Metaphysics

Metaphysics, according to Scotus, is a ‘‘real theoretical science’’: it is real in that it treats things rather than concepts, theoretical in that it is pursued for its own sake rather than as a guide for doing or making things, and a science in that it proceeds from self-evident principles to conclusions that follow deductively from them. The various real theoretical sciences are distinguished by their subject matter, and Scotus devotes considerable attention to determining what the distinctive subject matter of metaphysics is. His conclusion is that metaphysics concerns ‘‘being qua being’’ (ens inquantum ens). That is, the metaphysician studies being simply as such, rather than studying, say, material being as material.

The study of being qua being includes, first of all, the study of the transcendentals, so called because they transcend the division of being into finite and infinite, and the further division of finite being into the ten Aristotelian categories. Being itself is a transcendental, and so are the ‘‘proper attributes’’ of being - one, true, and good - which are coextensive with being. Scotus also identifies an indefinite number ofdisjunctions that are coextensive with being and therefore count as transcendentals, such as infinite-or-finite and necessary-or-contingent. Finally, all the pure perfections are transcendentals, since they transcend the division of being into finite and infinite. Unlike the proper attributes of being and the disjunctive transcendentals, however, they are not coextensive with being. For God is wise and Socrates is wise, but earthworms - though they are certainly beings - are not wise.

The study of the Aristotelian categories also belongs to metaphysics insofar as the categories, or the things falling under them, are studied as beings. (If they are studied as concepts, they belong instead to the logician.) There are exactly ten categories, Scotus argues. The first and most important is the category of substance. Substances are beings in the most robust sense, since they have an independent existence: that is, they do not exist in something else. Beings in any of the other nine categories, called accidents, exist in substances. The nine categories of accidents are quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, place, time, position, and state (habitus).

Scotus follows the Aristotelian orthodoxy of his day, which identified matter as what persists through substantial change and substantial form as what makes a given parcel of matter the definite, unique, individual substance that it is. (There are also accidental forms, which are a substance’s accidental qualities.) But as Scotus elaborates his views on form and matter, he espouses three important theses that mark him off from some other philosophers of his day: he holds that there exists matter that has no form whatsoever, that not all created substances are composites of form and matter, and that one and the same substance can have more than one substantial form. Let us examine each of these theses in turn.

First, Scotus argues that there is matter that is entirely devoid of form, or what is known as ‘‘prime matter’’ (Quaestiones in metaphysicam 7, q. 5; Lectura 2, d. 12, q. un.). Scholars debate now (just as they debated in Scotus’ day) whether Aristotle himself really believed that there is prime matter or merely introduced it as a theoretical substratum for substantial change, believing instead that in actual fact matter always has at least some minimal form (the form of the elements being the most minimal of all). Aquinas denied both that Aristotle intended to posit it and that it could exist on its own. For something totally devoid of form would be utterly featureless; it would be pure potentiality, but not actually anything. Scotus, by contrast, argues that prime matter not only can but does exist as such: ‘‘it is one and the same stuff that underlies every substantial change’’ (King 2003).

Second, Scotus denies ‘‘universal hylemorphism,’’ the view that all created substances are composites of form and matter (Lectura 2, d. 12, q. un., n. 55). Universal hylemorphism (from the Greek hyle, meaning ‘‘matter,’’ and morphe, meaning ‘‘form’’) had been the predominant view among Franciscans before Scotus. Saint Bonaven-ture, for example, had argued that even angels could not be altogether immaterial; they must be compounds of form and ‘‘spiritual matter.’’ For matter is potentiality and form is actuality, so if the angels were altogether immaterial, they would be pure actuality without any admixture of potentiality. But only God is pure actuality. But as we have already seen in his affirmation of the existence of prime matter, Scotus simply denies the unqualified equation of matter with potentiality and form with actuality. Prime matter, though entirely without form, is actual; and a purely immaterial being is not automatically bereft of potentiality.

Third, Scotus holds that some substances have more than one substantial form (Ordinatio 4, d. 11, q. 3, n. 54). This doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms was commonly held among the Franciscans but vigorously disputed by others. We can very easily see the motivation for the view by recalling that a substantial form is supposed to be what makes a given parcel of matter the definite, unique, individual substance that it is. Now suppose, as many medieval thinkers (including Aquinas) did, that the soul is the one and only substantial form of the human being. It would then follow that when a human being dies, and the soul ceases to inform that parcel of matter, what is left is not the same body that existed just before death. For what made it that very body was its substantial form, which (ex hypothesi) is no longer there. When the soul is separated from the body, then, what is left is not a body, but just a parcel of matter arranged corpse-wise. To Scotus and many of his fellow Franciscans it seemed obvious that the corpse of a person is the very same body that existed before death. Moreover, they argued, if the only thing responsible for informing the matter of a human being is the soul, it would seem that (what used to be) the body should immediately dissipate when a person dies. Accordingly, Scotus argues that the human being has at least two substantial forms. There is the ‘‘form of the body’’ (forma corporeitatis) that makes a given parcel of matter to be a definite, unique, individual human body, and the ‘‘animating form’’ or soul, which makes that human body alive. At death, the animating soul ceases to vivify the body, but numerically the same body remains, and the form of the body keeps the matter organized, at least for a while. Since the form of the body is too weak on its own to keep the body in existence indefinitely, however, it gradually decomposes.

While Scotus’ account of form and matter has clear implications for what happens to the body at death, it is less forthcoming about what happens to the soul. Can the animating soul survive the death of the body it informs? Scotus considers a number of arguments for the incorruptibility of the human soul, but he finds none of them persuasive. This is not to say that he denies the immortality of the soul, of course, but that he does not think it can be proved by human reason unaided by revelation.

Another metaphysical topic on which Scotus defends a distinctive position is the problem of universals. The problem of universals may be thought of as the question of what, if anything, is the metaphysical basis of our using the same predicate for more than one distinct individual. Socrates is human and Plato is human. Does this mean that there must be some one universal reality - humanity - that is somehow repeatable, in which Socrates and Plato both share? Or is there nothing metaphysically common to them at all? Those who think there is some actual universal existing outside the mind are called realists; those who deny extramental universals are called nominalists. Scotus was a realist about universals, and like all realists he had to give an account of what exactly those universals are: what their status is, what sort of existence they have outside the mind. So, in the case of Socrates and Plato, the question is ‘‘What sort ofitem is this humanity that both Socrates and Plato exemplify?’’ A related question that realists have to face is the problem of individuation. Given that there is some extramental reality common to Socrates and Plato, we also need to know what it is in each of them that makes them distinct exemplifications of that extramental reality.

Scotus calls the extramental universal the ‘‘common nature’’ (natura communis) and the principle of individuation the ‘‘haecceity’’ (haecceitas). The common nature is common in that it is ‘‘indifferent’’ to existing in any number of individuals. But it has extramental existence only in the particular things in which it exists, and in them it is always ‘‘contracted’’ by the haecceity. So the common nature humanity exists in both Socrates and Plato, although in Socrates it is made individual by Socrates’ haecceitas and in Plato by Plato’s haecceitas. The human-ity-of-Socrates is individual and nonrepeatable, as is the humanity-of-Plato; yet humanity itself is common and repeatable, and it is ontologically prior to any particular exemplification of it (Ordinatio 2, d. 3, pars 1, qq. 1-6, translated in Spade (1994:57-113)).

Another important aspect of Scotus’ contributions to metaphysics is his theory of modality. Scotus offers the first systematic exposition of an intensionalist account of possibility and necessity (see the entry on Modal Theories and Modal Logic in this volume). A key element of his theory is the notion of synchronic alternative possibilities: that if a state of affairs S obtains contingently at a time t, there is a genuine (though of course unrealized) possibility that not-S obtain at t. Scotus finds application for this theory not only in his account of God’s relation to the created world but also in his theory of human freedom.