Andrew T. LaZella - The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference

THE SINGULAR VOICE OF BEING

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Texts and Studies

Gyula Klima, Fordham University

series editor

Richard Cross

Brian Davies

Peter King

Brian Leftow

John Marenbon

Robert Pasnau

Giorgio Pini

Richard Taylor

Jack Zupko

editorial board

THE SINGULAR VOICE OF BEING

John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference

ANDREW LAZELLA

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York 2019

Copyright 2019 Fordham University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: LaZella, Andrew, author.

Title: The singular voice of being : John Duns Scotus and ultimate difference / Andrew LaZella.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Fordham University Press, 2019. | Series: Medieval philosophy: texts and studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018059016 | ISBN 9780823284573 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Duns Scotus, John, approximately 12661308.

Classification: LCC B765.D74 L39 2019 | DDC 189/.4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059016

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1

First edition

CONTENTS

WORKS BY JOHN DUNS SCOTUS

References to standard internal divisions will be made with the following abbreviations: d. = distinction; a. = article; p. = part; q. = question; and n. = paragraph number. For example, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3, n. 133.

WORKS BY OTHER AUTHORS

All other abbreviations will be explained in context.

THE SINGULAR VOICE OF BEING

In his relatively late Quodlibetal Questions (dated to Advent 1306 or Lent 1307), John Duns Scotus begins by citing a passage from Ecclesiastes 1:8. All things are difficulty, says Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1 and he explains why he thinks they are difficult. Scotus and Solomon proceed to gloss the passage: Human language is inadequate to explain them. Therefore, the distinction of things can help in classification surrounding these difficult questions. Getting our distinctions straight can alleviate the difficulties humans face in explaining things (res). Equipped with inadequate linguistic and conceptual capacities, humans must undertake great labors in order to classify the world and make distinctions.

This work will investigate how Scotus envisions us wayfarers undertaking this labor of proper division. Such division, it will be shown, requires cutting the univocal concept of being at its joints. Such proper carving must locate what Scotus calls ultimate differences, which are nonthings yet are not nothing. A study of such ultimate differencesan area of Scotuss thought that has been underexploredwill reveal the importance of a nonreified conception of difference for proper division, as well as shedding new light on Scotuss much-misunderstood doctrines of univocity and theory of individuation.

Properly distinguishing and classifying beings stands as a perennial task of philosophy, one by no means unique to Scotus. Amid a career of making such divisions, Plato famously remarks in the Phaedrus: Division must cut being at its joints. But can he find the joints?

The question of division takes center stage in the Sophist, beginning with the question of how we can distinguish between the statesman, the sophist, and the philosopher. To get things started, the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus (the dialogues primary interlocutors) construct a network of divisions to define an angler. The angler provides a simple definitional model that can be used for the sophist. Such a network of division casts a net to identify a target. A well-constructed network of divisions, like a well-constructed net, should capture its prey without letting it escape between its nodes. This definition serves to cut being at its joints.

The angler, we learn, is an expert, whose expertise acquires (as opposed to producing) its object by means of actions (not through exchange), who secretly hunts (not openly combats) a living (not lifeless) water (not land) animal and so on. In each case of division, we tread clearly down one side of the binary paths, which ultimately lead us to our target: the angler.

The sophist, however, proves a wilier target. Like the philosopher, one might say, the sophist is also a cleanser of souls. So what distinguishes the sophist from the philosopher? In casting the net of division to capture one of them, we confront a moving target. The sophist has transcategorial being, not remaining within a single node of the net cast upon him or her.