsic power can put a barrier in the way of Michael exercising his intrinsic power to sin. Perhaps it is simply that God makes himself always so present to Michael that this presence is itself the barrier to Michael’s sinning. At all events Michael retains the power freely to sin but God ensures, extrinsically, that he never exercises it. There is some similarity here to so-called ‘Frankfurt cases’, where a person is free to choose between a and b but, if he is about to choose b, some outside agent intervenes to prevent it and ensure choice of a. In fact, however, the person chooses a without ever being about to choose b, and the agent does not have to intervene. The person, then, freely chooses a without in fact being able to do otherwise and choose b. Blessed Michael’s case, on Scotus’ view, seems similar: Michael actually chooses enjoyment, but remains free not to choose it and to sin, save that God would prevent that choice - not intrinsically by removing the power, but extrinsically by preventing its exercise. Or, as Scotus puts it [n.352], Michael remains able by remote power to do otherwise and sin, but not by proximate power [n.353].

⁵⁹Removing the misleading punctuation ‘.. .non. Ideo non potest...’ in the printed text, and replacing it with ‘.. .non ideo non potest.’

⁶⁰Sc. the likeness between the soul not wanting unhappiness now and not wanting iniquity then carries over only as regard the fact and not as regard the ability. The soul now both does not and cannot want unhappiness; the soul then does not but can want iniquity (in the way explained above in n.351).

⁶¹The meaning of this remark here is obscure.

⁶²Such a case is ‘the power of sinning’ itself: ‘the power’ is here the abstract term (the concrete term would be the thing having the power), and ‘of sinning’ is the gerundive. A power without the gerundive would be, for example, ‘the seeing power’ or ‘the visual power’, as later in this paragraph.

⁶³That is, ‘visual power’ states the remote power and ‘power of seeing’ the proximate power.

⁶⁴The four endowments are that the body will be impassible, agile, clear, and subtle.

⁶⁵The four traditional elements are earth, air, fire, and water, and only the earth in the human body is in its proper place, namely down level with the earth.

⁶⁶This preceding question (number 12, about whether beatitude could be obtained in mortal life) is missing in the Ordinatio (see notice from the editors above). Its place was supplied by editors after Scotus’ death from his oral treatment of it preserved in the Reportatio.

⁶⁷Or, following other ms. readings, “.. .will be taken away.” In either event the point seems to be that contraries will not then function as contraries because, whether the reason for their being contraries remains or not, they will not then be in the same thing successively replacing each other.

⁶⁸To argue that contraries will not then be (or function as) contraries, because they will not be in the same thing successively replacing each other, is to argue in a circle. For ‘being in the same thing successively replacing each other’ is how, in this argument, ‘contrary’ is being defined, so to say that contraries will not then be contraries because this definition will not apply to them is to say that they will not then be contraries because they will not then be contraries.

⁶⁹If a subject lacks a property or form, as when water lacks warmth, it has the lack (or privation) of that property, as the lack of warmth. So if, conversely, one says of some water that it lacks the lack of warmth, one is saying that it has the lack of the lack of that property or form, or in short that it has the property and is warm. Accordingly, it is a contradiction to say of water that it lacks this lack of warmth and yet is not warm. But such is what one ends up saying if one says that the impassible body, unlike the passible body, does not receive warmth (or cold) because it lacks the lack of them.

⁷⁰Instead of ‘if’ another ms. has ‘unless’, which is required if the ‘[there can be]’ is not taken to be implied

⁷¹The sphere of the heaven was understood to be physical, and so in principle touchable, but not corruptible.

⁷²That is, when something touches, or is touched, by something according to some sense quality, it leaves something of itself behind (some quanta of energy, we might now say), and so is progressively corrupted by such acts of touching.

⁷³The point seems to be that Plato’s position (the heaven is in principle corruptible but God will prevent it ever being corrupted in fact) does not, contrary to the objection [n.410], involve a contradiction. For the two possibilities are not contradictory as they stand, and though one becomes impossible if the other is posited, this is not a new necessity in the things (de re) but only a necessity in the statements (de dicto). For both statements assert something possible in itself, but if one is asserted the other is necessarily denied.

⁷⁴In the first way the necessity is about what God must do to the heaven extrinsically from without; in the second way the necessity is about what the heaven must undergo intrinsically from within. This intrinsic condition, however, can be prevented from every being realized extrinsically by God.

⁷⁵Before the contradiction was not in the things but in the statements, that while both were possible yet if one was true (or even necessary) the other could not be true. But once one of the statements is posited to hold in reality (being), the other is necessarily shown not to hold in reality.

⁷⁶The will is a free power so must be reduced to act by a free cause. If there is no free cause, it will be reduced to act necessarily.

⁷⁷Hitherto the contradiction has concerned the necessity of things being conserved by God and the possibility of things ceasing to be. This contradiction has arisen because of necessity in one of the opposites (namely that if God necessarily conserves things, the possibility of their ceasing to be is removed). The contradiction now is because of necessity in the other opposite as well, namely not only that God necessarily conserves things but also that corruptible things must at some time necessarily be corrupted. The contradiction in this case is more manifest because there is an opposed necessity on both sides, whereas the contradiction before was between necessity on one side and possibility on the other. Scotus is, however, not disturbed by either contradiction, because it is in the statements rather than the things - for if God conserves things, even necessarily, the possibility of things ceasing to be is only removed in fact and not in idea [n.458-459].