The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus's Early Works

THE NOTION OF UNIVOCITY IN DUNS SCOTUS'S EARLY WORKS* Of all the philosophical innovations for which John Duns Scotus has been acclaimed, surely the most celebrated is his notion of the univocity of the transcendental concepts, the primary and most important of which was the concept of being. Although Duns was hardly shy about advancing novel or even idiosyncratic ideas in his endeavor to subject philosophy and theology to a penetrating critical analysis, most of his novelties found their roots in the debates of the generation or two preceding him. Even so radically non-Aristotelian a doctrine as the intuition of singulars was not new with Duns so much as more fully articulated in his works and raised to a prominence only hinted at in the writings of his Franciscan predecessors.1 On the matter of univocity, however, Duns's ideas marked a radical departure from a tradition that had remained essentially unchanged for nearly a thousand years, and in a sense went back all the way to Aristotle. Here there was almost no hint of change in the decades before Duns. On the contrary, the Aristotelian notion of univocity was reaffirmed and reinforced. It was pure invention when Duns suggested that the notion of univocity might be used in a way that broke with the past.2 It is not new to point this out. Since the days of Duns himself scholars have either criticized him for his recklessness or praised him for his insight in talking about univocity the way he did. Yet until * The writing of this article was supported by a grant from the Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities 1 For an introduction to the problem of the knowledge of singulars among thirteenth-century scholastics, see Camille Bérubé, La connaissance de l'individuel au moyen âge (Montreal, 1964) 2 The clearest statements of the radical newness of Duns's ideas on univocity can be found in Timotheus Barth, "Zum Problem der Eindeutigkeit," Philosophisches Jahrbuch 55 (1942): 317, 319-20; and "De univocationis entis scotistica intentione principali necnon valore critico," Antonianum 28 (1953): 72, 77. 348STEVEN P. MARRONE recently there has been little interest in looking to see how Duns might have worked his way to his novel ideas. The general tendency has been to assume that Duns was committed to his new view of univocity from the start.3 Only in the twentieth century have historians begun to suggest that the real story is somewhat different. Perhaps, they have said. Duns came to his philosophical invention by way of an intellectual process that has left traces in his writings. Raymond de Courcerault was an early and eloquent voice calling attention to the fact that in his logical works Duns does not appear to have had the same idea of univocity, or the same understanding of the way it attached to being, as he revealed in the classical passages of his Ordination Given the increasingly accepted assumption that the logical commentaries antedated the rest of the Scotistic corpus, with the Questions on the Metaphysics coming somewhere in the middle, the implication of Father Raymond's words was clear.5 On the issue of univocity, Duns began his career essentially in the mainstream, only gradually coming to challenge the philosophical assumptions of a millennium. Since the days of Father Raymond, scholarly consensus has been building that the matter of Duns' career-long attitude toward univocity is more ambiguous than was for so long assumed to be the case. There has begun to be debate and discussion about the significance of Duns's statements on univocity in his logical works. Not everyone, however, has agreed that Duns's early ideas were contradictory to what he later said. Of all that has been written on this issue the most interesting remarks come from Timotheus Barth and Allan Wolter. Any analysis of the issue must begin with them. 3 For example, see the statements of one of the most prominent expounders of Scotus in this century, Parthenius Minges, "Beitrag zur Lehre des Duns Scotus über die Univokation des Seinsbegriffes," Philosophisches Jahrbuch 20 (1907): 314-20. To be sure, Minges's primary concern in...