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John Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus
Selected Writings on Ethics

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY

Thomas Williams

1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Thomas Williams 2017
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First Edition published in 2017
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Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Topical guide to the translations xi
Introduction xiii

1. Questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX, q. 15: “Is the distinction

Aristotle draws between rational and non-rational powers appropriate?” 1
2. Ordinatio prologue, part 5, qq. 1 and 2 (omitting nn. 270–313):
“Is theology a practical or a speculative science?” / “Is a science
called practical per se because it is ordered to praxis as its end?” 16
3. Ordinatio I, d. 1, part 1, q. 1: “Is the object of enjoyment per se the
ultimate end?” 44
4. Ordinatio I, d. 1, part 2, q. 1, nn. 65–73: “Is enjoyment an act elicited
by the will or a passion received by the will?” 50
5. Ordinatio I, d. 1, part 2, q. 2 (omitting nn. 100–33): “Does the will
necessarily enjoy an end when it is apprehended by the intellect?” 53
6. Ordinatio I, d. 8, part 2, q. un., nn. 223–5, 269–74, 281–301:
“Is God alone immutable?” 67
7. Ordinatio I, d. 17, part 1, qq. 1–2, nn. 55–67, 92–100: “Is a moral habit,
as a virtue, in some way an active principle with respect to moral
goodness in an act?” 75
8. Ordinatio I, d. 38, q. un.: “Is God’s knowledge with respect to created
things practical?” 82
9. Reportatio IA, dd. 39–40, qq. 1–3, nn. 24–59: The nature and cause
of contingency 86
10. Ordinatio I, d. 44, q. un.: “Can God make things otherwise than as it is
well-ordered for him to make them?” 95
11. Ordinatio I, d. 47, q. un.: “Is divine permission an act of the divine will?” 99
12. Ordinatio I, d. 48, q. un.: “Is a created will morally good whenever
it is in conformity with the uncreated will?” 102
13. Ordinatio II, d. 6, q. 1: “Was the evil angel able to desire equality
with God?” 104
14. Ordinatio II, d. 6, q. 2: “Was the angel’s first sin formally pride?” 109
vi CONTENTS

15. Ordinatio II, d. 7, q. un., nn. 28–39: The levels of goodness 123
16. Ordinatio II, dd. 34–7, q. 2: “Is sin per se a corruption of good?” 126
17. Ordinatio II, d. 38, q. un.: “Is intention an act of the will alone?” 135
18. Ordinatio II, d. 39, qq. 1–2: “Is synderesis in the will?” / “Is conscience
in the will?” 138
19. Ordinatio II, d. 40, q. un.: “Is every act good in virtue of its end?” 144
20. Ordinatio II, d. 41, q. un.: “Can any act of ours be indifferent?” 147
21. Ordinatio II, d. 42, q. un.: “Are the capital sins distinct?” 150
22. Ordinatio II, d. 43, q. un.: “Can a created will sin ex malitia?” 151
23. Ordinatio II, d. 44, q. un.: “Is the power for sinning from God?” 153
24. Ordinatio III, d. 17, q. un.: “Were there two wills in Christ?” 156
25. Ordinatio III, d. 27, q. un.: “Is there a theological virtue that
inclines one toward loving God above all else?” 161
26. Ordinatio III, d. 28, q. un.: “Ought one to love one’s neighbor by
the same habit by which one loves God?” 178
27. Ordinatio III, d. 29, q. un.: “Is each person required to love himself
the most, after God?” 184
28. Ordinatio III, d. 32, q. un. (omitting nn. 12–18): “Does God love
all things equally through charity?” 186
29. Ordinatio III, d. 33, q. un.: “Are the moral virtues in the will as in
a subject?” 190
30. Ordinatio III, d. 34, q. un., nn. 1–5, 24–38, 45–83: “Are the virtues,
gifts, beatitudes, and fruits the same habits?” 207
31. Ordinatio III, d. 36, q. un.: “Are the moral virtues connected?” 222
32. Ordinatio III, d. 37, q. un.: “Do all the precepts of the Decalogue
belong to the natural law?” 248
33. Ordinatio III, d. 38, q. un.: “Is every lie a sin?” 259
34. Ordinatio IV, d. 15, q. 2, nn. 78–101: The origin of private property 272
35. Ordinatio IV, d. 17, q. un., nn. 1–2, 17–33: Sacramental confession
and the natural law 276
36. Ordinatio IV, d. 21, q. 2: “Is a confessor bound in every case to
conceal a sin disclosed to him in confession?” 281
37. Ordinatio IV, d. 26, q. un., nn. 12–31: The moral goodness of the
marriage contract 296
 CONTENTS vii

38. Ordinatio IV, d. 29, q. un., nn. 2, 11–28: Coerced consent 301
39. Ordinatio IV, d. 33, q. 1: “Was plural marriage ever licit?” 305
40. Ordinatio IV, d. 33, q. 3: “Was it licit under the Mosaic Law to
divorce one’s wife?” 311
41. Ordinatio IV, d. 46, qq. 1–3: “Is there justice in God?” / “Is there
mercy in God?” / “Are justice and mercy distinct in God?” 319
42. Quodlibetal Questions q. 18: “Does an exterior act add any goodness
or badness to an interior act?” 333

Bibliography 351
Index 355
Acknowledgments

I am enormously grateful for the $138,000 Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities that relieved me of half my
teaching in 2014 and 2015 and thereby allowed me to make much faster progress
on this volume than would otherwise have been possible. The grant also funded the
work of Jeff Steele as editorial associate, and I am very grateful for his tireless and
skillful research, the keen eye he brought to the translations, and his invariably sharp
suggestions for corrections and improvements.
I was fortunate also to be in residence at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Humanities at the University of Edinburgh as the American Philosophical Associ-
ation’s Edinburgh Fellow in the fall of 2014 and at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy
and Public Affairs at the University of St Andrews as a Visiting Fellow in the spring
of 2015. I am grateful to the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH)
and the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs (CEPPA) for providing
settings wonderfully conducive to work, and to the American Philosophical Associ-
ation (APA) for its support.
I was sustained during my time in Scotland by the hospitality and welcome I found
in the Scottish Episcopal Church. I am grateful to the Bishop of Edinburgh, the Right
Revd John Armes, and the Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, the Most
Revd David Chillingworth, for granting me permission to officiate in their dioceses,
and to the clergy and people of Old St Paul’s Church and St Mary’s Cathedral in
Edinburgh and All Saints’ Church in St Andrews for making me a part of their
communities.
I am also grateful to the University of South Florida for granting me a research
leave in the fall of 2014 as compensation for serving a term as chair of Religious
Studies, and to my chair in Philosophy, Roger Ariew, for accommodating my
comings and goings.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my medieval history professor at Vanderbilt,
Paul Freedman, for introducing me to paleography. Neither of us had any particular
reason at the time to suppose that I would ever use it; he simply had an exuberant
love of learning that found expression in teaching, and as a medievalist-in-training
I was intrigued enough to pay close attention. But this proved to be the most
consequential side-conversation of my scholarly life, despite the fact that it corres-
ponded to no pre-approved “learning outcome” (such things having mercifully not
been invented yet in the 1980s). The state of the editions being what it is, I could not
have completed this project responsibly without spending a good deal of time in the
manuscripts, and I am grateful to Prof. Freedman for introducing me to the skills
I would need in order to do so.
Topical guide to the translations

The decision to present mostly complete questions rather than primarily shorter excerpts
meant that it was not practical to organize the material under general topical headings,
since most of the chapters cover two or more major topics in some detail. Here I provide a
list of major topics and the numbers of the chapters in which those topics are treated
extensively. This guide is meant to help in selecting and organizing readings that focus on
particular themes; I hope it will be especially useful for those preparing syllabi for courses
on Scotus, medieval philosophy, the history of ethics, and so forth. For every discussion of
a topic, even in passing, the index will be a better guide.
absolute vs ordered power: 10
analogy/disanology between intellect and will: 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 41, 42
capital sins: 14, 21
charity: 5, 15, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 36
composed vs divided sense: 1, 9
confession (sacramental): 35, 36
conscience: 18
consent: 38
contingency: 1, 2, 5, 6, 9
Decalogue: 32
deliberation: 29, 31
efficacious vs simple/restrained volition: 11, 13, 28
end: 2, 3, 5, 16, 19, 31, 32
enjoyment: 3, 4, 5
friendship: 25, 30
friendship-willing vs desire-willing: 13, 14
God’s justice and mercy: 41
God’s love: 28
goodness and badness
generic: 15, 19, 33, 37, 42
meritorious: 15, 19, 20
moral: 7, 12, 15, 19, 20, 37, 42
natural: 15, 19, 42
habits: 7, 18, 25, 26, 29, 31
happiness: 5, 14, 25
immutability of God: 6
imputability: 42
indeterminacy, kinds of: 1, 6, 9, 29
indifference of an act: 15, 20
xii TOPICAL GUIDE TO THE TRANSLATIONS

intellect: see will, relation to intellect

intention: 17
interior (elicited) vs exterior (commanded) act: 2, 38, 42
irascible vs concupiscible: 30
justice: 14, 16, 30, 39, 40, 41, 42
law
divine: 10, 34, 35, 36
Mosaic: 35, 40
natural: 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39
positive: 32, 34, 35, 36
love of God: 14, 25, 26, 27, 32, 42
love of neighbor: 26, 27, 32
lying: 33, 36, 38
marriage: 37, 38, 39, 40
necessary vs contingent moral truths: 2, 32
passions: 7, 29, 30
pleasure: 4, 29, 30, 31
powers
for opposites: 1, 9, 42
rational vs non-rational: 1, 42
practical principles: 2, 8, 32, 35
practical science/cognition: 2, 8, 31, 32
praxis: 2, 8
pride: 14
private property: 32, 34
prudence: 7, 29, 30, 31
rectitude/correctness: 16, 42
right/correct reason: 2, 7, 15, 19, 25, 31, 37, 38, 42
sin: 13, 14, 16, 22, 23, 33, 42
synderesis: 18
virtue(s): 7, 25, 29, 30, 31
will
acts of (willing, willing-against, etc.): 4, 11, 13, 14, 17
as rational power: 1
as subject of virtue: 29
divine: 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 28, 41
freedom of: 1, 4, 5, 14, 18, 22, 23, 29, 42
natural vs free: 14, 18, 24, 29
relation to intellect: 1, 2, 5, 8, 13, 17, 29, 31, 41
relation to sensory appetite: 14, 21, 22, 24, 29, 30
two affections of: 14, 18
vs nature: 1, 5, 29
 Introduction

John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308) did not write systematically about ethics and
moral psychology, but he did write extensively. In this volume I offer translations
that cover the whole range of ethical topics that Scotus discusses, including
happiness, freedom, moral responsibility, the virtues, the metaphysics of goodness,
practical reason, the moral attributes of God (such as love, justice, and mercy), the
will and its acts and affections, the foundations of morality, sin, and such practical
matters as marriage, truth-telling, promise-keeping, and sacramental confession.
To the extent that space would allow, I have translated entire questions, or at least
extended selections, rather than shorter excerpts.
I begin with a brief overview of Scotus’s life and works, with particular emphasis
on the works from which the selections in this volume are drawn. I then discuss the
editions and manuscripts I have used, and finally I explain some conventions I have
adopted in the translations.

Scotus’s life
We have relatively little clear and uncontested information about Scotus’s life. The
first certain date that we have is 17 March 1291, on which Scotus was ordained to the
priesthood by Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, at the priory of St Andrew in
Northampton. Bishop Sutton had held ordinations in Wycombe (somewhat closer
to Oxford, where Scotus was studying) on 23 December 1290, so the conjecture—and
it is no more than a conjecture—is that Scotus reached the canonical age of twenty-
five between those two dates.1 Thus his birth is commonly said to have taken place
between 24 December 1265 and 17 March 1266, and although there is certainly
nothing to rule out the possibility that Scotus was in fact older than twenty-five when
he was ordained,2 these dates fit well with other accounts that Scotus was born “about
the year 1265”3 in Duns, in the Scottish Borders.
Accounts of Scotus’s early studies are so contentious and rely so heavily on conjecture
that I will simply pass over them in silence4 and turn to the culmination of his studies,

1
Callebaut, “A propos du Bx. Jean Duns Scot,” 319; Wolter, “Reflections,” 5.
2
Sheppard, “Vita Scoti,” 294. 3
Wolter, “Reflections,” 6 n.
4
See Sheppard, “Vita Scoti,” 297–311, for details of the controversies.
xiv INTRODUCTION

for which we have better information. Scotus lectured on the first two Books of the
Sentences of Peter Lombard at Oxford in 1298–99 and began revising those lectures for
publication almost immediately, probably completing his revisions of Book I by the end
of 1300.5 In 1302 Scotus left Oxford for Paris and lectured on the Sentences—probably
in the order Book I, Book IV, Book II, Book III—completing his lectures in 1303.6 In late
June of 1303 Scotus, along with eighty-two other Franciscan friars, was forced to
leave Paris for taking the pope’s side in the dispute between Philip IV of France and
Pope Boniface VIII. Where Scotus went during his exile is not clear, though most
scholars believe that he returned to Oxford.7 He was back in Paris in 1304.
In a letter dated 18 November 1304, the newly elected Minister General of the
Franciscan order, Gonsalvus of Spain (Gonsalvo de Balboa), nominated Scotus to be
the next Franciscan regent master at the University of Paris. This nomination was
successful, and Scotus accordingly received his doctorate and incepted as master,
probably in early 1305. It was the privilege of regent masters to conduct quodlibetal
disputations, and we have one set of Quodlibetal Questions from Scotus, which must
have been disputed between Lent 1305 and Lent 1307.8
In 1307 Scotus left Paris for the Franciscan house of studies at Cologne. Though a
number of intriguing theories have been suggested to account for the “suddenness of
his departure from Paris at the height of his career,”9 there is almost certainly no real
mystery about it: it was common practice for the Franciscans to move their best
theologians from one house to another. Scotus died at Cologne in 1308; the date of
his death is traditionally given as 8 November. His remains rest in the Minoriten-
kirche in Cologne in a sarcophagus that bears the epitaph Scotia me genuit, Anglia me
suscepit, Gallia me docuit, Colonia me tenet: “Scotland begot me, England received
me, France taught me, Cologne holds me.”

Scotus’s works
We have at least three distinct versions of Scotus’s commentary on the Sentences. The
earliest is the Lectura, which presents the text of his Oxford lectures on Books I and
II. (There is also a Lectura on Book III, sometimes called the Lectura completa; it is
apparently a separate work.) Scotus revised his Oxford lectures for publication and
added commentary on Books III and IV. This text is known as the Ordinatio (from
ordinare, to set in order). We have student reports of his lectures at Paris, known as
the Reportatio.

5
For the evidence that Scotus was at Oxford from 1298 through 1302, see Sheppard, “Vita Scoti,”
311–13.
6
Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, 1–2.
7
Wolter, “Reflections,” 11; Sheppard, “Vita Scoti,” 316–18.
8
Quodlibetal disputations were held in Lent and Advent. For the dates, see Noone and Roberts, “John
Duns Scotus’ Quodlibet,” 132.
9
Wolter, “Reflections,” 12–13. For details of the theories, see Sheppard, “Vita Scoti,” 319–23.
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