The Moral Psychology of Duns Scotus: Some Preliminary Questions

THE MORAX PSYCHOLOGY OF DUNS SCOTUS SOME PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS A full-scale account of Scorus's moral psychology must probably wait upon the completion of the critical edition of his writings as well as on further detailed studies of his thought.1 But it is possible, I think, to provide a rough sketch of the terrain in order to identify and to relate some of the various elements that enter into Scorus's theory. While I leave many issues unresolved, I do not at all mean to imply that the problems are insurmountable. It may in the end turn out that the appearance of complexity hides a relatively simple—or most subtle—answer. There are four questions whose answers I think would provide the basis for understanding the structure of Scorus's moral psychology. They are variations on a common theme. What does Scotus think the relation is between: (1)the non-normative and the normative? (2)the normative and the moral? (3)the moral and the obligatory? (4)full awareness of what one ought to do and action? The first and last of these can be dealt with rather straightforwardly ; and I try to do so in Section 1. The answer to the second question requires some account of Scorus's doctrine of dual basic inclinations in the will, which is sketched in Section 2. The remaining sections deal in one way or another with Ques1 Special mention must be made of the useful collection of texts and interesting commentary by Allan Wolter, O.F.M. Almost all the references I make to Scotus can be found in his Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986): hereafter ["W" followed by page]. (I have sometimes adjusted the translation.) Since the Latin text, along with suitable references to the critical and/or older editions is provided there, I have not duplicated those references here. References to the Quodlibeta, follow the divisions used in Felix Alluntis and Allan Wolter, eds., God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). 32JOHN BOLER tion Three: in particular, Scotus's appeal to the will of God (Section 4), his account of certain exemptions in Scripture (Section 5), and his use of natural law (Section 6). In Sections 7 and 8, using Frederick Copleston as a foil, I try to show why the problems of interpretation are real and interrelated. Section 9 offers a modified version of a suggestion made by Allan Wolter. Section 10 briefly lists my guesses at the four answers along with a reminder of the topics raised but not fully resolved. With respect to the last of the four proposed questions, there is general agreement among medieval writers that a rational agent has free will. They cannot accept unqualifiedly, therefore, the Socratic maxims that "to know the good is to do the good" or that "virtue is knowledge." There are thinkers, however—Scotus singles out Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent2—who believe that the ability of rational agents to choose among certain goods presupposes a necessary inclination to act with respect to an ultimate good: roughly, "happiness " or we might say now "human flourishing." Scotus, on the contrary, maintains that the root of the freedom of the will of a rational agent lies in its being able to "not-act" even when presented with an unqualifiedly good object.3 The sharp contrast he draws between the will as voluntary and the intellect as a merely "natural" agency is not without its affect on his moral theory, but that is best discusses in connection with the status of the moral for Scotus (i.e., Question Two). The first of the questions listed in the introduction can also be answered somewhat briefly, at least if it is construed as construed as broaching only the minimal or broadest notion of the normative. Scotus's general position can be fairly described, I think, as essentialist and teleological. It follows that certain goals (or needs) are part of the natural structure of things, and 2 Ordinatio IV, suppl. d.49, q.9-10, a.2 [W 186 ff.] What lies behind Scotus's disagreement with...