CHAPTER THREE

THE PREDICATION OF THE TERM ‘BEING’

Ockham has a considerable amount to say about the term ‘being’ when it functions as a predicate term. Like other late medieval theologians, Ock- ham asked whether the term ‘being’ has the same meaning when predi- cated of God and creatures as well as of substance(s) and its accidents. Does it have a number of different meanings or just one depending on what it is predicated of? If God and creatures are radically diverse, do we mean the same thing when we say that both are beings? Inspired by a logical tradition originating in Aristotle, late medieval theologians had at their disposal a semantic theory that posited a division of words on the basis of their meaning(s), viz. univocal, equivocal, denominative. In an effort to clarify religious language, they fruitfully employed this logical- semantic tradition in new contexts, theological and metaphysical. In Aquinas, we find the famous “analogy of being” where ‘being’ is said analogically of God and creatures. This is intended to capture the notion that God and his creation are beings but not in the same way; their being is different although somehow related. By contrast, Scotus argues for the univocity of the concept of being in the case of God and creatures that expresses some bare and minimal “note” of being. Scotus is not suggesting that God and creatures are beings in the same way or have the same kind of being but simply that they are beings and that one and the same con- cept is therefore applicable to both.1 Ockham adopts Scotus’s conclusion

1 Scotus’s famous account of the univocal concept of being is presented in Ord. 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 1–2, n. 26–n. 45 (Vatican III, 18–30) against the background of Henry of Ghent’s analogical concept of being. It forms part of Scotus’s treatment of our natural knowledge of God in this life. Having declared that we cannot naturally cognize God in this life but that we do have some natural cognition of God, Scotus proceeds to argue how this might be possible. The concept of being is pivotal in this regard. There is a wealth of secondary material on the univocity of being in Scotus. What follows is by no means exhaustive. For a history of the univocity of the concept of being that traces the notion from Avicenna, to Henry of Ghent, to Scotus, to Gerard of Bologna, and finally to Peter Auriol, see Brown 1965. For other older explications of the relevant texts in Scotus, see Wolter 1946, especially chapters 3 and 4; Barth 1965. Marrone 1983 and Pini 2005a both focus on Scotus’s earlier works, specifically his logical commentaries and his Quaestiones Metaphysicorum, where Scotus uncharacteristically argues that being is equivocal. They argue that Scotus develops his position on the univocal concept of being over the course of his career and that it only reaches completion in his Sentences commentaries. Dumont 1987 gives a clear summary 150 chapter three and argues that the concept of being is univocally predicable of God and creatures and likewise of substance and accident.2 The purpose of this chapter is to present and critically assess Ockham’s position on the univocal predication of ‘being’ with a view to its relevance for metaphysics. The larger importance of the doctrine for my purpose is two-fold: first, the univocal predication of ‘being’ over substance(s) and its accidents, viz. of substance and accident terms, provides additional support for the conclusion that metaphysics includes a consideration of the categories as such. The concept of being signifies exactly what the category terms signify and thus the term ‘being’ is univocally predicable of category terms. Second and similarly, the doctrine of the univocal predi- cation of ‘being’ justifies the inclusion of God within metaphysics on the grounds that he is a being and that the term ‘being’ is univocally predica- ble of all beings, divine or otherwise. By virtue of the univocal predication of ‘being’, God becomes an object of study for the science of being and the term ‘God’ becomes one of its secondary subjects by the primacy of predication as well as its first subject by the primacy of perfection. Thus, the present chapter leads us from a consideration of being (chapter 2) to to a consideration of God (chapter 4). Moreover, since the term ‘being’ is the first subject of metaphysics by the primacy of predication, it is the metaphysician who inquires into the predicational behaviour of ‘being’ in a number of propositional contexts, including the propositions, “the term ‘being’ is properly univocally predicable of God and creatures, substance, and accident” and “the concept of being is improperly univocally predica- ble of God and creatures, substance, and accident.” It is not inappropriate

of Scotus’s position in comparison with William of Alnwick’s; Dumont 1998 concentrates in detail on the discussion between Henry of Ghent and Scotus. Finally, see Boulnois’s introduction to Boulnois 1988 and Cross 2005, 249–259. 2 After having presented Scotus’s position on the univocity of being, Ockham states that while he agrees with Scotus’s principal conclusion, he has two criticisms: 1) some of Scotus’s arguments are weak and inconclusive and 2) he disagrees with Scotus’s conclusion that being is univocal but not of all things that exist. The second remark refers to Scotus’s contention that being is univocal and common to genera, species, and individuals but not to ultimate differences and the attributes of being, see Ord. d. 2, q. 9 (OTh. II, 298: 8–13). For a comparison of Ockham and Scotus on this issue, see Langston 1979; Boulnois 2002a; and Honnefelder 2000. While Langston concentrates on what he takes to be Ockham’s inconclusive criticisms of Scotus’s arguments for the univocity of the concept of being, Honnefelder and Boulnois compare Scotus and Ockham on metaphysics at large including this particular topic. Both note that Ockham’s theory of concepts as natural signs that sup- posit for what they signify in propositions means that his account of the univocal predica- tion of ‘being’ is far easier to maintain; he is not compelled to deal with certain difficulties that Scotus does.