Modern Theology 21:4 October 2005

ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)

ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

READING DUNS SCOTUS: FROM

HISTORY TO PHILOSOPHY

OLIVIER BOULNOIS

I have written a large book on the place of Duns Scotus in the history of
metaphysics.1 This is understandable.
But I have written only a small book on the structure of theology accord-
ing to Duns Scotus.2 This is forgivable.
What is less forgivable is that I have not taken a position on the place of
Duns Scotus in the history of Western theology.
What is not forgivable at all is that I have not taken a position in the con-
temporary debates on the appropriateness or not of the revival of radical
orthodoxy.
Why is this the case?
Because I did not want to pass from the historical results at which I had
arrived to the contemporary problem that one is asked to answer.
For what is the question?
According to Catherine Pickstock, it is that of modernity. Given that
attempts to improve society in a secular way via the state and market have
so visibly failed, then perhaps this revised genealogy which stresses the
legacy of a distorted religious theory could also point us indirectly towards
a more serious alternative future polity than the liberal and post-modern
critiques.3
What means to we have to answer this? For Pickstock, it is clearly a ques-
tion of an interpretation of the nature of modernity. Is modernity that which
it purports to be: an autonomy productive of values and not owing anything
to what precedes it? Obviously, not. Hans Blumenberg, in his work The Legit-
imacy of the Modern Age, has already shown that modernity rests on the
metaphor of secularization, and that any secularization rests on the idea of
the appropriation of the goods of the Churchand thus on the appropria-

Olivier Boulnois
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 45 rue des Ecoles, 75005 Paris, FRANCE

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Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
604 Olivier Boulnois

tion, laicization, and even the embezzlement of a religious heritage that had
been patiently accumulated. In his recent work, The Law of God, Remi Brague4
has shown that the secularization of the law is only the unfolding of a pos-
sibility inscribed in Jesus saying: Render therefore unto Caesar the things
which are Caesars; and unto God the things that are Gods (Matthew
22:21)a possibility that does not have an equivalent in other religious con-
stellations, in particular in the Quran. Thus, modern secularization is not the
opposite of Christianity, but one of its most intimate possibilities. Far from
being the opposite of Christian theology, modernity, in a certain way, is its
achievement.
Modernity is a concept with variable geometry, depending on whether one
centers it on Descartes, Hobbes, Kant or Hegel. Nevertheless, as an emanci-
pation it always depends on a preliminary debt that it more or less refuses
to recognize. Thus it is natural that, for the last century, all non-ideological
history continues to discover the medieval genealogy of modernity. Obvi-
ously, it thus revises the claims of moderns, who want to be without ances-
tors (Proles sine matre creata, as Montesquieu said in the Forward to The
Spirit of Laws).
By looking further into the sources of modernity, it is always possible to
relocate the date of its inception on the basis of the problem that is being
studied. Thus in metaphysics one can locate the essential rupture in the birth
of nominalism (William of Ockham), in the univocal concept of being (Duns
Scotus), in an analogical unification of metaphysics (Thomas Aquinas) or in
a definition of metaphysics as the science of being qua being (Ibn Sina/Avi-
cenna). Each time one moves the cursor, one emphasizes a different rupture.
I personally have stressed the Scotist rupture, for several reasons.
First (and this is the principal reason), because it resolves the principal dif-
ficulty bequeathed by Avicenna. In proposing that metaphysics has as its
object being qua being, Avicenna revives the interpretation of Aristotle,
because he privileges the still-unnamed science of Metaphysics Gthere is
a science of being qua beingover the nomenclature of Metaphysics E
(reprised by Boethius), which culminates in a theological science (epistm e
theologik e ), having being considered apart from matter as its object. But for
Avicenna, metaphysics still culminates in the proof of the existence of God,
and thus we have a central difficulty: the passage from a being that is
abstracted by the intellect, but in reality still united in matter, to a being that
is truly separate in itself. Thomas believed this difficulty could be resolved by
a theory of analogy: being qua being, the abstract object of the intellect, par-
ticipates in subsistent being, which causes it and gives it being. Thus there
is an analogy of created being and divine being. But because in Henry of
Ghent analogy became the confusion between two conceptsa confusion
that is even an errorDuns Scotus cannot accept it. He prefers to foreground
a representation, the transcendental concept of being, which can be applied
to God only by the addition of a modal determination (the infinite). It is the
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 Reading Duns Scotus 605

transcendental concept, the object of metaphysica generalis, which ceaselessly

specializes transcendental being, and founds a metaphysica specialis. We
thus have in Duns Scotus the prehistory of ontology in the modern sense.5
Second, I have stressed the Scotist rupture because this has as a conse-
quence the inclusion of God under a concept, the absorption of negative
theology into affirmative theology, and the inscription of the transcendence
of God within human intelligence and no longer beyond it.6
Third, I have stressed the Scotist rupture because I have been able to verify
that the subsequent nominalism did not profoundly modify this meta-
physics. Structurally, the metaphysics of nominalism does nothing but wed
itself to the figure given by Duns Scotus to this science.7
Fourth, I draw attention to the Scotist rupture because Duns Scotus
understanding of the status of divine ideas and possiblesas a pure object
projected by divine intellect vis--vis itself, and not as participating in
itengages all the debate of modern scholasticism (and in particular the rad-
icalization of Vazquez): would that which is possible still be possible even if
God did not exist? Which is precisely the proposal evoked by Mrs. Pickstock:
The self-possessed space is frequently considered by Scotus as if per impos-
sibile God did not exist, and so etsi Deus non daretur.8
Fifth, the Scotist rupture is stressed because the concepts of objective reality
and formal reality, so fundamental to explaining in Descartes the relationship
between the representation and its cause, and thus the problem of subjec-
tivity, were developed in the scotist school, in particular in Trombeta.9
Such are the results at which I believe I have arrived and which I propose
for discussion. It should be stressed that they relate only to the genealogy of
metaphysical modernity, and not to political, ethical and religious modernity.
One will grant to me, I hope, that even if these metaphysical mutations are
related to the foundations of modernity, and thus affect the whole of moder-
nity, they are not enough to explain it exhaustively.
Does this analysis make it possible to lead us towards a more serious
alternative future polity? Does historical analysis make possible judgments
of value? One can approach these two questions, it seems to me, by two
paths: historical genealogy and conceptual argumentation.
To proceed by the historical path, it would be necessary to decipher a kind
of double meaning to history: under the apparently inexorable chain of his-
torical events, one would have to uncover a bifurcation, an alternative virtual
advance or, if you will, a loss by which the meaning of history becomes
invisible, so as to reappear in possible rebirths. In place of the history of
philosophy as progress towards the liberation of the spirit (and of Spirit:
Hegel), or, negatively, as the involution born of the original forgetfulness of
being (Heidegger), we would have a third possibility: an alternative history,
with Thomas Aquinas as its fulcrum.
This solution, partly laid claim to by Catherine Pickstock, is already well
marked out. It was already that offered by Etienne Gilson. It supposes that
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606 Olivier Boulnois

the work of St. Thomas is a balanced and completed synthesis, after which
the history of philosophy is nothing more that a long decline, interrupted by
some attempts at revival. In order for this reading to be relevant today, it
runs the risk, however, of asking St. Thomas for that which he does not have,
namely, the answers to questions he never asked. This is why twentieth-
century Thomism, and even Hans Urs von Balthasar, sought in St. Thomas
an aesthetics, a discipline that has meaning only after the eighteenth century,
with Baumgarten.10
From the point of view of the history of metaphysics, this solution is stim-
ulating, but it has the disadvantage of fixing in one position an astonishingly
mobile way of thinking, which finds its equilibrium in its perpetual motion.
Thus, Thomas balances on a divide between the priority of the concept of
ens (Avicennism) and the transcendence of God (Neoplatonism). If one wants
to be sure not to fall under the blow of Duns Scotus critique (and thus into
the lineage of the history of the decline of metaphysics), it is necessary as
much as possible to release divine transcendence from the concept of ens,
and thus give up all Aristotelian elements, in order to return to the most
radical of Neoplatonisms.
But can one do that without constructing another philosophy that does
not follow the letter of St. Thomas and without giving up the strictly his-
torical point of view? That seems impossible to me. We have thus passed to
the other side, that of the conceptual analysis. It seems to me that this is
exactly what Pickstock does, when she declares: But then, if so, how should
one describe Aquinas challenge to Avicenna [. . .]? Not, surely, as an invo-
cation of the pre-modern, but as something like an avant-garde innovation
against the modern already begun in the name of a deepening of the Patris-
tic tradition?11
The necessities of the present oblige us to scrutinize the past, to interro-
gate each epoch while forgetting the consequences that it has engendered.
The debate shows itself to be philosophical through and through. It can
progress only by beginning from conceptual arguments. The story then
becomes no longer a genealogy of modernity, but the occasion for a return
to the sources, intended to enrich our argumentation. It is then that our
reflection comes back to think divine transcendence differently, in a worthier
and more rational way, more faithful to its object as well. In short, it is to a
rigorous philosophical work that we are called. The historical genealogy
opens finally onto a labor of philosophical argumentation.
The future does not belong to us. All that we can do is to contribute to that
which depends on us to make it better.
The whole problem is therefore to seek a way of thinking of God that
would be faithful to his biblical transcendence. How do we make the human
gaze that looks at God correspond to the self-donation of God in revelation?
The various forms of its dispensation already arise in the realm of meta-
physics (to borrow from the title of one of the volumes of Hans Urs von
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 Reading Duns Scotus 607

Balthasars The Glory of the Lord), which appears thus as the place of the inter-
action between revelation and reason. If one cannot return, at the end of this
long history, with this metaphysical past as it is, the fact remains that one
cannot exempt oneself from bringing forth a rigorous way of thinking of
God.
For a medievalist, metaphysics developed in educational institutions and
in a epistm e dominated by theology: theo-logic (the theologica of Boethius
and the theologia of Abelard) develops before onto-logic (Duns Scotus). How
does one measure this gap? How does theology, in its essence, give rise to
philosophy and release it for its own task? If thought must take a backwards
step in order to think the essence of God on this side of the concept which
governs all the history of our philosophy, this step back applies to all of the-
ology as a discipline. In order to understand how God presents himself in
thought, it is necessary to question the entire structure of theology, and thus
its fundamental concepts. One will be able then to historicise the points of
contact between theology and philosophy, and to examine how the latter
develops.
This ascent, which goes from the concept of God towards his theological
source, is not a leap of faith. It does not seek to renounce the concept, but
rigorously to think God in his unsurpassable transcendence. It seeks above
all to understand that all of the intertwined history of philosophy and the
theology is the history of the forgetfulness of the difference between God (as
he is in himself, preserved by his holiness) and God (that which we call
God, our concept). Initially a simple methodological rule, this remark directs
us towards what remains to be thought, in the tradition of Denys and the
theology of eminence, and Anselm and the affirmation of transcendence.
Consequently, a rigorous concept of God leads us to think it in the with-
drawal from everything recognizable and from every visible figure. It is not
possible here to deliver to us to this extremely difficult and problematic
analysis.12 I will give simply a formal indication of it. This difference must
be reconstituted as the distance between the Son and the Father: the Son is
the visible of the Father, the Father is the invisible of the Son.13 It is only by
beginning with the Son that one can hope to have an image of the invisible
Father, and thus eventually to conceive him.
Catherine Pickstocks remarks have their value in inviting us to do so, and
in showing us an example. For her analysis itself leads us already from
history to philosophy.

Translated by F. C. Bauerschmidt

NOTES
1 Olivier Boulnois, Etre et Reprsentation, Une gnalogie de la mtaphysique moderne lpoque
de Duns Scot, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999).

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608 Olivier Boulnois

2 Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scot, la rigueur de la charit (Paris: Le Cerf, 1998).

3 Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance, p. 544.
4 Remi Brague, La loi de Dieu: Histoire philosophique dune alliance (Paris: Gallimard, 2005).
5 See Olivier Boulnois, Etre et Reprsentation, chap. 8, Lobjectit.
6 See Olivier Boulnois, Etre et Reprsentation, chap. 9, La nouvelle structure de la
mtaphysique.
7 See Olivier Boulnois, Une mtaphysique nominaliste est-elle possible? Le cas dOccam,
in Le ralisme des universaux, Cahiers de Philosophie de luniversit de Caen, Vincent Caurraud
and Stphane Chauvier, eds. (Caen, France: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), pp.
187228.
8 Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance, p. 553.
The mediation between Duns Scotus and the hypothesis of Grotius (etsi Deus non daretur)
is the work of Vazquez, as I have shown in Si Dieu nexistait pas, faudrait-il linventer?
Situation mtaphysique de lthique scotiste, Philosophie, Vol. 61 (March 1999), pp. 5074
and in Duns Scot: de la mtaphysique lthique. On the history of the problem of the divine
ideas, see, Sur la Science divine, Textes prsents et traduits, Jean-Christophe Bardout and
Olivier Boulnois, eds., (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2002); Le Contemplateur et
les Ides: Modles de la science divine du noplatonisme au XVIIe sicle (Paris: Vrin, 2002), Olivier
Boulnois, Jacob Schmutz and J.-L. Solre, eds.; and above all the unpublished thesis of Jacob
Schmutz, La Querelle des possibles, Recherches philosophiques et textuelles sur la mtaphysique
jsuite espagnole, 15401767.
9 See the unpublished thesis of M. F. Marrone, entitled Res et Realitas chez Descartes, Les
Antcdents scolastiques du concept cartsien de realitas objective.
10 Olivier Boulnois, La beaut davant lart, De saint Thomas Umberto Eco, et retour, Le
Souci du passage, Hommage J. Greisch, (Paris: Le Cerf, 2005).
11 Catherine Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance, pp.
568569.
12 For the moment, see Dire ou tuer? La nomination de Dieu, de la transgression la tran-
scendance, Revue philosophique de Louvain Vol. 99 no. 3 (August, 2001), pp. 358384.
13 Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 6, 6 (SC 100, 451).

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