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Home , Univocity of being

CHAPTER TEN

DISCUSSIONS ON THE SCOTIST CONCEPTION

Scotus’s new model of a “transcendental science” dominated the dis- cussions in the fourteenth century. His epoch-making claim of the univocity of in particular met with controversy even among his own disciples—a typical feature of the “Scotist School”, in which one was not required to uphold every thing the Master had taught. The debate started with the criticism of the English Franciscan Wil- liam of Alnwick (d. 1333), one of Scotus’s closest associates. In his commentary on the Sentences, read in Paris sometime before 1315, he regards Scotus’s position to be inconsistent, when it holds the univoc- ity of being but denies its univocal predication of the transcendental properties and the ultimate differences. According to Alnwick being is predicated in quid of all intelligibles.1 In some nineteen arguments against Scotus he tries to show that if being is taken in its most general ratio formalis as what is opposed to nothing, then whatever is distinct from nothing must essentially include being. Ultimate differences and transcendentals, however, are not nothing.2 Two anonymous Quaes- tiones ordinariae de conceptibus transcendentibus, written by a fol- lower of Scotus at Paris sometime between 1312 and 1316, defend Scotus’s doctrine of univocity; the second question is a refutation of Alnwick’s attack.3 The development of the transcendental theory in the early four- teenth century is still relatively unknown.4 In this chapter we shall

1 Cf. S. D. Dumont, “The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Cen- tury: John and William of Alnwick”, in: Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987), pp. 1–75 (with a text edition of William of Alnwick, In I Sententiarum, q. 8, pp. 35–70). 2 William of Alnwick, In I Sententiarum, q. 8 (ed. Dumont, p. 49, ll. 398–404). 3 Cf. S. F. Brown / S. D. Dumont, “The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: III. An early Scotist”, in: Mediaeval Studies 51 (1989), pp. 1–129 (with a text edition of the two questions, pp. 39–129). 4 Two collective volumes deal with early fourteenth-century thought. The journal Quaestio 8 (2008) is devoted to “La posterità di Giovanni Duns Scoto” and includes a contribution by W. Goris, “After Scotus. Dispersions of , of the Scope of Intelligibility, and of the Transcendental in the early 14th Century”, pp. 139–157. The other volume is S. F. Brown / T. Dewender / Th. Kobusch (eds.),Philosophical Debates at Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century, Leiden – Boston 2009 (Studien und 434 chapter ten focus on five Franciscan thinkers, who all make innovative contribu- tions to the debate on Scotus’s model:

(10.1) Peter Auriol (d. 1322), who proposes an alternative doctrine of the transcendentals in his criticisms of Scotus; (10.2) Francis of Meyronnes (d. 1328), who composes the first sepa- rate Tractatus de transcendentibus in the Middle Ages; (10.3) Peter Thomae (d. 1340), who systematizes Scotus’s account but also develops a new transcendental logic; (10.4) Nicholas Bonet (d. 1343), who presents the first systematic account of a transcendental metaphysics; (10.5) Francis of Marchia (d. 1344), who introduces a new order of the transcendental notions and questions the onto-theological unity of First Philosophy. He intends a splitting up of meta- physics into a general metaphysics of what is transcendental and a particular metaphysics of what is transcendent.

10.1 Peter Auriol: An alternative doctrine

The most significant Franciscan thinker in Paris after Scotus was Peter Auriol (ca. 1280–1322), who began his studies in Paris soon after 1300, where he possibly heard Duns Scotus. One of the most influential works of philosophical theology of the later Middle Ages is his monumental Scriptum of the first book of theSentences , which was mostly completed during his lectorship at the Order’s studium generale in Toulouse. It pre-dates Auriol’s lectures on the Sentences at the University of Paris, which survive as Reportationes. He was regent master at Paris from 1318 to 1320.5 In his works, which were all com- posed in the decade between 1310 and 1320, Auriol critically examines several conceptions that are crucial for Scotus’s understanding of tran- scendentality: the unity of the concept of “being”; the first adequate object of the intellect; the possibility of a “transcendental science”; and the between the transcendentals. At the same

Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 102), which, however, does not contain a study on the doctrine of the transcendentals. 5 For an overview, cf. C. Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345. Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine foreknowledge and future contingents, Aldershot 2000, pp. 67–76.