Duns Scotus
The Subtle Doctor, who argued that being means the same of God and creatures, and that each thing has its own thisness.
Duns Scotus earned his nickname honestly: few thinkers reward and punish attention so equally. Against Aquinas he argued that being is said univocally, in one sense, of God and creatures, or else we could not so much as speak of God. He gave the will a primacy over the intellect, and coined haecceity, thisness, the individuating principle that makes a thing not merely a member of a kind but uniquely itself. His razor-fine distinctions shaped late medieval thought so deeply that centuries later his name, in the mouths of his mockers, gave English the word dunce.
Places
Ideas
Words
“Being is said in one and the same sense of God and of creatures, or we could not speak of God at all.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Scotland
Born at Duns in the Scottish borders, he joined the Franciscans and studied at Oxford and Paris.
Thisness
Argued that each thing has haecceity, a thisness that makes it uniquely itself, not merely a member of a kind.
Lecturing at Paris
Lectured on the Sentences at Paris, refining his doctrines of univocal being and individual thisness with famous subtlety.
Death at Cologne
Died at Cologne at forty-two. His subtle distinctions shaped late medieval thought; centuries later mockers made his name into dunce.
Influence
Influenced by
- Thomas Aquinas
Duns Scotus reacted against Aquinas, arguing that being must be said in one sense of God and creatures alike.
Influenced
- William of Ockham
Ockham worked through Scotus closely and cut away what he judged needless machinery, the formal distinction and common natures, leaving only individuals and the names we give them.
