Scotus' Ethics

Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M.

    Scotus' ethics may be one of the least well known aspects of his philosophy because of the status of the critical Vatican edition. Though work on it began half a century ago, the 10 Volumes done to date contain but a fraction of his major works and little specific to his ethics. We can appreciate Gilson's complaint: "Waiting for the critical edition of Duns Scotus is like waiting for the beatific vision!"

    Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality1 was an attempt to remedy this with a source book of Latin texts corrected mainly on the basis of the renowned Assisi manuscript, regarded by the Scotistic Commission as containing the closest possible version of the original "Liber Scoti." Only four of the 34 often lengthy selections the book contains are presently available in the Vatican edition. Face to face with the Latin text is an English translation that aims at ready understanding. Since Scotus' most important ethical doctrines often appear in most unlikely places, each item is introduced with an analysis of the context and particular problem that occasioned Scotus' discussion together with an explanation of any unfamiliar technical terms it might contain.

    The most frequent misunderstanding of Scotus' ethical system, it seems, stems from what he says of the role of God's will and in summary accounts of his philosophy, it frequently obscures entirely the rationality of his approach to morality. One contributor to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy even dismissed his ethics with this single statement2: "Things are good because God wills them,3 and not vice versa, so moral truth is not accessible to natural reason." Even those who are aware of Scotus' continuous appeal to the use of right reason, fail to see how this can be reconciled with the antecedent of the above enthymeme, and are puzzled by the apparent antinomy at the heart of his ethics.4

    My aim in the book, then, was twofold:

To correct the common misconceptions that arose because of his Voluntaristic notions of God's relationship to creation, but more important to show the unity of his ethical system based on right reason, for it is his rational approach to what he believed as an ex professo theologian that makes his conceptions of morality and especially of the will of more than historical interest.5

    As regards the first, my ploy is to show why Scotus thought the will was our only truly rational faculty.6 As for the second, I list the presuppositions of his ethical system and explain how they lead logically to a highly systematic humanistic ethics, one indeed that made the Scotistic school so popular in the 17th century that its adherents outnumbered those of the other schools combined. Consider the first of these.

1. The will as a rational faculty

    Scotus' notion of will is a combination of what Aristotle said about rational and nonrational "potencies" and what Anselm said about freedom.7 The first two parts of the book8 are devoted respectively to what Scotus learned from these two thinkers.

    Let me begin with Aristotle. His statement in Metaphysics IX, 2: "It is clear that some potencies will be nonrational but others will be with reason," prompted Scotus to ask "Is the difference Aristotle assigns between the rational and irrational appropriate, namely, that the former are capable of contrary effects but the latter produce but one effect?"9 If one is convinced, as Scotus was, that will is distinct from nature precisely because it is a power that can act at any given moment and under any set of external circumstances in more than one way, whereas natural powers or potencies, given all preconditions for acting, are determined by their very nature to act in the way they do, then all natural powers, including the intellect itself, are basically "nonrational" whereas the will alone is capable of effecting at any given moment more than one sort of volition or nolition. If one adds to this that the will can only act "with reason" or with some practical knowledge, one can see why Scotus might claim it is the only active potency that meets the Aristotelian criterion of a truly rational potency.

    Consider next what Scotus borrows from Anselm of Caterbury and the school of St. Victor. Anselm had conducted this interesting "Gedankenexperiment."10 Suppose God created an angel or pure spirit with only an intellectual appetite. What would it seek as its ultimate goal? Self-actualization or its own happiness and perfection! And on this score it could not be faulted. Its superior intellectual powers would be governed by an "affection for the advantageous." Strictly speaking it could not view anything honestly or objectively but only through the jaundiced eye of self-interest. But suppose in addition to this "affection for the advantageous'' it also had an inclination or "affection for justice"? Would this not free it in some respects from inordinate or exclusive self-interest and enable it to love what is good objectively and honestly?11 Would this not enable it to love God above all-not just as a good for me, but as an absolute good apart from any relationship to something other than itself, something worthy to be loved for its own sake?12 But if the will is a rational potency, Scotus argues, this affection for justice is logically equivalent to an inclination to love things according to right reason.

    Another Anselmian feature Scotus added to his conception of will and its affection for justice was the saint's notion of freedom as a pure perfection.13 Rather than a "potestas peccandi" or power to sin, argued Anselm, the will's essential freedom consists in its capacity to preserve rectitude for its own sake (potestas servandi rectitudinem propter seipsum). And justice itself, Anselm defined, as "rectitude of will served for its own sake."14

    Couple this Anselmian notion of the Will's liberty and affection for justice with Richard of St. Victor's definition of perfect love, and you complete the picture of what Scotus believed objective love consists in and why a perfect lover desires that what it loves objectively for its intrinsic worth, be loved by others as well. "Perfecte diligens vult dilectum condiligi."15 Scotus applied these notions to God's will and its relationship to creatures capable of moral choice. And this brings us to the second point, the presuppositions underlying Scotus' system of morality.

2. Presuppositions of Scotus' ethics

The first is his metaphysical notion of God; the second, his conviction that God must have free

    As for the first presupposition, Scotus was personally convinced that if there was one theoretical entity a skilled metaphysician could prove existed on rational grounds alone, it was God as the supreme good and source of man's existence.17 Hence, he argued:

    Furthermore, Scotus argued, secondly, that God must have created freely, for on no other rational grounds could he account for the manifest truth that the world is contingent and that we

    This rational analysis led to his third and fourth ethical presuppositions, namely, that God's love for his infinitely perfect nature is both Voluntary and steadfast, and hence is, in a special sense necessary; the fourth, how this dual aspect of his will affects his relationship to creatures, with whom he always deals according to right reason and in some ordained and methodical way. If the affection for justice is essential to the notion of will, and is in fact the ultimate specific difference that makes a created rational appetite free, then God's own volition must be governed by justice as well, and he must be true to himself and his own goodness in whatever he chooses to create. His third and fourth presuppositions permit Scotus to disengage his natural law theory from that of the impersonal Stoic-Augustinian conception of the eternal law, and show under what conditions of right reason God, as the author of man, might dispense from the binding force of the last seven precepts of the decalog, though never from natural law in the strict sense.

    Scotus' fifth presupposition concerns how God reveals the moral law to a created intellect endowed with right reason. For if God is the author of human nature with the capacity to know and love what God himself does, then he has the authority to impose a moral obligation upon the creature he has created and set the conditions under which that creature may one day share God's inner life. How then does he manifest his Will? What often gets overlooked in asking this question of Scotus and his contemporaries is that their textbook in theology was the Sentences of Peter Lombard. If Peter had hammered one point into their heads, it was this:

    Hugh of St. Victor, whose influence on the Franciscan school can hardly be overestimated, had even earlier made specific application of this principle to ethics and the will of God:

    That Scotus accepted this principle is clear from what he says about the law of nature being, in the words of St. Paul, "written interiorly in the heart of man."22

    As a keen observer of human nature and its foibles, however, Scotus might well have anticipated G. K. Chesterton's quip: "It is not true to say 'The man in the street does not think'; he does think, but he soon gets tired!" It was on this score that Scotus, like his fellow-theologians, rationalized the practical need for some special revelation on the part of God to reinforce truths that a skilled lawyer or moralist might have recognized without such revelation. All moral truths, however, are not equally evident. Scotus clearly distinguishes those which he considered to be the primary or self-evident principles of the natural law from secondary principles. These, if not obvious to all immediately, may be recognized upon further reflection and study to be very reasonable and in harmony with human nature and its individual and social needs.23

    It is coming from this background that the 400 or more pages of texts and translations my book contains are to be understood. They are arranged under eight headings, entitled: the will and intellect; the will and its inclinations; moral good; God and the moral law; the love of God, of self, and of neighbor; and finally, as

    Scotus, like the great thinkers of his day, was ex professo a theologian rather than a philosopher, and in the latter role, perhaps more of a metaphysician and a psychologist than an ethician. Yet it is clear from the material contained in this work that he did discuss in depth and at length a great number of moral questions of contemporary interest. Though I might have added a number of other items of moral interest to the book, it would have made the book too unwieldy for ordinary uses for a course in Scotistic ethics. The topics covered are sufficiently broad in number and type to provide more material than required for a simple survey. They should suffice to show that Scotus had indeed an impressive and remarkably coherent moral philosophy, one in which right reason obviously plays the dominant role. Furthermore, despite the inner consistency of his ethics as a whole, the principles and conclusions he arrives at are not so tightly interconnected that a great many of his particular moral insights are not logically independent of one or another of these presuppositions and hence may be of considerable interest to a wider group of ethicians than those who may share his religious faith and all or most of his metaphysical conceptions. Many of Scotus' important insights emerge in his discussions of the moral aspects of marriage, divorce, polygamy, individual rights versus the authority of the state, what we owe to self versus what we owe to others, how right reason should evaluate a multifaceted good where one value must be sacrificed or downplayed for the sake of another, the role of prudence and other virtues, the effect of education and cultural differences, etc.

    Though all of the book reviews of the work so far have been laudatory, Linus Thro, who has done considerable work on Scotus' thought himself, has raised some important questions that undoubtedly will occur to other readers as well. Referring to the presuppositions listed as underlying Scotus' ethics he writes:

    As for this one could say that, whatever his readers may have thought, it is clear that Scotus himself considered he had not only demonstrated by Aristotelian standards the existence of a necessary being that was supremely good, but the more controversial point, that such a being was actually infinite. If the demonstrative character of his proof was questioned in the first quarter of the 14th century, it was still considered by its critics as the most cogent rational proof that had been given to date and was regarded as persuasive and reasonable if not demonstrative. Even Ockham, Scotus' most severe critic, employed his own version of what Scotus regarded as a "causal" argument in his "conservation" proof of God as supreme being.

    One should note that in the original version of his proof Scotus made no use of Anselm's argument whatsoever, but took as his starting point Henry of Ghent's summary of what were the proofs generally accepted as demonstrative in his day.25 These include his interpretation not only of the five ways of Aquinas but arguments from Augustine as well. Only Anselm's controversial Proslogion proof seems to be omitted in the classical arguments he marshals under the two headings of eminence and causality.26 "Causality," he understood to include not only efficient, but also exemplar and final causality. Scotus simplified Henry's "way of causality," combining it with the "way of eminence," and concentrated his personal efforts on putting the argument as a whole in a more rigorous logical form. In his Tractatus de Primo Principio, which seems to represent a final revision completed only with aid of some secretary, Scotus prefaces the proof with two introductory chapters in which the axioms and theorems it employs are set forth in an even more systematic way. If he introduces each chapter of this tract with prayer, it is a prayer that God may permit him to use reason rather than faith to see how far a metaphysician may go

    It seems that it was only in his second and later versions of the proof that Scotus recognized that the notion of "infinite" presented a special problem. As expressing something proper to God, it could not be constructed from simple univocal affirmations and negations of empirical elements in a straightforward way like such other theoretic notions as "highest good" or "supreme being." In his late magisterial Quodlibet Scotus goes to considerable pains to show what constructural steps can be used to facilitate the intellectual "blic" or "Gestalt-shift" that results in insight.27 In the post-Lectura versions of his proof of God, however, it seems clear that, rightly or wrongly, Scotus believed he had established a rational proof for the existence of an infinitely perfect God. And it was only when he sought to reorder and multiply his initial proofs for the infinity of his "First Being" that Scotus introduces his quasi-empirical or psychological proof, namely, an observation made earlier by Aristotle himself that far from being jarred by the notion of "infinite being," the human mind rather reaches out for such in its quest to make sense of the world of experience. It was in showing why "infinite" does not contradict the notion of "being" as some real entity (i.e., as something that either exists or can exists) that Scotus realized the technique he was using could be employed to "touch up" Anselm's argument itself so that it could be given an empirical rather than an a priori interpretation. Thro asked: "Is not the presupposed metaphysical notion of God really a Christian notion?" Obviously for Scotus it was, and for believers of other persuasions, it too might have required a modicum of faith. Even Kant himself admitted, a certain amount of good faith is needed to accept any proof for God. But the philosophers among the various religious sects have always thought they could make theological discourse meaningful and even give persuasive and plausible reasons for what they believed.28 If Scotus' first presupposition seems "Christian," he himself certainly thought it was shared by the two philosophers he admired most, Aristotle and Avicenna.

    More serious, however, is Thro's further question: Does the effort succeed in showing the accessibility of moral truth to unaided human reason? For

    Unless one specifies more precisely the sense of "moral truth," I think Thro's question has already been answered. For as I noted above, it seems clear to me, that in accepting much of the "Anselmian-Victorine-Bonaventure tradition" Scotus was concerned not to distance himself from Aristotle, but to bring that Franciscan line of thinking into the mainstream of contemporary Aristotelian thought. In his reformulation of Henry's classical arguments, for example, Scotus goes out of his way to use Aristotelian rather than Augutinian principles. And in his substitution of "nature and will" for Aristotle's dichotomy of "nonrational and rational potencies," Scotus devotes pages to showing the logical equivalence of the two conceptions.30

    However, if one stresses the term "genuine" one could agree in great part with Thro's contention that "Scotus could hardly consider genuine moral truth available to man without faith." For we recognize more clearly today, as did the scholastics of Scotus' time, that for a Christian there is only one "genuine" end or destiny towards which all a person's moral striving should aim. Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Scotus, like their Christian contemporaries, considered human nature to have been created only a "little less than the angels." For even if it was the "lowest" of such natures, it was still "capax Dei," and called to share in the afterlife the face to face vision of God. If this goal was something nature could not achieve through its own powers, it was still not regarded as something that did violence to that nature or was something towards which it was only indifferently inclined. Grace, it was often said, builds on nature; it perfects it without destroying it. In Aristotelian terms, however, this would mean that built into the very core of human nature was some potentiality to be perfected by something above the power of any created agency.31 This led

    This question as to how much a philosopher without faith in any supernatural perfection might know about moral truth or the true nature of man, led undoubtedly to the sharp distinction made later between the natural (hypothetical) end of man and the supernatural (actual or genuine) end Christian's claimed to have. If this dichotomy, perhaps, was introduced explicitly only in Cajetan's day, it was spread by Suarez and the later scholastics, and adopted generally by Catholic theologians until relatively recent times. Only since Henri De Lubac's studies on what the high scholastics themselves thought, has there been a trend to reverse this kind of dualistic, "two-storied" conception of human nature.

    Today as philosophers and theologians of various religious persuasions become more aware of the global unity of the human race, they also realize God seems to have intervened in a numinous way with cultures other than their own. Well may they ask how much of a role should one's particular religious faith play in their philosophical speculations. It might help here to borrow a page from philosophers of science. Their studies of the logical status of theoretical concepts indicate that while certain theories may be falsified by empirical data, strictly one cannot show there is but one unique theory that satisfies what is generally accepted as factual data. What is more, even what we claim to experience psychological studies show to be in some measure theory-laden. Hence the method by which any theory, scientific or philosophical, is arrived at appears irrelevant to its cognitive value in making sense of the real world in which "we live, move and have our being." All of this raises questions as to what should be excluded from philosophical speculation as being purely or properly theological. One might fall back on Gilson's original contention, which if I remember correctly, was that Christian theologians were giving better answers to the philosophers' questions than the pagan philosophers themselves.

    I personally doubt whether Scotus was as skeptical of the powers of the human intellect to discover genuine moral truth as Thro's questions seem to suggest. Faith of some sort, as Augustine

    At any rate, historians of medieval thought, philosophers of religion or ethics should find the evaluative techniques Scotus uses to solve particular ethical problems that fall under the second table of the law of value, without necessarily agreeing with his reasons why they oblige morally. For what right reason tells us is what perfects human nature naturally, and this should suffice for the development of a rational ethics by those who claim man's moral behavior is not essentially dependent upon a divine command.

    In conclusion let me call attention to another important notion implicit at least in Scotus' ethical approach that other believing ethicians may appreciate. If nature's perfection is more an ideal towards which we strive rather than an absolute value that demands God's immediate intervention, then understandably God for whom a 'thousand years are as a day' is not constrained to see that it be attained at once or by some miraculous intervention on his part to correct each human mistake. The conception of a nature that achieves its complete perfection and comes to full maturity only gradually and by an internal trial and error mechanism does not seem foreign to or incompatible with Scotus' conception of God. If he stated his principle of evolutionary development Deus ordinate agens procedit de imperfecto ad perfectum in reference to God's revealed law, there seems to be no reason why it does not apply to the promulgation of the law of nature as well, namely, through a gradual growth in moral awareness that spans centuries or even millennia of human history. In processu generationis humanae, semper crevit notitia veritatis.33