Chapter 1: The Divisions and Types of Essential Orders
Chapter 1 The Divisions and Types of Essential Orders 1. (1) May the First Principle of things permit me to believe, discern, and disclose whatever pleases His Majesty and elevates our minds to contem plate him.
(2) Lord our God, truest Teacher, when your servant Moses asked for your name, that he might proclaim it to the children of Israel, you replied, know ing what the mind of mortals can conceive of you, revealing your blessed name: "I am who I am."1 You are True Existence. You are Total Existence. This
I believe, and this, if it is possible for me, I would like to know.
Help me, Lord, as I seek the utmost limit of the knowledge our natural reason can achieve concerning the True Existence you are, if we begin with the being you have predicated of yourself.
Introducing Essential Order 2. (3) There are several properties of being it would be useful to consider in pursuit of this goal, but I will pursue the more fruitful route of essential order, in the following way: in this first chapter I will set forth the four divisions of order, from which the number of essential orders may be calculated.
(4) An explication of a division requires the following: first, that the things resulting from the division be stated and shown to be contained under the thing divided; second, that the repugnance of the things resulting from the division be made evident; and third, that it be proved that the things resulting from the division exhaust the thing divided. The first of these requirements will be met in this chapter, and the other requirements in the second chapter.
Here, then, I will delineate the divisions and explain the things resulting from these divisions.
3. (5) But I do not take essential order in its narrow sense, as do those who say that the posterior is ordered but the prior or the first is beyond order.
Instead, I take it in the broad sense, in which order is a relation of compar ison said of the prior with respect to the posterior and the posterior with 1. Exodus 3:14.
Translation respect to the prior, or in which prior and posterior fully divide that which is ordered. Thus whenever there is talk of order there is thereby talk of both priority and posteriority.
The First Division of Essential Order Eminence and Dependence 4. (6) First Division. I first say therefore that essential order appears to be divided first of all as an equivocal term into its equivocates: the order of emi nence and the order of dependence.
(7) In the first way (the order of eminence), the prior is called eminent and the posterior is that which is excelled. Briefly put, whatever is more perfect and more noble according to essence is prior in this way. It is in this sense of priority that Aristotle shows in Metaphysics 9 that act is prior to potency,2 where he calls act prior according to substance and species. He says that those things that are posterior in generation are prior in species and substance.
(8) In the second way (the order of dependence), that on which something depends is called the prior, and that which depends is called the posterior.
Aristotle explains this sense of priority in Metaphysics 5,3 with the testimony of Plato: the prior according to nature and essence can exist without the posterior, but not conversely. I understand this to mean that even if the prior necessarily causes the posterior and hence cannot exist without it, this is not because it needs the posterior for its own existence; rather, the posterior needs the prior. There is no contradiction in positing the existence of the prior and the nonexistence of the posterior. But the converse of this is not true, because the posterior needs the prior. This need we can call dependence, so we may say that every essentially posterior thing depends necessarily on the prior, but not conversely, even when the posterior follows necessarily. This sort of prior and posterior we could also describe as priority and posteriority according to substance and species, as the other sort was described above; nevertheless, for the sake of precision, let this sort be called prior and poste rior according to dependence.
2. Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a1–5 (Barnes, 2:1658).
3. Aristotle, Metaphysics 5.11.1019a1–4 (Barnes, 2:1609).
Chapter 1 The Second Division of Essential Order Causal and Non-Causal Dependence 5. (9) Second Division. Leaving undivided the order of eminence, I now sub divide the order of dependence, because the dependent either is caused and that on which it depends is its cause, or the dependent and that on which it depends are both dependent on the same cause, the dependent more remote from the cause, and that on which it depends closer to the cause.
(10) Concerning this second division, the account of its first member, and the fact that this member really is contained under the thing divided, are understood well enough. For it is clear what a cause is, and what a caused thing is; and, given the above account of what is here divided—namely, essential order—it is clear that a caused thing essentially depends on a cause, and that a cause is that on which it depends.
(11) But it is not so clear what this second member of this second division is, or how it is contained under the essential order of dependence.
First, I say that if there are two effects [A and B] of the same cause [C] of which one [B] is first and more immediately comes to be caused by that cause [C], while the other [A] would not be caused unless the more imme diately caused thing [B] were already caused, I say that with respect to their cause [C], the other [A] is the posterior caused thing, and the more imme diately caused thing [B] is prior. This is the account of this second member of the second division.
(12) Given this, I show that the second member is contained under the essential order of dependence, that is, that the more remote effect [A] essen tially depends on the closer effect [B]. First, it [A] would not exist if the other [B] did not exist. Second, the causality of the cause [C] is related to them [A and B] in an orderly way; therefore they are essentially ordered to each other in that they are both related to a third thing which is the cause of both, and therefore they are ordered to each other due to the features in virtue of which each is related to their cause. Third, the cause [C] considered just insofar as it is a cause, is the immediate cause only of that [B] which is more proximate to it [C]. If that [B] is not caused, then it [C] would be only a remote cause with regard to any other things it causes [such as A]. But if that [B] is caused, then it [C] is proximate in relation to a second thing [A].
Now a remote cause, just insofar as it is remote, does not cause anything.
Therefore the second thing [A] depends on the cause [C] insofar as the cause has first produced that closer effect [B]. And therefore the second thing [A] depends on the closer effect [B] as well as its cause [C].
Translation The Third Division of Essential Order Two Orders of Non-Causal Dependence 6. (13) Third Division. Each member of the second division is subdivided. I subdivide the second member first, given what has just been said above. One caused thing [B], which is closer to a cause than some other caused thing
[A], is said to be prior [to A] not only insofar as it is closer to their proximate cause but also insofar as it is closer to their remote cause.
Suppose that the proximate cause [C] of one thing—call it A—is in no way a cause of the other thing—call it B—but some other prior cause [D] is both B's proximate cause and a remote cause of that caused thing [A] of which the other [C] is the proximate cause. Then there will be an essential order between these caused things [A and B], that is, an essential order of the prior caused thing [B] to the posterior caused thing [A]—so long as the causality of their common cause [D] is an essential order to each [i.e., of D to A and of D to B].
(14) But it is less clear that the second member belongs under this third division. I show that it does belong in this way: first, two things [A and B] are essentially ordered to a third thing [D], which is a cause of both.
Therefore they are essentially ordered to each other. Moreover, their common cause [D] is merely a remote cause of the posterior [A], if the prior [B] is not caused first. Finally, A cannot exist without B.
The Fourth Division of Essential Order Four Orders of Causal Dependence 7. (15) Fourth Division. The first member of the second division, namely cause, is famously subdivided into the four well-known causes: final and effi cient, material and formal. That which is posterior to cause is divided into four, corresponding to the four causes: namely, that which is ordered to an end, or, for short, the finitum; the effectum;4 that which is brought about from matter, that is to say, the materiatum; and that which is brought about 4. "Effectum" has a narrower meaning in the Treatise than its closest English translation,
"effect." This is because the English word "effect" is simply the correlative of "cause," taken generally. But in Scotus's essential orders framework, in which the four Aristotelian types of causes are four types of essential order, "effectum" is specifically the correlative of "causa efficiens" (efficient cause) and not "causa" (cause) in general. For this reason, whenever pos sible I have reserved "effect" to translate "effectum." Scotus often uses "causatum" (caused thing) as his general term for the correlative of "causa."
Chapter 1 through form, that is to say, the formatum.5 Here I will not offer a full account of this division, since I have written extensively about it elsewhere and in what follows I will eventually come back to this issue, when the matter at hand requires it.6
Conclusion 8. (16) Summing up, I harvest the fruit of this chapter: essential order is exhaustively divided into six types of order, four concerning the order of cause to that which is caused; one concerning the order of two caused things— taking here as one the two members of the third division; and one concerning the order of the eminent to that which is excelled.
(17) Two more things need to be shown for the presentation of these divi sions to be complete, namely, that the members of the divisions are repug nant to each other, and that they exhaust the nature of what is divided. These two will be shown in the following chapter, as much as it is relevant to the task at hand. In that chapter some general, necessary propositions will be set forth, and the aforementioned orders and their correlatives will be compared with reference to the necessary and non-necessary relations between them, since this comparative work is very important for what will follow.
5. I leave these four italicized terms untranslated in this paragraph because, except for effectum, none has a natural one-word English equivalent. A literal English translation of this paragraph would therefore have been clunky and silly.
6. 2.9(1)–17(33) below.