The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus by A. B. Wolter, O. F. M (review)

520 BOOK REVlEWS Of this company is Professor Miller. It would be easy, doubtless, to score him on many counts for his treatment of mediaeval philosophers, and to criticize his own personal philosophy for shallowness due to the lack of any real metaphysics. (Is his distrust of metaphysics due to the fact that he- can only think of metaphysics in terms of the rationalism he rejects?) It would doubtless be easy so to criticize, but perhaps we should at the same time ask ourselves whether we are not to blame for his not having a more complete and sympathetic view of our philosophy. Why is it that Miller, like Professor Wild of Harvard, feels that Thomism (despite the work of Maritain and others), is not really interested in the contemporary problems of justice and liberty and has little really contemporary to say? Miller's philosophy, based so largely on the spirit of political liberty and the passion for justice, is insufficiently metaphysical, but have we shown the passion for justice and freedom that would lead such men to examine more dispassionately the foundations of our philosophy? Such, in the hearts of men, is the curious link between the speculative and the practical orders. Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wiaconsin DoNALD A. GALLAGHER The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus. By A. B. WoLTER, 0. F. M. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1946. $2.75. This is a.doctoral dissertation submitted to the School of Philosophy of the Catholic Universi:ty of America. The purpose of the dissertation is to expound Scotus' theory of transcendentality , and the function of each of the main classes of transcendentals , emphasizing particularly their theological implications. The author remarks that such a study has been neglected up to now-an inexplicable neglect, for the theory of transcendentality is indispensable in understanding Scotus' ideal of a systematic and scientific metaphysics, which the Subtle Doctor defines as " the science of the transcendentals." Doctor Wolter has refrained from attempting any critical or comparative study, and has limited himself to the interpretation of Scotus' teaching . This limitation of field was undoubtedly legitimate and even necessary . We hppe, however, that he will some day attempt to give us a critical appreciation of Scotus' theory as well as its relation with St. Thomas' teaching. The incidental remarks which he makes in this connection increase the interest of such ail undertaking. He affirms that Scotus' theory can be justly critisized on several counts. This statement BOOK REVIEWS 521 will make many a reader wonder whether the points susceptible of just criticism are the basic ones, and whether consequently the whole Scotistic metaphysics is built upon sand. Regarding the relation between Scotus' and Thomas' teaching Dr. Wolter remarks over and over again that "the chasm between both is not so unbridgeable as his commonly believed," that the doctrine of the two Scholastics is, in the majority of instances, complementary rather than contradictory. This affirmation deserves to be proved and substantiated for several reasons-not the least important being to eradicate from the earth the tribe of those who call themselves either Scotists or Thomists and deliberately ignore the teaching of St. Thomas or Scotus respectively. Dr. Wolter bases all his treatise on a text taken from the Opus Oxoniense, b. 1, d. 8, q. 3, nn. 18-19 (Vives Ed., IX, 597b-598b). This key text gives him even the plan and the main divisions of the whole work, which is divided into two parts. The first deals with the idea of transcendentality in general and its basic presuppositions, namely, the nature of a real concept and univocation; the second discusses the various classes of transcendentals , namely, being, the properties or attributes coextensive with being as such, the disjunctive attributes, such as " infinite-or-finite," " substance -or-accident," etc., and finally the " pure perfections," which are of two kinds: those predicable of God alone and those predicable of God as well as of certain creatures. A separate chapter is appended by way of conclusion, showing how Scotus integrated into an organic whole the heterogeneous elements of Aristotle's metaphysics. Transcendental, according to Scotus, is whatever rises above all...