The Life of the Mind

by Hannah Arendt

  When we now come to Duns Scotus, no leap over the centuries, with the inevitable discontinuities and discords that make the historian suspicious, will be involved. He was not more than a generation younger than Thomas Aquinas, almost his contemporary. We are still in the midst of Scholasticism. In the texts you will find the same curious mixture of ancient quotations—treated as authorities—and argumentative reason. Although Scotus did not write a Summa, he proceeds in the same way as Aquinas: first, the Question states what is being inquired about (for instance, monotheism: "I ask whether there is but one God"); then the Pros and Contras, based on authoritative quotations, are discussed; next the arguments of other thinkers are given; finally, under Respondeo, Scotus states his own opinions, the viae, "Ways," as he calls them, for thought-trains, along with correct arguments, to travel.34 No doubt at first glance it looks as though the only point of difference with Thomistic scholasticism were the question of the primacy of the Will, which is "proved" by Scotus with no less argumentative plausibility than Thomas had deployed in proving the primacy of the Intellect, and with scarcely fewer quotations from Aristotle. To put the opposing arguments in a nutshell: If Thomas had argued that the Will is an executive organ, necessary to execute the insights of the Intellect, a merely "subservient" faculty, Duns Scotus holds that "Intellectus ... est causa subserviens voluntatis." The Intellect serves the Will by providing it with its objects as well as with the necessary knowledge; i.e., the Intellect in its turn becomes a merely subservient faculty. It needs the Will to direct its attention and can function properly only when its object is "confirmed" by the Will. Without this confirmation the Intellect ceases to function.35

  It would be somewhat pointless here to enter the old controversy as to whether Scotus was an "Aristotelian" or an "Augustinian"—scholars have gone so far as to maintain that "Duns Scotus is as much a disciple of Aristotle as St. Thomas is"36 —because Scotus actually was neither. But to the extent that the debate makes sense, that is, so to speak, biographically, it seems that Bettoni, the Italian Scotus scholar, is right: "Duns Scotus remains an Augustinian who profited to the utmost degree from the Aristotelian method in the exposition of the thoughts and doctrines that form his metaphysical vision of reality."37

  These and similar evaluations are surface reactions, but unhappily they have succeeded in obliterating to a large degree the originality of the man and the significance of his thought, as though the Doctor subtilis' chief claim to our attention were subtlety, the unique complexity and intricacy of his presentation. Scotus was a Franciscan, and Franciscan literature was always greatly affected by the fact that Thomas, a Dominican, despite early difficulties, was recognized as a saint by the Church and his Summa Theologica, first used, and finally prescribed, as the textbook for the study of philosophy and theology in all Catholic schools. In other words, Franciscan literature is apologetic, usually cautiously defensive, even though Scotus' own polemics are directed at Henry of Ghent rather than turned on Thomas.38

  A closer reading of the texts will soon disabuse one of those first impressions; the difference and distinction of the man show most clearly when he seems to be in complete conformity with the rules of Scholasticism. Thus, in a lengthy interpretive rendering of Aristotle, he suddenly proposes to "reinforce the Philosopher's reasoning" and, in discussing Anselm of Canterbury's "proof' of the existence of God, he will almost casually yield to the inclination to "touch it up" a bit, indeed quite considerably. The point is that he insisted on "establishing by reason" arguments derived from authority.39

  Standing at the turning-point—the early fourteenth century—when the Middle Ages were changing into the Renaissance, he could indeed have said what Pico della Mirandola said at the end of the fifteenth century, in the middle of the Renaissance: "Pledged to the doctrine of no man, I have ranged through all the masters of philosophy, investigated all books, and come to know all schools."40 Except that Scotus would not have shared the naive trust of later philosophers in reasons persuasive power. At the heart of his reflection, as well as at the heart of his piety, is the firm conviction that, touching the questions that "pertain to our end and to our sempiternal perpetuity, the most learned and most ingenious men could know almost nothing by natural reason."41 For "to those who have no faith, right reason, as it seems to itself, shows that the condition of its nature is to be mortal both in body and soul."42

  It is his close attention to opinions to which he remained uncommitted, but whose examination and interpretation make up the body of his work, that is likely to lead the reader astray. Scotus certainly was not a skeptic—ancient or modern—but he had a critical turn of mind, something that is, and always has been, very rare. From this perspective, large portions of his writings read like a relentless attempt to prove by sheer argumentation what he suspected could not be proved; how could he be sure of being right against almost everybody else unless he followed all the arguments and subjected them to what Petrus Johannis Olivi had called an "experimentum suitatis," an experiment of the mind with itself? That was why he found it necessary to "reinforce" the old arguments or "touch them up" a bit. He knew very well what he was doing. As he said: "I wish to give the most reasonable interpretation to [other thinkers'] words that I possibly can."43 Only in this essentially non-polemical way could the inherent weakness of the argumentation be demonstrated.

  In Scotus' own mature thought, this manifest weakness of natural reason can never be used as an argument for the superiority of irrational faculties; he was no mystic, and the notion that "man is irrational" was to him "unthinkable" ("in- cogitabile").44 What we are dealing with, according to him, is the natural limitation of an essentially limited creature whose finitude is absolute, "prior to any reference it may have to another essence." "For, just as a body is first limited in itself by its own proper boundaries before it is limited in respect to anything else ... so the finite form is first limited in itself before it is limited with respect to matter."45 This finitude of the human intellect—very much like that of Augustine's homo temporalis—is due to the simple fact that man qua man has not created himself, though he is able to multiply like other animal species. Hence for Scotus the question is never how to derive (draw down, deduce) finitude from divine infinity or how to ascend from human finitude to divine infinity, but how to explain that an absolutely finite being can conceive of something infinite and call it "God." "Why is it that the intellect ... does not find the notion of something infinite repugnant?"46

  To put it differently: What is it in the human mind that makes it capable of transcending its own limitations, its absolute finitude? And the answer to this question in Scotus, as distinguished from Thomas, is the Will. To be sure, no philosophy can ever be a substitute for divine revelation, which the Christian accepts on the strength of testimony in which he has faith. Creation and resurrection are articles of faith; they cannot be proved or refuted by natural reason. As such they are contingent, factual truths whose opposite is not inconceivable; they relate to events that might not have happened. For those brought up in the Christian faith they have the same validity as other events of which we know only because we trust the testimony of witnesses—for instance, the fact that the world existed before we were born or that there are places on the earth where we have never been, or even that certain persons are our parents.47

  A radical doubt that rejects the testimony of witnesses and relies on reason alone is impossible for men; it is a mere rhetorical device of solipsism, constantly refuted by the doubter's own existence. All men live together on the solid foundation of a fides acquisita, an acquired faith they have in common. The test for the Countless facts whose trustworthiness we constantly take for granted is that they must make sense for men as they are constituted. And in this respect, the dogma of resurrection makes much more sense than the philosophers' notion of the soul's immortality: a creature endowed with body and soul can find sense only in an after-life in which he is resurrected from death as he is and knows himself to be. The phi
losophers' "proofs" of the soul's immortality, even if they were logically correct, would be irrelevant. To be existentially relevant for the "viator," the wayfarer or pilgrim on earth, the after-life must be a "second life," not an entirely different mode of being as a disembodied entity.

  Yet while it seems obvious to Scotus that the philosophers' natural reason never attained the "truths" proclaimed by divine revelation, it remains undeniable that the notion of divinity antedated any Christian revelation, and that means that there must be a mental capacity in man by which he can transcend whatever is given to him, transcend, that is, the very factuality of Being. He seems to be able to transcend himself. For man, according to Scotus, was created together with Being, as part and parcel of it—just as man, according to Augustine, was created not in time but together with time. His intellect is attuned to this Being as his sense organs are fitted for the perception of appearances; his intellect is "natural," "cadit sub natura";48 whatever the intellect proposes to him, man is forced to accept, compelled by the evidence of the object: "Non habet in potestate sua intelligere et non intelligere."49

  It is different with the Will. The Will may find it difficult not to accept what reason dictates, but the thing is not impossible, just as it is not impossible for the Will to resist strong natural appetites: "Difficile est, voluntatem non inclinari ad id, quod est dictatum a ratione practica ultimatim, non tamen est impossibile, sicut voluntas naturaliter inclinatur, sibi dismissa, ad condelectandum appetitui sensitivo, non tamen impossibile, ut frequenter resistat, ut patet in virtuosis et sanctis."50 It is the possibility of resistance to the needs of desire, on the one hand, and the dictates of intellect and reason, on the other, that constitutes human freedom.

  The Will's autonomy, its complete independence of things as they are, which the schoolmen call "indifference"—by which they mean that the will is "undetermined" (indeterminata) by any object presented to it—has only one limitation: it cannot deny Being altogether. Man's limitation is nowhere more manifest than in the fact that his mind, the willing faculty included, can hold as an article of faith that God created Being ex nihilo, out of nothingness, and yet be unable to conceive "nothingness." Hence the Will's indifference relates to contradictories—voluntas autem sola habet indifferentiam ad contradictoria; only the willing ego knows that "a decision actually taken need not have been taken and a choice other than the one actually made might have been made."51

  This is the test by which freedom is demonstrated, and neither desire nor the intellect can measure up to it: an object presented to desire can only attract or repel, and an issue presented to the intellect can only be affirmed or negated. But it is the basic quality of our will that we may will or nill the object presented by reason or desire: "in potestate voluntatis nostrae est habere nolle et velle, quae sunt contraria, respectu unius obiecti" ("It is in the power of our will to will and to nill, which are contraries, with respect to the same object").52 In saying this, Scotus, of course, does not deny that two successive volitions are necessary to will and nill the same object; but he does maintain that the willing ego in performing one of them is aware of being free to perform its contrary also: "The essential characteristic of our volitional acts is ... the power to choose between opposite things and to revoke the choice once it has been made" (italics added).53 Precisely this freedom, which is manifest only as a mental activity—the power to revoke disappears once the volition has been executed—is what we spoke of earlier in terms of a brokenness of the will.

  Besides being open to contraries, the Will can suspend itself, and while such suspension can only be the result of another volition—in contradistinction to the Nietzschean and Heideggerian Will-not-to-will, which we shall discuss later—this second volition, in which "indifference" is directly chosen, is an important testimony to human freedom, to the mind's ability to avoid all coercive determination from the outside. It is because of their freedom that men, though part and parcel of created Being, can praise God's creation, for if such praise derived from their reason it would be no more than a natural reaction caused by our given harmony with all the other parts of the universe. But by the same token they can also abstain from such praise and even "hate God and find satisfaction in such hatred" or at least refuse to love Him.

  This refusal, which Scotus does not mention in his discussion of the possible hatred of God, is posited in analogy to his objection to the old "all men will to be happy." He admits that of course all men by nature wish to be happy (although no agreement about happiness exists), but the Will—and here is the crucial point—can transcend nature, in this case suspend it: there is a difference between man's natural inclination to happiness and happiness as the deliberately chosen goal of one's life; it is by no means impossible for man to discount happiness altogether in making his willed projects. As far as natural inclination is concerned, and the limitation nature sets on the power of the Will, all that can be affirmed is that no man can "will to be miserable."54 Scotus avoids giving a clear answer to the question of whether hatred of God is possible or not, because of the close relation of that question to the question of evil. In line with all his predecessors and successors, he, too, denies that man can will evil as evil, "but not without raising some doubts as to the possibility of the opposite view."55

  The Will's autonomy—"nothing else but the will is the total cause of volition" ("nihil aliud a voluntate est causa totalis volitionis in voluntate")56—decisively limits the power of reason, whose dictate is not absolute, but it does not limit the power of nature, be it the nature of the inner man, called "inclinations," or that of exterior circumstances. The will is by no means omnipotent in its actual effectiveness: its force consists solely in that it cannot be coerced to will. To illustrate this mental freedom, Scotus gives the example of a man "who hurls himself from a high place."57 Does not this act terminate his freedom since he now necessarily falls? According to Scotus, it does not. While the man is necessarily falling, compelled by the law of gravity, he remains free to continue "to will to fall," and can also of course change his mind, in which case he would be unable to undo what he started voluntarily and would find himself in the hands of necessity. We remember Spinoza's example of the rolling stone which, if endowed with consciousness, would necessarily be prey to the illusion that it had hurled itself and was now rolling of its own free will. Such comparisons are useful in order to realize to what an extent such propositions and their illustrations, disguised in the form of plausible arguments, depend on preliminary assumptions about necessity or freedom as self-evident facts. To stay with the present illustration—no law of gravity can have power over the freedom guaranteed in interior experience; no interior experience has any direct validity in the world as it really and necessarily is according to outer experience and the correct reasoning of the intellect.

  Duns Scotus distinguishes between two kinds of will: "natural will" (ut natura), which follows the natural inclinations, and may be inspired by reason as well as by desire, and "free will" (ut libera) properly speaking.58 He agrees with nearly every other philosopher that it is in human nature to incline toward the good and explains the evil will as human weakness, the blemish of a creature that has come from nothingness ("creatio ex nihilo") and has therefore a certain inclination to sink back into nothingness ("omnis creatura potest tendere in nihil et in non esse, eo quod de nihilo est").59 Natural will works like "gravity in bodies," and he calls it "affectio commodi," our being affected by what is proper and expedient. If man had only his natural will, he would at best be a bonum animal, a kind of enlightened brute, whose very rationality would help him to choose appropriate means to ends given by human nature. Free will—as distinguished from the liberum arbitrium, which is only free to select the means to a pre-designed end—freely designs ends that are pursued for their own sake, and of this pursuance only the Will is capable: "[voluntas] enim est productiva actum," "for the Will produces its own act."60 The trouble is that Scotus does not seem to say anywhere what this freely des
igned end actually is, although he seems to have understood the activity of free designing as the Will's actual perfection.61

  It is with great regret that I admit that this cannot be the place (and that I would not be qualified if it were the place) to do justice to Duns Scotus' originality of thought, especially to the "passion for constructive thinking that pervades all of [his] genuine work,"62 which he had neither the time—he died too young, too young for a philosopher—nor perhaps the inclination to present systematically. It is hard to think of any great philosopher, any one of the great thinkers—of whom there are not many—who still "needs [so much] to be discovered and helped by our attention and understanding."63

  Such help will be all the more welcome and all the more difficult to provide, for the very good reason that finding a comfortable niche for him between predecessors and successors in the histoiy of ideas will not be possible. Avoiding the textbook cliché of the "systematic opponent of St. Thomas" will not be enough, and in his insistence on the Will as the nobler faculty compared with the Intellect he had many predecessors among the schoolmen—the most important was Petras Johannis Olivi.64 Nor will it be enough to clarify and bring out in detail his undoubtedly great influence on Leibniz and Descartes, even though it is still true, as Windelband said more than seventy years ago, that their links with "the greatest of the scholastics ... have unfortunately not found the consideration or treatment that they deserve."65 Certainly the intimate presence of the Augustinian inheritance in his work is too patent to escape notice—there is no one who read Augustine with greater sympathy and deeper understanding—and his indebtedness to Aristotle was perhaps even greater than that of Aquinas. Still the simple truth is that for his quintessential thought—contingency, the price gladly paid for freedom—he had neither predecessors nor successors. Nor for his method: a careful elaboration of Olivi's experimentum suitatis in thought-experiments, which were framed as the ultimate test of the mind's critical examination in the course of its transactions with and within itself (experimur in nobis, experientia internatia66).