III. Objections against Scotus’ own Response

17. Against this can be objected that, according to it, person would seem to signify only a double negation of a double communicability,a - and if this be true then it seems doubtful how negation could be common to the three persons unless some affirmation be common to them because of which such a negation is in them;b but that affirmation is not ‘deity’, because deity is not multiplied in number along with the three [sc. one does not say ‘three deities’ or ‘three Gods’]; therefore some common positive -as person - must be given first that is abstracted from them before there is such negation, and then the intended proposition is obtained.

a [Interpolation] Again, I argue as follows: if person formally states incommunicability, then it formally states negation; but negation is a second intention, since it is a being of reason; therefore person states a thing of second intention, which is the intended proposition. - I reply that person does not only state incommunicability but gives to understand the intellectual nature in which it is, as individual gives to understand nature in general. However, I am in doubt whether it state existence formally along with double incommunicability, or only state formally incommunicability-negation and existence in the concrete as a way of having the nature, so that the sense is ‘person is incommunicability having existence in intellectual nature’; and even if one suppose it to be so, I still say that person does not state a second intention (because a second intention, since it is a being of reason, is only caused by the intellect busying itself about something), for that to the knowing of which the thing moves the intellect before any busying of the intellect is not a second intention, but a thing that moves the intellect moves it to negation of the opposite before any busying of the intellect, because such negation follows the thing from the nature of the thing before any busying of the intellect (and hence it is that one of the opposites moves to knowledge of its opposite before any busying of the intellect, for which reason the Philosopher says that ‘the same science is of opposites’ [Posterior Analytics 2.26.69b8-32]).

     Therefore although it be posited that person only formally states a negation, yet it does not state a second intention, because a negation that follows from the nature of a thing is not a second intention, and negation in general chiefly so, of which sort is incommunicability. When therefore it is said that ‘negation is a being of reason’, I say that it is a negative entity from the nature of the thing; for just as Socrates is man from the nature of the thing, so he is not-ass from the nature of the thing; also negations - in the intellect - are entities, because the first motion of the intellect (not first before affirmation but first before negation) is to apprehension of negation. - Thus therefore I hold that person is not a name of second intention but of first, and that it formally signifies the double negation of communicability and connotes intellectual nature. And perhaps it also formally imports existence, and then it not only imports a common negation but something positive; or perhaps it does not formally state existence and then there belongs to what it formally signifies only double negation which gives to understand a double positive, namely nature and the mode of having it. And hereby, whichever way of importing is given, the answer to the arguments [nn.1-2] is plain, because if person states existence in the abstract and the way of having it in the concrete, it is formally positive, and then person is formally incommunicable existence possessing an intellectual nature; but if it only formally imports negation, then it connotes existence in the nature, and thus it stands for that which is incommunicable, - and thus is person adored and is a term of real production. But to the other argument [n.2] the answer will be plain elsewhere, in distinction 25 [Reportatio IA d.25 n.24; also above nn.12-13, and below n.24].

b [Interpolation] because negation does not seem common to the three unless it follow a common affirmation.

18. Even if it state such negation precisely, it does not seem to state the whole idea of person, because person states something pertaining to dignity, but negation posits no dignity or perfection.

19. It seems too that it states a relation of reason, because of the fact that its opposite - namely what is communicable - only states a relation of reason in the divine essence; for essence is communicable to the Son and yet essence is not really referred to the Son; therefore communicable too states a relation of reason.

20. To the first of these objections [n.17] I say that from the ultimate distinctive and constitutive factors of the persons nothing common that is said in the ‘what’ of them can be abstracted from them, because these factors are primarily diverse, that is, they do not include anything really the same (for in that case it would be possible to ask about them what they were distinguished by [I d.3 n.132]); and therefore everything common abstracted from them is either a concept altogether negative or at any rate is not a quidditative concept of reason. But it is certain that some common negation can be abstracted from those ultimate factors, and that a negation of one idea, because negation is of one idea by the fact that it opposes an affirmation of one idea. Therefore whatever things an affirmation of one idea opposes, to those things belongs a negation of one idea, - and so to the three persons, and also to the ultimate factors distinctive of them, there can belong some common negation. But if that negation be said to be incommunicability, and if it be posited that incommunicability alone is of the per se idea constitutive of a person (so that personality be ‘incommunicability of what subsists in intellectual nature’, and everything beside the first [sc. incommunicability] be an addition to the idea of person), then person properly does not state some concept of second intention; for every concept is a concept of first intention that is of a nature to be caused immediately by the thing, without work or act of the busying intellect, of which sort is not only a positive but also a negative concept.

21. And if this be posited, then when it is doubted ‘how there can be a common negation without a common positive which it is in’, I reply: however diverse things are, even if they have nothing common, they can have a common negation, - just as notSocrates is a univocal common to everything other than Socrates, beings and not beings. And although the things to which the negation is common have something common that is positive, yet it is not necessary that the common negation be in them because of that common positive; for non-rationality agrees with the ultimate difference of horse and ass, and not because of something common to the things to which that negation belongs, because either there is nothing common to the ultimate differences, or if entity is common to them, such negation yet does not belong to them because of entity, just as neither is the contrary affirmation opposed to them because of entity.a

a [Interpolation] And so one should say that the major [interpolation b to n.17] is false, for a negation is of one idea because it is opposed to an affirmation of one idea and not because it follows an affirmation of one idea; for not-man is of one idea because man, to which it is opposed, is of one idea and not because it follows an affirmation of one idea; for not-man is common to being and not-being, to which nothing affirmative or positive is common.

22. And when, second, it is objected that ‘negation does not state anything of dignity’ [n.18] (and for this can also be adduced the reasons for the principal conclusion, that ‘negation is not adored’, ‘nor is it even a term of a real action’ [n.1]), - it could be said that negation in a genus differs from negation outside a genus and from privation. Privation indeed requires an appropriate subject, either in itself if it is a privation in itself, - or in a genus, if it is a privation in genus (the way a mole is called blind, Metaphysics, the chapter on privation, 5.22.1022b24-27). Negation outside a genus requires absolutely nothing, because it is said equally of being and not-being. But negation in a genus is as it were in the middle, because it requires a subject of which to be said, though it does not indicate aptitude for a form; such negation is perhaps imported by diversity (about which elsewhere [I d.18 qq.1-2]), because it indicates such non-identity in being - therefore incommunicability, as it is included in person, can name such non-identity, because it indicates the negation of a double communicability in intellectual nature; nor yet does it state any aptitude for communicability, but it states the negation in positive intellectual nature, - and so it states dignity, not by reason of what is signified, but by reason of what is connoted and of the subject, and thus can person be conceded to be adored and generated (just as ‘a blind man walks or is loved’, not because the blindness is the principle of the walking, but because that in which such privation exists is the subject in respect of such predicate).

23. When argument is raised about the communicable and incommunicable [n.19], I say that one opposite can be a relation of reason and the other a real relation (or at any rate a real negation or privation of some relation), just as ‘the same’ with perfect identity states a relation of reason (Metaphysics 5.9.1018a2-4, on ‘the same’), and yet ‘diverse’ -which denies this identity - belongs to a thing without act of reason or intellect; and the reason is that, although something not belong to a thing save from work or act of intellect, yet that something can be opposed to the thing of itself, without any act of intellect, just as universality is opposed to Socrates, although universality does not belong to man save through an act of intellect working and busying itself about man. Although therefore communicability state only a relation of reason in the essence, yet it can be opposed to person by something that is real, and incommunicability can belong to person on the same basis.

24. If therefore this way is supposed as certain (that from person can be abstracted some negative concept of negation in a genus, and this abstracted not only from the persons as wholes but also from the formal constituents of them [nn.20-23]), there is a further doubt whether only such a common negative is abstractable from them or some common positive.

And it seems one should posit something positive, capable of being abstracted from them, because of what Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine and of what the

Master says in the text of distinction 25, which were adduced against the first opinion [nn.12-13].

25. It can be said that from individuals can be abstracted not only the species, which states the quiddity of the individuals, but also something quasi-proper.Vatican editors: Scotus did not finish the question but left here a blank space. ¹⁰³