William of Ockam John Duns Scotus
An t-Idèa chosmonòmach Arastotaileach.
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The Aristotelian cosmonomic Idea.
According to the scholastic ground-motive of nature and grace, the Thomistic cosmonomic Idea has a natural and a supra-natural side.
The former rules THOMAS' philosophy, the latter his theology of revelation. The natural component is the Aristotelian transcendental ground-Idea, accommodated to the Augustinian Idea of the lex aeterna.
According to the Aristotelian cosmonomic Idea all of nature is dominated by a dual teleological order: every natural substance strives according to its nature toward its own perfection, which is enclosed in its essential form.
In their relationship to each other the substantial forms are arranged in a hierarchical order in which the lower is the matter of a higher form. This is the content of the lex naturalis. As pure actual form the deity can be accepted as the origin of the motion which proceeds from matter toward form as its goal. However, there is no way in which the deity can be considered as the origin of the principle of matter, with its blind arbitrary ἀναγκή [inescapability/formless fate]. Even the Aristotelian theory of categories is permeated with the dualism of its dialectical ground-motive. It makes a fundamental distinction between the specific categories of matter (spatiality, number) and those of form. The concept of substance, as the central category of being, pretends to unite into an absolute unity the form and matter of natural beings. But it cannot accomplish this union, because it lacks a real starting-point for this synthesis. To attain this desired result it would be necessary to have a deeper radical unity above the opposed principles of form and matter (1). And, as we saw in the Prolegomena, the metaphysical (transcendental) concept of being can only bring them into an analogical unity.
The content of the Thomistic cosmonomic idea.
In THOMAS' cosmonomic Idea the Aristotelian lex naturalis, which is immanent to natural substances, is related to a transcendent lex aeterna as the plan of creation in the divine Mind.
The latter is the Origin of the former. In conformity with the Aristotelian Idea of God, the lex aeterna was now considered identical with divine reason. As a compromise with the Augustinian conception, only the obligating force of the lex naturalis (what is here thought of is only the natural ethical law) is derived from the sovereign will of the Creator. The Christian Idea of divine providence in the order of creation is now transformed into the Aristotelian Idea of the teleological natural order, with its hierarchy of substantial forms, which conforms to the religious form-matter motive.
In the typical transcendental ground-Idea of Thomism the divine Origin of the natural order was conceived of as the first cause and final goal of the whole temporal movement in nature from matter to form, from means to end. And the supra-natural sphere of grace, in which the divine Origin is conceived in the light of Revelation and in which the lex naturalis finds its supra-natural complement in the lex charitatis et gratiae, was placed above the natural order as a higher level. It is this view that became the speculative philosophic expression of the Idea of synthesis which typified the entire ecclesiastically unified culture.
The intrinsic dialectic of the scholastic basic motive of nature and grace and the nominalism of the fourteenth century.
However, the intrinsic dialectic of the motive of nature and grace in scholastic philosophy soon became evident.
As long as the Roman Catholic church was strong enough, the artificial synthesis between the Christian and Greek world of Ideas could be maintained, and the polar tendencies in the ground-motive of nature and grace could not develop freely. Ecclesiastical excommunication was sufficient to check the development of these tendencies in philosophy and in every day affairs.
In the critical period of the Late Middle Ages however, as we shall see in the following paragraph, the ecclesiastically unified culture began to collapse. One secular sphere after another began to wrest itself free from ecclesiastical domination.
Since the 14th century the nominalism of the late scholasticism under the leadership of WILLIAM OF OCCAM, turned against the artifical compromise between Christian and pagan lines of thought in the Thomistic system. This reaction commenced after the Averroistic PETRUS AUREOLI and DURANDUS of St. Porcain, in a somewhat different philosophical and theological orientation, had taken up the nominalistic tradition of earlier centuries.
Before the 14th century nominalism had been always suppressed by realistic scholasticism with its doctrine of the reality of the universal forms ("universalia"). It had repeatedly received the official condemnation of the church. In the 14th century, however, nominalism became a cultural factor of world-significance. It was able to pave the way for modern philosophical thought, since the church had lost its dominating influence on philosophy.
The Thomistic cosmonomic Idea required the realistic-metaphysical conception of the Aristotelian "substantial forms". As soon as this conception would be abandoned, the whole Thomistic-Aristotelian Idea of the natural order, as an understructure of the supra-natural order of grace, was doomed to break down. And the same holds good in respect to natural theology as an understructure of the sacred theology of revelation.
At this very point Thomism was subjected to the criticism of OCCAM'S nominalism, which, in the last analysis, was founded on an extremely nominalistic conception of the "potestas Dei absoluta". It cut off every metaphysical use of natural reason by denying that the universal concepts of thought have a "fundamentum in re" (2).
It joined forces with the so-called terministic suppositional logic as presented in the seventh treatise (3) of the "Summulae" of PETRUS HISPANUS and conceived of "universalia" as only being "signs", which in the human mind stand for (supponunt) a plurality of individual things, but which themselves possess no reality "in" or "before" the latter. In so far as they do not rest upon arbitrary convention, as the "voces", the "universalia" are "conceptus" or "intentiones animae" formed by the understanding. They function merely as copies of the corresponding traits of individual things and only have a subjective value for knowledge. When OCCAM limited scientific knowledge to the logical judgment and the universalia, he thereby intended to depreciate science and not the Christian faith.
Faith, in a positivist manner bound to Holy Scripture — here conceived in a pseudo-juridical sense, as an ecclesiastical law book — and to the tradition of the Church, may maintain the realistic conception of "substantial forms". But philosophical thought can only hold to a completely sceptical attitude with respect to the reality of universals. This position destroyed the realistic metaphysical concept of truth.
The "primacy of the will" in the nominalistic school of thought versus the "primacy of the intellect" in the realistic metaphysics of THOMAS AQUINAS. There is no essential connection between realism and the primacy of the intellect.
The brunt of the attack upon the Thomistic conception of the "lex aeterna" lay in the nominalistic turning of the doctrine of the primacy of the will against the Thomistic doctrine of the primacy of the intellect. This whole controversy can only be understood in the light of scholastic and patristic syncretism. It is meaningless in a philosophy which in its transcendental ground-Idea holds to the integral and radical ground-motive of the Christian religion.
The conflict between the primacy of the will and the primacy of the intellect was originally unrelated to the conflict between realism and nominalism. Realists of the Augustinian school had contended for the primacy of the will. And JOHANNES DUNS SCOTUS, the great opponent of THOMAS AQUINAS, was essentially a more consistent realist than THOMAS. Nevertheless, in his doctrine of the Potestas Dei Absoluta, he gave a new stimulus to the conception of the primacy of the will.
The primacy of the will in the cosmonomic Idea of AUGUSTINE.
We have seen, that even in the cosmonomic Idea of AUGUSTINE the risky attempt was made to reconcile the Christian conception of the Absolute Sovereignty of God's Creative Will with the neo-Platonic basic Idea of the hierarchical ordination of reality in higher, more real and lower, less real spheres, in which pure matter formed the lowest level (4). In AUGUSTINE'S later period we find priority being given to the Christian conception of God's Will as Creator and to the insight into the obfuscation of human reason by the fall. This Christian conception became involved in the proclamation of the "primacy of the will", because it had to wrestle with the competitive realistic metaphysics which sought its Archimedean point in theoretic reason.
Nominalism was related to the Augustinian tradition by way of Franciscan thought. However, OCCAM changed the doctrine of the primacy of the will in a radically irrationalistic manner. He totally deformed the Christian confession of God's Sovereignty as Creator.
The potestas Dei absoluta in DUNS SCOTUS and WILLIAM OF OCCAM.
In DUNS SCOTUS the potestas Dei absoluta, as distinguished from the potestas Dei ordinata, was bound to the unity of God's holy and good Being (essence). According to him, the lex aeterna also originates in the essence of God. And absolute goodness and truth are grounded in the divine Being (5). Consequently, the Scotist conception of the potestas absoluta cannot have any nominalistic purport. It had no further intention than to account for the fact that sometimes in the Old Testament God seems to give "dispensation" of some commands of the second table of the Decalogue. This was doubtless a scholastic-juridical conception of the latter. However, in DUNS the potestas Dei absoluta, too, is always the expression of God's holy and good Being.
WILLIAM OF OCCAM abandoned the idea of a lex aeterna and a potestas absoluta "being bound to God's Being". In Aristotelian fashion the speculative-metaphysical theology had viewed the essence of God as pure Form. Nominalism now conceived of the potestas Dei absoluta in a sense which had some affinity with the unpredictable Anangkè of the Greek matter-motive. And by so doing, it separated itself from the integral Self-Revelation of God in His Word, to an even greater degree than the Thomistic realism had done in its theologia naturalis. It abstracted the Will of God from the Fulness of His Holy Being and conceived of His sovereign power as an orderless tyranny. In his De Trinitate AUGUSTINE had expressly warned against isolating the Will of God and the "ratio divina".
The nominalistic conception of the potestas Dei absoluta entirely contrary to its own intention places God's Creative Will under the boundary-line of the lex.
This functionalistic, theoretical mode of contemplation is only possible under the boundary-line of the cosmic temporal order. Consequently, God's will was actually placed under the lex; a result entirely in conflict with the intention of OCCAM. In relation to religious and ethical laws we can only speak of "arbitrariness" in the sense of an anti-normative behaviour, which supposes a norm. This is exactly what OCCAM does, when he allows for the possibility that God could have just as well sanctioned with His Will an "egoistic" ethics, and when he even conceives of the central religious commandment included in the first table of the decalogue, as a mere product of divine arbitrariness. Idolatry, too, presupposes a religious norm, which is transgressed by it.
As we observed in the Prolegomena, the concept "possibility" only has a reasonable sense, if we pre-suppose the necessity of a law in relation to which subjective individuality retains its full latitude but nevertheless remains subject to the necessary determinations and limitations imposed by it.
The nominalistic critique effectuated a radical disruption between the Christian and pagan motives in medieval scholasticism.
Nevertheless, nominalistic thought served as a liberator at least in one respect. Under its sharp critique the Christian and pagan motives, which had apparently been most effectively synthesized in the Thomistic transcendental ground-Idea, were radically disrupted. "Nature" and "grace" were completely separated. Thus after a short time, Humanism could consistently develop the line of "autonomous natural thought". This it did in a new manner based upon the dialectical ground-motive of nature and freedom. It might be expected, that the Reformation would have developed an essentially Christian philosophy, based upon the central ground-motive of Holy Scripture. That this did not occur for several centuries, is due solely to the fact that the Reformation was quickly captured by the scholastic ground-motive of nature and grace. This latter motive again led theological and philosophic thought along a scholastic path. We shall return to this point in part three of this volume. For the present we need only concern ourselves with the significance of late medieval nominalism as a condition for the rise of modern Humanistic thought.
As long as nominalistic scholasticism subjected itself in a positivistic faith to the dogma of the Church, it rested in an unreconciled dualism between faith and natural knowledge. In the late Middle Ages, however, some representatives of nominalism gave it a form which prepared the way for a complete secularization of the life- and world-view.
Secularization of nominalism in late scholasticism.
This process of secularization was introduced by JOHN OF JANDUN and MARSILIUS OF PADUA, which, just as PETRUS AUREOLI at an earlier period, belonged to the school of Averroistic nominalism (6).
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(1) Apparently ARISTOTLE tried to relativize the absolute contradiction between the two poles of the Greek ground-motive by conceiving of them in the modal meaning of the cultural aspect. In this modal aspect form-giving is related to a material which as "cultural object" has a potentiality to cultural shapes. The orientation of the relation between matter and form to culture is entirely in keeping with the ascription of religious primacy to the form-motive of the culture-religion.
(2) It may be observed in this connection that OCCAM started from the traditional metaphysical opposition between the logical thought-function and "reality in itself"; and that the only sources of our knowledge are to be found in sensory perception and logical understanding. We have seen in the Prolegomena, that this metaphysical pre-supposition excludes the insight into the integral horizon of our temporal experience.
(3) Under the title "de terminorum proprietatibus", later expanded to a separate textbook under the title "Parva Logicalia". This part of the Summulae did not stem from Aristotelian logic. And in opposition to PRANTL, recent investigations have established, that it was even less of Byzantine origin. The "Moderni" grounded themselves just on this treatise, whereas e.g. Duns Scotus chose the whole book of PETRUS HISPANUS as the foundation of his logic, and joined the 7th treatise with realistic metaphysics.
(4) Cf. De civitate Dei XII, 2: "natural essentiarum gradibus ordinavit" and his neo-platonic doctrine of the "esse" et "minus esse". Compare also his neo-platonic levels of the mystical elevation of the soul to God.
(5) Cf. the following statements of Scorus: "Intelligere non est primum in Deo, sed PRIMUM DANS ESSE EST IPSUM ENS, tum quia potentia non potest esse prima ratio essendi, tum quia intellectus praesupponit rationem objecti et potentiae sicut per se causas ejus vel principia" (R. P. I d. viii q. 1). "Deus est agens rectissima ratione" (R. P. iv d. 1 q. 5, n. 9).
"Quidquid Deus facit, propter se facit — omnia enim propter seipsum operatus est Altissimus — et ex charitate perfectissima quae ipse est, facit; ergo ejus actus est ordinatissimus, tame ex fine quam ex principio operativo" (Ox. II d. xxvii, q. I, n. 2).
"Nomine legis aeternae intelligimus judicium divini intellectus, qui producens omnia in esse intelligibile, subinde dat unicuique primum esse intelligibile, atque in eis omnes veritates relucent, adeo ut intellectus pervadens terminos necessario intelligat veritates omnes in illis involutas, tam speculativas, quam practicas" (Ox. I, d. iii q. 4).
(6) In my work entitled In den Strijd om een Christelijke Staatkunde (In the Struggle for a Christian Politics), Chap. I, XII (A.R. Staatk. Ist year, pp. 617 and following), I have established in detail the fact that we may speak of an Averroistic nominalism in these thinkers. In my analysis of the document Defensor Pacis I also showed the secularization of nominalistic thought.
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(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 181-188)
