| |
All:
Farmer p. 237n. suggests Pico is thinking of Duns Scotus, Ord., lib. 3, dist. 6 qu. 1, in Opera, ed. Wadding, vol. 7, pp. 171-172: 'Utrum in Christo sit aliud esse Verbi ab esse creato?' Did, that is, Christ have one 'esse' as a human being and another as the divine person? As Farmer notes (p. 237 n.), Pico intended to reconcile the Thomist and Scotist positions; see Conclusiones II.1.5(= Farmer, Conclusiones paradoxae numero XVII, 1>5, p. 366). Farmer's suggestion may be right - though perhaps Ord. lib. 3, dist. 11, n. 3, in Opera, ed. Wadding, vol. 7, p. 250, is perhaps a better fit - but the identification is not conclusive. The thrust of Duns Scotus's Christology here (Ord., lib. 3, dist. 6, qu. 1-3, pp. 171-184) and elsewhere is, to put a complicated matter too briefly, that, while Christ did have created and uncreated existence, He was one subsistent being. Christ as the Word existed 'simpliciter' but only 'secundum quid' as Christ incarnated. Duns Scotus emphasized, that is, Christ's unity rather than any duality of being. See further Cross, The metaphysics of the Incarnation (as in the bibliography below), pp. 46-48, 121-143.
Pico may, instead, be referring to the doctrine of the 'plurality of forms' (pluralitas formarum'). If, as Thomas and other scholastics claimed, the soul was identical with an animal's form, then, on the animal's death, its form ceased. What remained was a lifeless carcass. But, like any other inanimate bodily thing, the cadaver must have a form. The cadaver's form could not be the same as the form that had once animated the body, given that the latter had been a principle of animation. But this conclusion was implausible; the body no longer could no longer perform the operations that it had when alive, but it was the same body. It was also heretical, in that it suggested that Christ's body did not survive as His body while it lay lifeless in the Tomb.
To solve this problem some scholastics argued that living things, including animals and human beings, had two substantial forms, one acting as the organising principle of the body, the other acting as the principle of its psychological and, where applicable, intellectual operations. Living things, therefore, were composed not simply of matter and form, but of 'body' (viz. matter plus bodily form) and soul. Thus they had more than one substantial form, even though the ontologically inferior one was 'incomplete'. These incomplete, i.e. imperfected, forms, like all imperfected forms, sought perfection in the perfect substantial forms that perfected them. The doctrine's supporters produced many arguments and authorities. When speaking of matter and form comprising a substance, Aristotle meant by 'matter' the next degree of indeterminacy, not the elements, let alone the absolute indeterminacy of matter understood as pure potentiality. Again, Genesis described how God breathed the breath of life into Adam, i.e. God had created Adam's body before endowing it with life.
Versions of the doctrine were held by many theologians and philosophers, predominantly Franciscan and Augustinian. Duns Scotus followed it; Petrus Tartareti gave a detailed Scotist account of the doctrine (Commentaria, sive [ut vocant] reportata, in quattuor libros Sententiarum, et quodlibeta Ioannis Duns Scoti, ed. Bonaventura Manentus, O.F.M. 6 vols, Venice, 1583, lib. 4, dist. 11, quaest. 3, vol. 4, pp. 147a-157a). Pomponazzi refers to it (De immortalitate, capp. 5, 6). The doctrine resembled, at least superficially, a Platonic interpretation of how body related to soul, as contemporaries recognized (Pomponazzi, ibid.; Matthaeus ab Aquasparta, Quaestiones de anima, qu. 6, cited in Zavalloni [see Bibliography below], pp. 199-200) and may partly explain why Ficino included Duns Scotus in the Platonic tradition.
Duns Scotus, like other scholastic theologians, applied the doctrine to explain the condition of Christ's body during the 'triduum'. Christ's body, as it lay lifeless in the tomb, according to Thomas's hylemorphism, should be an anonymous carcass rather than His body. (See Duns Scotus, Ord. 4.11.3, §§54-58, in Opera, ed. Wadding, vol. 8, pp. 653-654, 656.) Since, then, He had two forms, he had, as Pico says, two 'existences' (esse). The similarities with Pico's statement come out best in Scotist summaries of Duns Scotus's doctrine. See e.g. Tartaretus, op. cit., lib. 4, dist. 11, qu. 3, vol. 4, p. 147rb: 'His notatis sanctus Thomas probat opinionem suam, videlicet quod in natura humana Christi et in natura alicuius alterius hominis non sit aliquid nisi prima materia et anima intellectiva, quae quidem rationes si concluderent, essent contra ipsam conclusionem nostram, sed si solvantur, conclusio nostra manebit tunc probata, contra ipsum. Prima ratio. Unius entis est tantum unum esse, sed unius esse est tantum una forma, igitur in animato, quod est tantum unum ens, est tantum una forma, ergo etiam in Christo'; Tartaretus summarizes one of Duns Scotus's replies to this objection a few lines down: 'Sequitur primo, quod in uno esse sunt plura esse. Ex quo sequitur secundo, quod non est inconveniens quod in uno composito sint plura esse partialia, quia esse hominis continet esse corporis et esse animae.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wadding in Duns Scotus, Opera, vol. 8, p. 655; Roberto Zavalloni, O.F.M. Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralité des formes. Textes inédits et étude critique, Philosophes médévaux, vol. 2, Louvain, 1951; Alessandro Ghisalberti, Giovanni Buridano; dalla metafisica alla fisica, Milan, 1975, pp. 151-159: 'Contro la pluralité delle forme'; Richard Cross, The physics of Duns Scotus. The scientific context of a theological vision, Oxford, 1998, pp. 47-76; id., Duns Scotus, Oxford, 1999, pp. 73-75, 113-126; id., The metaphysics of the Incarnation. Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus, Oxford, 2002, pp. 121-133.
|
4. Iohannis Scoti
