Perhaps the
earliest signs of the growing autonomy of European thought even from within the
Scholastic and ecclesiastic ranks became discernible with the Summa of Saint
Thomas Aquinas which were to inspire the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages – so
much so that it is possible to discern the most advanced developments of modern
European philosophy in the writings and thoughts of the religious scholars at
the turn of the first millennium. As
early as his doctoral thesis on Duns Scotus, Heidegger decries and bemoans the
crushing weight of scholastic tradition – Hellenistic and ecclesiastical – on
the thought of the Middle Ages – “the absolute devotion and submission in
temperament to the material that was known to be handed down by tradition” (ibid., p.9). The rationalist equiparation
of the real with the rational, this Platonic realism where universals
assume an ethereal status categorically distinct from their mundane
particulars is precisely what the skeptical nominalist mediaeval
philosophers disputed first – and perhaps what first induced Heidegger toward
the critical pursuit of Aristotelian and Hegelian metaphysics as
presaged by Scotus (v. Gadamer, ‘Platon’ in Les Chemins de Heidegger).
Mediaeval man is not
in a modern sense with himself – he sees himself as always
suspended in metaphysical tension. Transcendence restrains him from a purely
human attitude in the face of the whole of reality. Reality as reality – as
real world-about – is for him a constraining phenomenon in that it immediately
and constantly appears as dependent on and measured by
transcendent principles….and by the problems of the suprasensory. (Heidegger,
D. Scotus, pp.10-11)
Tradition, transcendence and the suprasensory:
Scholastic philosophy moves constantly away from the particular toward the
general and then the universal through a process of deduction as opposed
to induction, and imposes thus the rules of formal logic and grammar as a
straitjacket on reality from which it seeks to deduce the univocity
of transcendental being. It is not the case, claims Heidegger, that
universals must be founded on particulars – psychologism -, but
rather that universals cannot inform us or enlighten us as to reality and
existence. This avulsion of the notion of Being
from that of Substance arises already in the Middle Ages in the work of
Duns Scotus where the timeliness of
Being, its materiality in the sense of historicity or temporality, is
distinguished from the transcendent time-less-ness
or eternity of the Deity, of God. Already, Aristotle’s notion of ens – the physis of Being, its transcrescence through
time – had opened the path to a conception of Being that could prescind from
its sub-stance, its hypo-keimenon, -
what subsists through the becoming of Being, its essence. (Franz
Brentano had earlier drawn attention to the Greek philosopher’s “several senses
of Being” in the Metaphysics, cf. his
On the Several Senses of Being in
Aristotle. Brentano was well known to Heidegger - see H. Gadamer’s frequent
discussions of this in his lectures on Heidegger.)
Before Duns Scotus, Scholastic learning had confined the study of
divinity to theology and faith; any philosophical theories of the Deity hinged
on analogies and on revelation or on deductive logic. The Doctor
Subtilis, as Scotus became widely known, was the first to devise and insist
on a proof for the existence of God based on rational metaphysical
speculation – not on revelation or formal syllogistic logic, or on mere
analogy, but on dialectical reasoning and empirical induction. By so doing, he
extended the scope of logic and metaphysics to the study of divinity and, more
harmful to Scholastic doctrine, relegated the role of divine Revelation and of
theology and faith to an inferior echelon of scholastic learning and
epistemological inquiry. But even within the ambit of rational metaphysics Duns
Scotus introduced a further distinction between a syllogistic logical
deduction based on empirical observation and generalizations asseverated by the
natural intellect – which he called logica practica - and the deductions
dictated by the pure dia-logical or dialectical powers of the intellect. Scotus
bases his argument for the existence of God from intellectual or conceptual
extrapolations that emerge from the common qualities of observable appearances.
La méthode de philosopher de Scot est donc, comme celle de
saint Thomas, comme celle de tous les péripatéticiens, ouvertement a
posteriori, prenant son point de départ dans l'observation des faits. Mais
l'ordre d'exposition des scolastiques est inverse de cette méthode, (E.
Pluzanski, Essai sur la Philosophie de Duns Scot, p.39).
From the very reality of the intellect (cogitare), Scotus infers
the certainty of being - not, and this was Descartes’s fateful error, that of
the Ego! This schism between the sphere of the Divine, encapsulated in the
logical rationalism of Scholastic theology, and that of the Natural,
exemplified by the growing empirical skepticism of heretical natural
philosophy, was intensified further in the new nominalist logic of
William of Ockham. It represented a move away from universalizing theory
to particularizing practical observation. Crucially,
theory based on deductive logic such as the syllogism is categorically
incapable of establishing the existence of its terms, whether in the premises
or in the conclusion. Theory seeks to find the ordo
et connexio rerum et idearum whereby symbols such as
words and propositions are linked directly to things so as to offer, as it
were, a “universal key” (clavis universalis) to the reading and
interpretation of “the Great Book” of divine creation to which human beings are
made privy. Not only is there no ordo et connexio rerum
et idearum, not only is there no adaequatio rei
et intellectus, but also any attempt to link objects to ideas and to
the intellect in an “order” dictated by reason and logic must fail because
reason and logic are categorically incapable of establishing – certainly not
“logically”! – the real existence of the very
“objects” that logic wishes to connect and that reason wishes to order! The
only “quality” or attribute that may be inferred from our natural perception of
“beings” is that which is common to all of them – Being.
Again, if a
certain property can exist only in virtue of such and such a cause, from every
such property that appears in the effect, we can infer the existence of the
cause. Now it is not just such properties of the effect as are treated in
the philosophy of nature that are possible CONCERNING METAPHYSICS 11 only
on condition that God exists, for the same is true of the properties treated of
in metaphysics. Not only does motion presuppose a mover, but a being that is
posterior presupposes one that is prior. Consequently, from the priority that
exists among beings the existence of the First Being can be inferred, and this
can be done in a more perfect way than the existence of a Prime Mover can be
established in natural philosophy. We can infer, then, in metaphysics from act
and potency, finiteness and infinity, multitude and unity, and many other such
metaphysical properties, that God or the First Being exists. So far as
this article is concerned, then, I say that God is not the subject of
metaphysics, because, as has been proved above in the first question, there is
but one science that has God as its first subject [theology], and this is not
metaphysics.10
Metaphysics, as the prima
philosophia, deploys the human intellect for the understanding of Being as Substance.
Yet once we acknowledge that God is not immediately apprehended
by the human intellect because the latter relies on the senses to understand
and fix its object of study, it becomes obvious then that God, as a suprasensible Being, is not and cannot
be the subject of metaphysics.
[5] And so the concept of being, in so far
as it agrees with the concept in question, is other than the dubious concepts
which come under it. But it is other in such a way that it is included in both
of the concepts which come under it, for these limiting differences presuppose
the same concept of being which they limit. The second reason I explain as follows:
We argued that God cannot be known
naturally unless being is univocal to the created and uncreated. We can argue
in the same way of substance and accident, for substance does not immediately
move our intellect to know the substance itself, but only the sensible accident
does so. From this it follows that we can have no quidditative concept of
substance except such as could be abstracted from the concept of an accident.
But the only quidditative concept of this kind that can be abstracted from that
of an accident is the concept of being.
And yet, metaphysics
can point to the existence of God, although it will never be able to
comprehend the Deity because the divine is categorically different from the
objects comprehensible by the human intellect. Metaphysics can do this not by
analogy or by revelation, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas would have
it, but through the intellectual notion of “being”. Both analogy and revelation
fail because the one is purely figurative whereas the second assumes –
through divine intervention, that is, by wholly “irrational” means, through
blind faith - what needs to be proven.
Of every subject, also of a subordinate science, it is
known through the senses that it is of such a nature that to exist is not
repugnant to it, as is evident of the subject of optics, for the existence of a
visible line is grasped immediately from the senses. Just as principles are
grasped immediately once the terms are apprehended through the medium of the
senses, so likewise if a subject is not to be posterior to, or less known than,
its principle,11 it must needs be grasped through the senses. But no proper
notion that we can form of God is apprehended immediately by man's intellect in
this life. Therefore, we can have no naturally acquired science about God under
some notion proper to Himself. Proof of the minor: The first [proper]
concept we have of God is that He is the First Being. This notion is not
grasped through the senses, but we must first ascertain that the union of these
two terms is compatible. Before we can know this compatibility, however, it is
necessary that we demonstrate that some being is first. Therefore, etc. Hence,
I concede with Avicenna that God is not the subject of metaphysics. (D.
Scotus, PW, pp.10-11.)
Implicit in this
categorization of the being and its accession to the Deity (the Uncreated) is
the ascertainable superiority of metaphysics – and then of the natural sciences
- as the purview of the intellect as against faith. Hereafter,
the object of science is not the search of the causa ultima or causa
causans but rather that of efficient causes and effects. If every cause
must have an effect and vice versa, then the First Cause must be able to
create, yet not itself be created – which means that it is toto
genere different from all other events in the causal chain – and therefore,
as such, not comprehensible by and to the human intellect except through
the apprehension of being!
Une science est l'ensemble des vérités sur un sujet. L'idéal
de la science, selon Duns Scot, serait d'avoir pour principe, par l'intuition
complète de son objet, la défnition qui en exprime l'essence, et d'apercevoir
les conséquences nécessaires d'un tel principe 4 . Mais il avoue que cet idéal
n'est pas possible pour nous ; une distinction lui est familière entre la
science en soi et la science par rapport à nous, et aux questions posées sur
l'objet et la méthode de la science, les solutions qu'il donne diffèrent
suivant ces deux points de vue succes -38-ifs. « Le propre de la
métaphysique, dit-il ', est de fonder ses divisions et définitions sur
l'essence, puis de faire des démonstrations par la considération des causes
essentielles absolument premières... Mais c'est le propre de la métaphysique en
soi. Ce n'est pas ainsi que nous en avons la science, ni qu'elle est enseignée
par Aristote. Cherchez dans tout son livre : vous n'y trouverez pas une seule
démonstration de métaphysique à priori, car, par suite de la faiblesse de notre
intelligence, c'est en partant des choses sensibles et moins intelligibles en
elles-mêmes que nous venons à la connaissance des choses immatérielles qui en
soi sont plus intelligibles (notiora) et devraient être en métaphysique prises
comme les principes de la connaissance des autres choses. » L'ange peut-être
aurait pu, selon Duns Scot 2 , « de la connaissance naturelle de Dieu déduire
toute autre connaissance; » mais ce n'est pas notre cas, et nous ne pouvons
commencer la science en supposant l'existence de Dieu ni la fonder sur sa
notion 3 : en effet, avant l'expérience des sens — 39 — il n'y a aucun principe
qui nous soit naturellement connu, (E. Pluzanski, Essai sur la Philosophie
de Duns Scot, pp.38-39).
Human beings, argues Scotus, cannot have a natural
knowledge of God because the divinity is beyond the reach of our senses, of our
perception, on which all of our natural knowledge, the sciences, must be
founded. There are aspects of
being that are merely qualitative or attributive or adjectival (in quale),
whereas there is a more intrinsic quiddity or whatness (quidditas) of
being (in quid) that cannot be qualified further. The proper subject of
metaphysics, argues Scotus, is precisely the relationship of this quiddity
to its qualities, that is, the relationship of being to its “mere
appearances” (recall Kant’s distinction between thing-in-itself and mere
appearances). We cannot
start from the existence of God, of the Word as Logos, and then proceed to
deduce analytically and syllogistically the essence of the natural sciences. It
is rather the other way round! Starting with our experience, we can then
project through our intellect the essential attributes of the Divinity, of
Being.
This vital distinction between knowledge and faith –
preferring the former even as a buttress to faith – is what marks Duns Scotus
as the probable founder of modern Western philosophy and establishes its point
of departure from Scholastic theology. The existence of God can be shown only in quid, only through transcendental
logic, not in quale, that is, not
through the logica practica. (For the
distinction, see D. Scotus, Philosophical
Writings, Notes to s,1.) But then, God cannot be said to exist in the way
real beings exist because the Deity as Being does not exist in time like
beings; “it creates but is not
created” – and in that sense it is Being in quid (Sein) as distinct from being in quale
(Seiende, etants, in French)
that “is created and either creates or
does not create”. Scotus’s complex Orationes came to
the attention of Heidegger because of this subtle distinction between being in
quid and being in quale, which is what opened his bush-path (Holzweg)
to an anthropological perspective of being and existence based, emphatically,
on the finitude of beings.
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