Duns Scotus's Rejection of 'Necessarily Exists' as a Predicate

Duns Scotus's Rejection of 'Necessarily Exists' as a Predicate CHARLES F. KIELKOPF THIS ISA RECONSTRUCTIONof an argument for the sixth conclusion of chapter three (3.23) of Duns Scotus's Treatise About the First Principle: ~it is the characteristic of but one nature to have necessary being of itself. The argument in 3.24 for this conclusion is reconstructed and shown to provide an argument that 'necessarily exists' is not a predicate because necessary existence cannot be a feature occurring in different natures. Slight changes in the reconstructed argument convert it into an argument that 'exists' is not a predicate because existence cannot be a feature occurring in different natures. Since neither necessary existence nor existence can be common features, problems are raised about the claim in 3.25 that "nothing is more perfect than a being having necessary existence of itself," and about Scotus's acceptance in 4.65 of a slightly retouched version of Anselm's Ontological Argument. By dismissing these problems I show that the fact that 'exists' and 'necessarily exists' are not predicates is irrelevant to ontological arguments. It is suggested that a necessary being necessarily has more perfections than any other being, although its existence and mode of existence are not features of it, let alone perfections of it. Similarly, it is suggested that the nature of an existing being has more perfections than any nature that is not the nature of an existing being but that, still, existence is not one of the features--let alone anything that can be called a perfection--making up the nature. Let us turn to a reconstruction of the 3.24 argument. Presentation of the second premise will be followed by some terminological stipulations. For reductio assume (1) N, and N2 are two different natures of necessary beings. (2) If N1 and N2 are two different natures of necessary beings, then there is a feature NE of existing necessarily that is common to both NI and N~. The second premise comes from the first four lines. We are not going to worry about the truth of the second premise. Indeed, Scotus's subsequent argument seems to show that existing necessarily cannot be a feature of a nature. Thus the subsequent argument may be strong enough to show that the whole of (2) is unacceptable because it is based on a mistaken analysis of what it would be for two distinct The basicideasof this paper werepresentedto the John CarrollSecondOhioConferenceon Medieval Studies, Cleveland, Ohio, October, 1975. 1Trans. A. Wolter,O.F.M. (Chicago:FranciscanHeraldPress, 1966).Thisis a translationof a revised Latin text of De primo principio and two related questionsfroman earlycommentaryon the Sentences. Hereafter, all passages from Scotusare from this book. Sections3.23and 3.24are appendedto this paper. Referencesto lineswillbe to the translationof 3.24, unless otherwisespecified. [13] 14 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY natures to be natures of necessary beings. However, as we shall see, the argument reconstructed below can be readily converted into a reductio argument against the consequent of (2). This reductio argument is of most interest because it is so readily transformed into an argument that 'necessarily exists' is not a predicate. For appreciation of the reconstructed argument, however, the terminology of (2) needs explanation (which I hope to provide by reference to 3.24). Let us use 'nature' very broadly to mean any consistent set of features. A feature in a nature shows what, among other things, an individual would be if it were to have the nature containing the feature. A feature is an entity that shows what an object is: a feature is an entitas quidditativa, as in line 3 of the Latin. A justification for using 'nature' so broadly is the fact that Scotus himself goes on in the next few lines to classify the alleged common feature of line 3 as a common nature. However, I am not classing all natures as features or entitates quidditativae. For instance, a set of features could be so large or complex that we could not know what is in it. Let us develop a notion of distinctive nature from "distinguuntur formalitatibus suis actualibus ultimis" of line 5. A distinctive nature DN, formalitas actualis ultima, is...