INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The Treatise on the First Principle (Tractatus de primo principio) is a virtuosic work of philosophy that deduces God's existence from strictly metaphysical theorems. An architectonic assumption of the book is that things are con nected to other things by their very natures: they are essentially ordered, as Scotus puts it. Here we are as far away from David Lewis's "Humean mosaic" as a philosophical outlook can be.1 Everything that begins to exist has one or more originating principles, and at least some elements of that origin are essential to it. Ultimately, there is nothing that begins to exist that is not essentially dependent on a First Principle. And the means by which we can discover the existence of this First Principle also yield the theorems we need to show that it has just the sort of attributes by which we know that it is God.
The result: everything that exists or can exist is God or implicates God.
The logical cohesiveness and razor-blade subtlety of the Treatise should make it of interest to all puzzlers, whatever their (current) answers to the question whether God exists. But it is not mere logic-chopping. The Latin text is always austere, but sometimes beautiful, especially when it expresses rhetorically simple but spiritually profound prayers to God, for help and in thanksgiving, and even in ecstatic praise. It is something like a literary hybrid of Ernest Hemingway and St. Anselm.
But it is an intrinsically difficult work—the few who know it well know it's hard. My own experience with the text and in the classroom made it clear to me that there was no English translation that was as precise and as read able as Scotus deserved, and no English commentary that was sufficiently focused on helping readers track the logical structure of Scotus's arguments.
Nor were extant translations or commentaries in print. So I resolved to make the Treatise more accessible and more attractive by producing a new transla tion with a concise and philosophically focused commentary.
Scotus composed the Treatise late in his career. Prior to the Treatise, he had worked out many of its key arguments in his commentaries on Peter
Lombard's Sentences: the Lectura, the Ordinatio, and possibly the Reporta tio examinata. About half of the Treatise is taken verbatim from Ordinatio.2
But the Treatise is no mere digest of earlier and longer works. It has a unity found nowhere else in Scotus, arguments developed elsewhere built up into 1. David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ix.
2. P. Carolo Balić, De ordinatio I: Duns Scoti Disquisitio historica-critica (Vatican 1:161–64). vii
viii Introduction a more rigorous and systematic whole. At the level of purely formal cohe sion, it at least rivals, and arguably surpasses, the vaunted more geometrico of Spinoza's Ethics. But it must be said that the Treatise is not immaculate.
2.18(36) comes to mind, where the text says "This is proved also by reason," but no proof follows; and there are more places than we'd expect in a mas terpiece at which Scotus expects us to rely on prior acquaintance with, or expects us to consult, his earlier works. But in its main argumentative line it is indeed a masterpiece, one of those artifacts of human culture both the neophyte and the connoisseur should revere.
About Scotus himself, the man, we know sorrowfully little. He was born in 1265 or 1266, in Scotland. As a teenager he joined the Franciscans, who sent him to Oxford for his education. There he was eventually ordained a priest and taught theology; later he was sent to Paris where, after a period of exile due to his support of the pope against the king, he was made Regent
Master, the loftiest academic job available to Franciscans at the most presti gious university in Europe. For unknown reasons he was sent to Cologne at the height of his career, and died shortly thereafter, in 1308.
A Note on the Text I have translated the Latin text found in Duns Scotus, Abhandlung über das erste Prinzip, 4th ed., ed. Wolfgang Kluxen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2009). To Anglophone readers, the most well-known Latin text and translation is A Treatise on God as First Principle, 2nd ed., ed. and trans., with commentary, by Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald Press, 1982). Kluxen and Wolter use different numbering systems.
For ease of reference to the secondary literature written in English, I have devised the "Kluxen-Wolter" citation method: Chapter Number.Kluxen
Paragraph Number(Wolter Paragraph Number). Chapter divisions are consistent across editions. Thus, "1.1(1)" refers to the opening lines of Chapter 1.
Further Reading On Scotus Williams, Thomas. "Introduction: The Life and Works of John Duns the Scot." In The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, 1–14. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
ix Introduction Dumont, Stephen D. "John Duns Scotus's Life in Context." In Interpreting
Duns Scotus: Critical Essays, ed. Giorgio Pini, 8–43. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Wolter, Allan B., O.F.M. "Reflections on the Life and Works of Scotus." In Scotus and Ockham: Selected Essays, 1–34. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 2003.
Ingham, Mary Beth, CSJ. Understanding John Duns Scotus: 'Of Realty the Rarest-Veined Unraveller'. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute
Publications, 2017.
Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Ward, Thomas M. Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus.
New York: Angelico Press, 2022.
On Treatise on the First Principle Duns Scotus, John. A Treatise on God as First Principle. 2nd ed. Edited and translated, with commentary, by Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Chicago:
Franciscan Herald Press, 1982.
Duns Scotus, John. The De primo principio. Edited and translated by Evan Roche, O.F.M. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1949.
Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus on God. New York: Routledge, 2016.
A Note on the Commentary I wrote the commentary with the goal of keeping the reader's attention as closely fixed on the Treatise as possible. The commentary follows the num bering system of the primary text, for ease of reference. Every numbered paragraph has an entry, some short, some long, according to my own sense of what might help the reader understand Scotus's arguments and concepts.
Readers already familiar with the Treatise might possibly benefit from read ing the commentary on its own. But I wrote with new readers in mind, imag ining them reading the primary text, getting to a difficult paragraph, flipping over to the corresponding entry in the commentary, then flipping back to continue reading Scotus first-hand.
The focus is distinctively philosophical rather than historical or literary; the Treatise is, after Chapter 1, more or less a long chain of syllogisms, and I have spent my energy trying to explicate these. Where Scotus references
x Introduction other authors, or other works of his own, I have for the most part been content to cite the relevant passages in footnotes to the translation, leaving motivated readers to search them out on their own. Many of these notes are borrowed from Kluxen's text, and I have added many of my own. But in some places, mere footnotes will not suffice: the Treatise presumes familiarity with Aristotle's philosophy, and some familiarity with Avicenna; it also presumes acquaintance with some of Scotus's own distinctive views he develops else where, including the disjunctive transcendentals, intuitive cognition, formal distinction, and haecceity (thisness). Thus, at the relevant points in the com mentary, I offer digressions that are just long enough to help the reader make progress with the primary text.
For the most part I have resisted the urge to include my own judgments about Scotus's arguments. Where I do evaluate, critically or sympathetically as the case may be, I do so tentatively and as a pedagogical exercise, modeling the deep-structure engagement the text invites. The task of judgment I leave to readers.
Acknowledgments This book was made possible by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funded my research leave from Baylor Univer sity in the spring of 2022. I am grateful to Thomas Williams and Giorgio
Pini for offering the early encouragement I needed to commit myself to what I guessed, correctly, would be a taxing project. Daniel Shields,
Dominic LaMantia, and Harrison Jennings read the first draft of the trans lation; Jennings also read the first draft of the commentary. Thomas Williams read a later draft of the translation. I have been greatly aided by their many insights, suggestions, and corrections, and I am deeply grateful for their help. Mistakes are my own, of course.