The Ordinatio of John Duns Scotus :: Ordinatio. Prologue. ::

III. From what Source Knowledge gets its Extension to Action

239. [First opinion] - About the third article [n.227] there exist opinions one of which is of this sort, that the intellect is called practical from one thing, and the act or habit is called practical from another. It is as follows: truth that is doable and that is not doable are specific objects, formally diverse, and so they distinguish per se the things that have a per se respect to them, namely act and habit, which are called practical because they concern something doable; but the intellect is only called practical if it is operative, and only the intellect that apprehends an order toward doing is of this sort. But it does not apprehend this order unless it is moved by appetite for the end, so that the practical intellect includes in its act, not formally by the essence of the act but by connotation, an order that is necessarily toward desire, a desire explicitly of the end and implicitly of the things for the end; wherefore, since the ordering of an object of speculation toward doing is accidental to that object (although the object’s being capable of being so ordered is not accidental to it), the difference, which flows from this, between the speculative and the practical intellect will be accidental and in respect of something extrinsic to the intellect, although the difference of the habits and acts is formal in accord with the formal difference of doable and non-doable objects. Hence in On the Soul 3.10.433a14-15 it is said that the speculative and practical intellect differ in their end, and in Ethics 6.3.1139a29-31 that: “The good of the practical intellect is truth in conformity with correct appetite.”

240. An example: the speculative intellect apprehends health as a fitting good, the appetite desires it, and there follows in another way the consideration of the practical intellect that health is to be acquired. With the desire for the end in place, then, the practical intellect proceeds discursively from the principle ‘that by which health can be better acquired is to be procured’, and its discursive process ends at the final conclusion of deliberation; and the whole discursive process, just as it takes its principle from apprehension of the desired end, which is the first object of the practical intellect, so it does what has been discovered in view of the end, and hence it presupposes will for the end and is ordered to the choice that follows deliberation.

241. Against this opinion - which, to speak briefly, consists in this that it puts the distinction of the practical and speculative intellect in an end that is accidental to the object, but the speculative and practical habit differ and are distinguished by the formal difference of their special objects - the argument is that it is said of the habits in Metaphysics 2.1.993b20-21 that: “The end of speculative science is truth, but of the practical it is doing.”

242. Likewise, the practical habit will in that case be in the speculative intellect, and the intellect will not be called practical by that habit, which seems discordant, because every habit denominates its possessor according to the nature of the habit.

243. They reply to the first argument [n.241] that the end of practical science is work potentially and in aptitude, insofar as its object is per se doable; but the doable object is considered according to the habit in general, which consideration is not enough for it to be subject to operation in actuality and in particular; because in goods act is better than potency, and so such particular and actual consideration is required; now the consideration is by a habit different from practical science, and that habit alone is in the practical intellect.

To the second argument [n.242] the response is that the habit can be said to be by denomination practical, not simply, but by understanding the denomination to be made from the habit

244. To the contrary: therefore the practical habit and act can exist in the speculative intellect, because a habit and act that are of their nature practical can exist in the intellect without such reference to an act of will of the sort posited.

The consequent would be conceded, but another habit would be posited as capable of being possessed in the practical intellect, a habit generated not only by practical acts but also by acts of the practical intellect.

245. To the contrary: a practical habit generated from practical acts would be enough for the same things as the other habit would be enough for that is generated by acts of the practical intellect, because the will commanding consideration for the sake of such an end does not give any other reason for consideration in acts of directing, nor consequently for a habit generated by considerations.

246. Again, in that case many accidents of the same species will exist in the same thing. For one cannot, on account of order or non-order of the will, posit a specific distinction between this act and that, nor similarly between this habit and that.

247. Again, third, against the opinion in itself [nn.239-240] I argue thus: a subject is denominated more from a per se and essential condition of its accident than from an accidental condition of it; therefore, if the intellect can be called practical from an accidental condition of its habit, to wit from the order of the will ordering its act to something else, much more can it be called practical from the essential order of the act by which the act is said to be essentially practical. Therefore, the intellect seems to be called practical from the same thing as that from which the habit and act are called practical, although of the habit and act it is not said as accidentally as it is said of the intellect, where it has the respect of an accident per accidens.

248. [Second opinion] - Alternatively, it is said that the thing from which habit and act are said to be practical is the end and the extension of practical knowledge to action, which is extension to an end.

On behalf of this opinion are the authorities set down earlier [nn.223-225].

249. There is also argument by reason. First thus: that a habit is said to be practical either from the object or from the end. Not from the proper object because the intellect ‘is made practical by extension’,⁷⁸ which is only true of the same speculative intellect that is also afterwards practical when extended to work; therefore there can be a speculative and a practical consideration of the same object.

250. Second thus: that medicine is divided into speculative and practical, and yet it is about some object that is the same, as about health or the body capable of health.

251. Again, an act is said to be practical because it is morally good or bad; goodness and badness in morals belongs to an act by its circumstances; but first and chief among the circumstances is the circumstance of the end; therefore etc.

252. Against this position I argue thus: I ask, are habit and act said to be practical because of actual extension to work or are they so only because of an aptitudinal or relational extension to work? Not because of actual extension (as is contained in the second article [nn.236-238] and as they concede), because in that case the workman who is not intending to work would not have practical knowledge; therefore because of aptitudinal extension. But an aptitude which is repugnant to one nature does not belong to another save because of something absolute in such nature; for because this nature is such, therefore such aptitude belongs to it; therefore in its very consideration it presupposes some intrinsic condition by which such aptitude belongs to it. This condition of consideration in itself is from another cause prior to it; but the prior causes of it are intellect and the object; therefore the condition belongs to it from the intellect or from some object.

253. If it be said that the end is the prior cause, or rather is the first among all causes, according to Avicenna Metaphysics 6 ch.5 (94va), and so from it can arise the consideration of such a nature so that such an aptitude befits it, on the contrary: the end is not a cause save insofar as, being loved and desired, it moves the efficient cause to cause its effect. But the said aptitude belongs to such a consideration whether the end is loved or not. For the said knowledge can exist in the intellect however the will is disposed, even were the will not conjoined with the intellect. And so it is not from the end as from the final cause that the aptitude belongs to the knowledge; for no cause makes a thing to be present that is present when the cause is not causing.

If you say that the end is apt to be loved before the aptitude is present in knowledge, on the contrary: this does not save the intended proposition, because an effect does not get anything causally from a thing on the ground that the thing has the nature to cause if the thing is not actually causing; therefore knowledge does not get an aptitude, or the nature that such aptitude is consequent upon, from an end that is apt to cause if it is not actually causing; nor does it actually cause as a final cause unless, being actually loved and desired, it moves the efficient cause to act; therefore etc

254. Besides, either the end as extrinsically elicited or possessed makes the habit to be practical, or it does so as considered and intended. Not as extrinsically elicited because in this way it is posterior to the habit and is in a way its effect; but an effect does not cause distinctions in a cause. If as considered, in this way it has the nature of the object; therefore the object causes the distinction. If as intended, this has already been refuted [n.253], because such knowledge exists before the end is naturally intended.⁷⁹

255. Besides, not every end of practical knowledge is action. For some practical understanding has regard to the action of a lower power, as for example the action of sensitive appetite or of the power of movement; but no act of a lower power is the end of an act of intellect, because nothing less noble is per se the end of something more noble; the act of understanding is nobler and more perfect than any act at all of any lower sensitive power at all.

256. It is said that, although understanding is nobler in its natural being than the operation of a lower power, yet it is not so in the genus of morals, because to act bravely is morally better than to think of acting bravely.

257. Against this there is a twofold objection. First, that it supposes something false, for the act of a lower power is not morally good unless it is conformed to right reason as to its rule; therefore rightness of reason is the cause of such goodness in that act and not conversely; but the act of reason being in this way right is for it to be morally good, just as understanding can be morally good. - The reasoning is confirmed because prudence is simply better than moral virtue as moral virtue exists in the sensitive appetite; therefore the act of the former as it is the former’s act is better than the act of the latter as it is the latter’s act; therefore the former as practical, in the way that understanding can be practical, is better than the latter as practical or as good morally. Hence it is plain that the proof about thinking is not valid; for when one is looking for the excellence of one thing over another, one should not compare the best to the worst, but one should compare the best to the best or the simply so to the simply so. Therefore, just as the best is taken there, namely to act bravely in fact, so one should take the best in the intellect, namely ‘to command brave action in accordance with prudence’. This second is better even morally, because, as being the rule, it has formal goodness, which is rightness proper; the other is only good materially, because, when one removes from it its order to the rule and to the will as commanding, it is not of itself morally good.

258. Second, the first response [n.256] does not seem relevant to what is proposed: for one does not look for the source of understanding’s being practical by supposing it to be practical, especially since one is not presupposing its first condition, namely the condition of the end, but one is inquiring into that condition [n.248]; therefore, since one is looking for practical understanding and for the first circumstance that will make it practical, one only takes understanding as to what it is in its natural being; therefore to distinguish it according to moral and natural goodness like this is nothing other than to assume what is being sought for and to distinguish the thing as the thing is considered in its precision under one member of the distinction.

259. Therefore this opinion [n.248] is corrected by others and it is said that a habit is called practical from the end, which is practical consideration; for the proper end of any habit is its act. - But against this: If this consideration, which is the end of the habit, is practical, then it has a cause for being called practical; either then the cause it has is the end of that consideration, and this has already been refuted [nn.252-255]; or it is the object, and then it follows that the object is the cause, prior to the consideration itself, whereby the habit is said to be practical, and one has what is proposed, that it is from the object that both the habit, though mediately, and the act are said to be practical.

260. [Scotus’ own opinion] - I concede, then, that the habit is not called practical from the act proper, because the act too is practical from a prior cause. Nor is any habitual or actual knowledge practical per se because it is ordered to action as to an end; yet it can sometimes get its first extension, namely conformity to action [n.236], from the very end of the action, not however from it insofar as it is end but insofar as it is object.

261. The first point here [about first extension] is plain. For sometimes the first practical principles are taken from the end of action, and so the end, as first cause of action, includes virtually all the knowledge in the genus, and so the knowledge itself gets from it its quiddity and aptitude.

262. The second point [about the end as object] is plain. For practice gives the aptitude, or the sort of nature possessing an aptitude, for this reason, that as the first object includes the principles and, by means of them, the conclusions, so it includes the whole of practical knowledge; but not insofar as it is end, first because no nature or natural aptitude is got from the end, unless the end is loved and desired and so is moving the efficient cause [n.253]; but before it is naturally loved it includes the said principles and conclusions; for the truth of a necessary practical principle does not depend more on the will than does the truth of a speculative principle, and neither do the conclusions necessarily inferred from such a principle; - second because anything else that may virtually include such knowledge would give such conformity to the knowledge in the same way, to wit if the action itself, or that which the operation is about, were first in the genus to include such knowledge, as sometimes happens and as was touched on in the response to the third argument in the first question about the subject of theology [n.185]; for man is perhaps the subject of both moral and medical science - but not happiness or health - because the idea of the end of each is included in the idea of what the action is about.

263. If it be said that the first practical principles are always taken from the end, therefore the end always first includes the knowledge of them virtually, - if this conclusion were conceded, it would hold nevertheless that the end did so, not insofar as it was end, but insofar as it was object, and it could then be said that man is the end both of health and of natural happiness, as was touched on in the preceding response [n.262]; but man is not at any rate the proximate end of the action, because, if the conclusion were denied, the antecedent taken universally would have to be denied, for taken particularly it is true, namely when the idea of the end is not deduced from anything pertaining to practical knowledge [n.314].

264. Or the antecedent could be expounded in another way thus: ‘the first principles are always taken from the end’ is true in the case of those principles that, once an act good in its kind has been presupposed, are taken from the moral circumstances, because in this way the object is not a circumstance. In another way, when the act is taken bare, the object is also a circumstance; and by this the antecedent seems to be refuted; for that from which the first circumstance of the act considered bare is altogether taken seems to be prior to anything else, and so the object from which the act is first specified so as to be called good in kind of act, being qualifiable by the other circumstances so as to be fully moral, seems to be altogether first in practical knowledge. But it is not necessary now to pursue the question whether this conclusion holds or not, because its place is in the third book (3 Suppl. d.26 q. un. n.10; d.38 q. un. nn.4-5; also 2 d.7 q. un. nn.11-13, 24-28; d.40 q. un. n.3) [cf. n.362 below].

Briefly then to this article [nn.239, 227] I say that practical knowledge does not first get its appropriate extension from the end insofar as it is end, for the reasons adduced above [n.262].

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III. From what Source Knowledge gets its Extension to Action