5. The moral law as accessible to reason
General Remarks nature and would judge that it is reasonable and prudent to act in that way.
One would have an ethic of the type represented by Aristotle's ethics. Actually, however, God has willed that course of action, and that will is reflected in moral obligation: to transgress the law is thus not simply irrational, it is sin in the theological sense of the word.
If the will of God underpins it, then the law of nature, especially as regards the second table, loses something of its impersonal and inflexible character. Its personal dimension cannot be ignored. Where other scholastics, following Augustine, who in turn was influenced by the Stoics, link it with the lex aetema, Scotus eliminates this last vestige of impersonalism. To legislate or command is a function of will, not of a nature as such, even if it be the most perfect of natures (Wolter, 1972, p. 370; Stratenworth, 1951, pp. 5-7). However, this does raise a crucial question: How do we know the will of God? Does this not require a special revelation on his part?
5. The moral law as accessible to reason What is often overlooked in the studies of the ethics of Scotus is that the notion that God reveals himself in nature as well as through the Scriptures was something the great scholastics took for granted.
After all, had not Peter Lombard formulated this basic principle in their theological textbook (I, dist. 3, c. I, p. 69):
That the truth [about the invisibilia Dei] might be made clear to him, man was given two things to help him, a nature that is rational and works fashioned by God. Hence the Apostle says [in Romans 1:19] "God has revealed to them," namely, when he made works in which the mind of the artisan somehow is disclosed.
And Hugh of St. Victor (PL 176, 268), whose influence on the Franciscan school can hardly be overestimated, had even earlier made specific application of this principle to ethics and the will of God:
Was it not like giving a precept to infuse into the heart of man discrimination and an understanding of what he should do? What is such knowledge but a kind of command given to the heart of man? And what is the knowledge of what should be avoided but a type of prohibition? And what is the knowledge of what lies between the two but a kind of concession, so that it is left up to man's own will where either choice would not harm him? For God to command, then, was to teach man what thillgs were necessary for him, to prohibit was to show what was harmful, to concede was to indicate what was indifferent.
That Scot us accepted this principle is clear from what he says about the law of nature being, in the words of St. Paul, "written interiorly in
Introduction the heart" (Ord. I, prol., n. 108; I, p. 70; also II, dist. 28) and in selection 18 (in answer to initial arguments): "In every state all the commandments have been observed and should be observed . . . In the state of innocence also all were bound by these precepts, which were either prescribed interiorly in the heart of everyone, or perhaps by some teaching given exteriorly by God." The same idea recurs in selection I 7 where the criterion of whether something belongs to the law of nature or not is whether it would hold for any state in which man existed. "The reason is that if [something] were a matter of naturallaw, the obligation would have held for any state of law-which is false. For no such obligation existed in the state of innocence or during the tenure of the Mosaic law."
But how far can human reason go in determining specific obligations of natural law, particularly something that pertains to the natural law only in the secondary sense that it is "valde consonans" or in harmony with those primary or self-evident principles that involve natural law in the primary sense? By way of answer, Scotus makes two points clear.
The first is that the human intellect, as such, has the capacity to reach reasonable conclusions about ethical matters, just as it has the capacity to reason to other theoretical or practical conclusions, beginning with principles that are more or less self-evident. In selection 10 from his Quodlibet, he explains how agents that act "by virtue of intellectual knowledge ... are suited by nature to have an intrinsic rule of rectitude for their actions. Only they can have an act whose goodness is moral." He goes on to explain that to infer whether an action is suitable to man as a moral agent and is therefore morally good we need premises that are certain. For this, knowledge of three things suffices, viz., the nature of the agent, the nature of the faculty by which he acts, and the essential notion of the act ("natura agentis et potentia secundum quam agit et ratio quidditativa actus"). "If these three notions are given, no other knowledge is needed to judge whether or not this particular act is suited to this agent and this faculty," and hence is in accord with right reason. It is clear from all he says that he thought this sort of knowledge posed no particular problem, at least to a philosopher skilled in reasoning.-Even the sort of dispensations Scotus sees God making, we might also note, are always in accord with right reason, and are something the human mind did figure out, or might have if emotions did not blind one's reason. For they concern such things as are good for man in relation to his fellowman, where there is a hierarchy of values involved, and where to obtain the principal value, certain aspects of lesser value may have to be sacrificed, in view
General Remarks
of a less than ideal environmental situation. In short, Scotus in his analysis of the two specific areas where he believes God dispensed the Jewish patriarchs (selections 19 and 20) is using right reason to clarify what he believes to be the objective priority of values.
The second point Scotus makes is that matters pertaining to the law of nature in the primary sense are far more clear, and universally agreed upon, than those pertaining to the second table of the decalogue. Scotus, like the scholastics generally, did not think the finer details of what might be natural law were as readily discernible as w,ere its broad outlines. Particularly is this true-he says-of those things that pertain to the second table. In Ordinatio IV, dist. 26, n. 9, explaining why the indissolubility of marriage is not evident to everyone, he admits:
But even if the law of nature were to obligate a couple to the indissolubility of their bond, which they entered into in virtue of their marriage contract, this would not be the law of nature of the most evident kind, but rather that of the second sort. Whatever is not manifest to everyone is not a law of nature, except in the second sensej and it therefore requires that the necessity of the precept be determined by positive law .... Those precepts that are far removed from the practical principles of the law of nature are not apparent to everyone in the way the universally known practical principles are because they are not explicated, and they are not explicated because no legislator other [than God] is able to do so. (Ord. 4, d. 26, n. 9)
This same notion comes through when Scotus explains why specific actions are sinful or not in accord with right reason. For theologians may often agree that something, such as lying, is sinful, yet the reasons they give why such is so differ widely.
Given the fact that Scotus, in determining what pertains to natural law, continually falls back on what is naturally good for human nature, it is not surprising that for him, as well as for Ockham, who followed him, that the substantive content of the natural law seems to be roughly the same as it was for the generality of the scholastics. It is only in their interpretation of why and how it binds that we discover a significant difference, as Copleston pointed out in the text cited earlier. It is a "law" and to that extent "obliges" inasmuch as it represents an expression of God's will in man's regard. For as Scotus puts it, "'To command,' I say, could only pertain to an appetite or the will" ("Hoc
'imperare' non convenit nisi appetitui vel voluntati"; Ord. IV, dist.
14, q. 2, n. 5; Codex A, f. 230rb). A specific application of this way of thinking is found in selection 29 where Scotus explains why we have an obligation to moderate our desire for happiness, even though it stems from a natural inclination. Scotus argues that Lucifer sinned when-despite his intellectual knowledge that it was morally wronghe deliberately willed his own happiness in some immoderate fashion.
Introduction For from the fact that Lucifer's free will, in virtue of its affection for justice, could moderate its affection for the advantageous, says Scotus,
"it is bound to do so according to the rule of justice it has received from a higher will" (selection 29). In other words, if we know from metaphysics that God exists and has made us, and we know from a psychological analysis of our affections that we have this capacity to moderate the affection for what is advantageous, we have thereby a moral obligation according to right reason to do so.
This refers to cases where the failure to do so would involve serious consequences, for Scotus points out that though we are bound to God by creation in regard to whatever we are able to do, we are left free to do what we will so long as we keep the precepts of the decalogue. ("licet homo ex creatione Deo teneatur in omnibus quae potest, tamen
Deus non tan tum exigit ab homine, imo dimittit liberum eum sibi, solummodo exigens quod servet praecepta decalogi"j Ord. IV, dist. 26j
Codex A, f. 249ra.) If we consider the above points carefully, we see that the logical antinomy Harris thought he found at the heart of Scotus' ethics is largely a myth. Scotus' system rather manifests a remarkable coherence, given the premises from which he begins. Before concluding these general remarks, however, it might be worthwhile to note the following points that make his moral philosophy interesting even to those who do not accept all his premises. Thus, although Scotus' ethical system does presuppose knowledge of the existence of God, it is in a sense independent of any particular special revelation on the part of God. In the prologue to the Ordinatio, Scotus acknowledges that "the Philosopher, following natural reason, maintained that perfect happiness consists in the acquired knowledge of the pure Spirits, as he apparently wishes to say in Bks. I and X of the Ethics, or if he does not categorically assert that this is our highest possible perfection, at least natural reason can argue to no other."
Also, the fact that the second table of the decalogue is only valde consonans with man's ultimate (supernatural) end indicates that Scotus considered it more or less loosely connected with this, and consequently with what he believed a Christian theologian might accept as revealed knowledge of his ultimate destiny and how it might be obtained. As he explains in selection 26, I can have a basic love of my neighbor in the sense that I will that he attain God in heaven, without necessarily willing that he observe every item of what the last seven commandments require of him. Also, the Judaic or Moslem believer, or any other ethician who grounds moral obligation on the will of God as revealed to him by a rational analysis of human nature,
General Remarks
might still agree with Scotus' fundamental conclusions about what is morally right in our dealings with our fellowmen without necessarily accepting the whole of what he believed God had revealed to him through the Scriptures and positive divine law (selection 17). This is clearly illustrated in the obligation Scotus ascribes to the third precept of the decalogue and to the positive aspects of the first two commandments (selection 18). For it is only in their negative aspect that these precepts express what pertains strictly to the law of nature, namely, that God be not hated or dishonored or shown irreverence.
It also seems clear that one could use the same evaluative techniques that Scotus employs to solve particular ethical problems that fall under the second table of the law without necessarily agreeing with his reasons why they oblige morally. For what right reason tells us-according to the analysis he gives in the Quodlibet selection
(Io)-is what perfects man's human nature naturally, and this should suffice for the development of a rational ethics by those who claim man's moral behavior is not essentially dependent upon a divine command. That is why some who have developed a phenomenological axiology, like Dietrich Von Hildebrand, find their concrete conclusions regarding what is morally good or morally bad in factual harmony with Scotus' ethical positions (Von Hildebrand, 1966, p. 8).
A final note before turning to an analysis of the particular items in this selection. As I have indicated in the article "Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus" (Wolter, 1972, p. 370):
There is another important consequence that seems implicit at least in a Scotistic approach to ethics. If nature's perfection is not an absolute value that must be placed above all else, then God, for whom a 'thousand years are as one day', is under no constraint to see that it be attained at once. The conception of a nature that achieves its end or perfection only gradually and by an internal mechanism that allows for a trial and error method of progression does not seem foreign to or incompatible with the conception of God that SCOtuS held. Though he states the principle of evolutionary development Deus ordinate agens procedit de imperfecto ad perfectum in reference to God's supernaturally revealed law, there seems no reason why it cannot be extended to his promulgation of the law of nature as well, viz., to a gradual growth in moral awareness, protracted over a period of centuries or even millennia if you will. In processu generationis humanae, semper crevit notitia veritatis
[Ord. IV, dist. I, q. 3, n 8; XIV, p. 136].
II Notes on the Specific Selections Iml' the title of thi' collection indicates, the selections fall roughly into two main sections, the first dealing with the will, the second with morality as such. The first of these includes the headings of the first two parts; the second the remaining six parts.
PART I: THE WILL AND INTELLECT
The four selections in this part are meant to express Scotus' conception of how the will and intellect interact. The will, insofar as it is a rational faculty according to Aristotle (selection 2), always works
"with reason" and hence needs "practical knowledge" as the proper basis for practice or praxis (selection I). Of the two faculties, it is the will alone that has the power to command, as Scotus points out in Ordinatia IV, dist. 14, q. 2, n. 5 (Wadding reprint ed. XVIII, p. 52;
Codex A, f. 230rv), cited above under general remarks, n. 4. Selection 3 shows how Scotus believed the will could exercise such thought control. The last selection shows the converse influence of intellect upon the will. For by presenting the will with the distasteful consequences of any particular choice, the intellect can bring pressure on the will to choose what amounts to the lesser of two evils, even though, physically speaking, the will is causally free and must determine itself to will the distasteful action. For even by his absolute power, God could not force the human will to elicit an act of volition or nolition, since to do so would entail a contradiction.
3 1
Introduction I. Practical science Scotus admits that ethics or moral philosophy is a practical, rather than a theoretical, science, but being primarily a theologian rather than a moral philosopher, he deals most explicitly with the subject of what makes science or knowledge practical in the prologue to his two commentaries on the Sentences of "the Master," Peter Lombard. To begin with we must keep in mind that "science," whether practical or theoretical, has the technical epistemic meaning given to it by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics I, ch. 2. For the Latin term scientia has a dual meaning. It refers initially to the single or individual conclusions of a demonstrative syllogism or reasoning process, which could best be translated as "scientific knowledge." But it also has the more contemporary sense of a unified body or corpus of such reasoned conclusions, where scientia is more reasonably translated as "science," though as we use the term today, this would also include principles as well as conclusions. Just what sort of "unity" such conclusions must have to be considered one science, he discusses explicitly in Bk. VI of his Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. He alludes to this briefly in suggesting how the various specific prudential judgments or "prudences" can form one virtue of prudence, and how the corresponding habit has the same unity as the universal science of geometry (selection 24, art. 2, part 2). The same sort of unity, he thought, characterized the reasoned conclusions of the theologian. And it is in this sense that the medieval scholastics of his day considered it a science. But they disagreed whether it was primarily practical or theoretical. It is this topic he discusses in the prologue to his commentaries on the Sentences.
There are two edited versions in the critical Vatican edition, the early Lectura and his expanded revision intended for publication and general circulation, known as the Ordinatio. In both versions, two interrelated questions are raised, namely, whether theology is a theoreticalor a practical science and secondly whether a science is called theoretical or practical because of its end. Since the way the initial question is answered will depend upon how one replies to the second,
Scotus in both versions begins his discussion with the latter question, namely, "Is a science called speculative or practical because of its end?" We choose this, then, as our first question and take our text from the relatively simpler Lectura (prol., nn. 127, 133-77; XVI, pp. 46-59) rather than the greatly expanded and involved development characteristic of the Ordinatio.
Both versions, however, begin the discussion with a principle generally accepted by Scotus' contemporaries, namely, that practical
The Will ana Intellect
knowledge "extends to practice," where "practice" or "praxis" (its transliterated Greek form, is the common designation for either action or making. The qualification "extends to praxis" indicates that practical knowledge, in contrast to theory, is never knowledge for knowledge's sake. To deserve the name "practical" it must playa directive role as regards the action of some faculty other than intellect, and for this reason, Scotus does not consider logic to be a practical science, since it directs only discursive reasoning, which is an action of the intellect. Practical knowledge is said to be "directive" in the sense that it allows one to make a sound choice, where several behavioral alternatives or procedures are presented. As Scotus points out, praxis therefore involves of necessity some act of the will, either the elicited choice itself or the action of some other faculty under the control of the will. Since the will cannot issue a command without an initial elicited act of self-determination, praxis refers primarily to the will's own elicited act and only secondarily to the action to be done by some other potency under its command.
Parenthetically we might note that Scotus maintains that each and every elicited act of the will is free (selections 2 and 4), and in later selections we shall deal more specifically with the powers of the will and in what sense, if any, it is constrained to seek something good, should it freely choose to act, rather than not act (selections 7 and 30). But here in referring to the view of Henry of Ghent that theology is speculative rather than practical (since it has to do with God as our end), Scotus does distinguish between good in general as the end of a will-act and a particular or specific good such as God as the ultimate end of man. What is more, he accepts, for the sake of argument, the fact that practical knowledge has as its purpose to enable the will to make a choice in accord with right reason or sound knowledge, namely, in a way that the intended good (whether it be real or apparent, or whether it be a better or a lesser good) be expeditiously obtained.
Hence, like Aristotle before him, Scotus considers "knowledge," in the proper sense of the term, to refer to true or correct knowledge.
And where the knowledge in question is practical, rather than theoretical, it is what he calls "right knowledge," namely, knowledge that by its nature not only enables the will to act rightly, but as we shall see later in his discussion of the sin of Lucifer (selection 29), positively inclines the will to act in accord with right reason. For the present it is enough to note that the role of right reason is never far from Scotus' mind in discussing the freedom of the will. In this first selection, for example, he cites Aristotle's remark in the Nicomachean Ethics,
Introduction Bk. VI, ch. 2 (I 139a22-25), that both intellect and appetite must be right if the choice is to be right (Lect., prol., n. 135; Vatican ed. XVI, p. 47). This natural inclination of the free will to act in accord with right reason must be kept in mind if we are to assess correctly the extent to which Scotus believes a rational ethics is possible.
In the present selection, Scotus prefaces his answer to the question as to why a science is called practical with certain preliminary notions, the first of which is a clarification of what is meant by praxis. In addition to the aforesaid requirement that it be the act of some power or faculty other than the intellect, two other properties are mentioned, namely, that it naturally follows an act of intellection or knowledge, and secondly that it is suited by nature to be elicited in accord with right reason. These last two properties also explain in what way practical knowledge is said to extend to praxis. As he explains in greater detail in the Ordinatio: "This extension consists in a twofold aptitudinal relationship, namely, [I] of conformity, and [2] of natural priority." Priority, because knowledge is a natural precondition for any act of the will; conformity, because, as Aristotle puts it in VI Ethics, ch. 3: "The truth of a practical consideration consists in its agreement with right desire." Scotus goes on to explain: "I have said
'aptitudinal,' because neither relation needs to be actual. For so far as the practical consideration itself is concerned, whether the action which follows is actually in accord with such correct knowledge is wholly contingent and accidental to that consideration as such. For if actual extension were required to call a thing 'practical,' nothing would be necessarily practical, but the same knowledge would be at times practical and at other times purely theoretical, which amounts to nothing. Therefore, it suffices that the twofold extension is only aptitudinal-in other words, that the knowledge in question has an aptitude to be extended to praxis" (Ord., prol., nn. 236-37; Vatican ed. I, pp. 161-62).
In showing just why he thinks theology is a practical science, Scotus also makes reference to other forms of practical knowledge, such as moral philosophy and the virtue of prudence. Ethics or moral philosophy in its most general sense embraces both principles and conclusions, both of which are more or less directly connected with praxis or proper behavior. Prudence, on the other hand, is regarded by Scotus as an intellectual rather than a moral virtue, since it resides in the cognitive, rather than the appetitive, portion of the soul. Where the prudential choice refers to an action that is naturally or morally good, however, prudence plays an important role not only in guiding the will but in inclining it to act in accord with right reason. Hence, it is