The ethics and voluntarism of John Duns Scotus

Tully Andrew Borland, Purdue University

Abstract

The late medieval philosopher, John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), is notorious for making the claim that everything other than God is good because God wills it and not vice versa. As evidenced by commentaries in the literature, a natural response to this claim is a skeptical one, since it suggests that God could have made even the most hideous acts morally good. On this reading of Scotus, he endorses an implausibly radical version of Theological Voluntarism. My dissertation challenges the above reading of Scotus by providing a systematic exposition of his ethical theory. The purpose is two-fold: (i) to show that Scotus is not a radical Voluntarist and (ii) to clarify the relationship between his Voluntarism and his broader ethical theory. One reason why commentators tend to read Scotus as a radical Theological Voluntarist is that they fail to distinguish between various types of Voluntarism. Broadly, there are two types. Metaethical Voluntarism claims that the nature of certain value properties is to be explained entirely by God’s will. Normative Voluntarism, in contrast, is an action guiding theory about the conditions under which certain normative properties obtain. My contention is that the type of Voluntarism to which Scotus subscribes is a moderate type of Normative Voluntarism, and it is in light of this that we should interpret other elements of Scotus’ ethical theory. In the first chapter I argue that Scotus is not a Metaethical Voluntarist by presenting his theory of value. Scotus follows the Aristotelian Eudaimonism of his day in developing a theory of value in terms of perfection or completion. That is, the goodness of an agent or action is its completeness, and it is not identified with a property of God’s will. Yet, interestingly, Scotus offers a non-Eudaimonistic moral psychology, borrowing from Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), and introduces an affection for justice as well as an affection for happiness (which is the only basic affection for standard forms of medieval Eudaimonism). In the second chapter, I develop Scotus’ theory of justice and his moral psychology and show how these elements of Scotus’ ethical theory fit with his theory of value. In the third chapter, I explain the way in which Scotus is a Voluntarist by demonstrating the extent to which God’s acts of will determine the conditions for right action. I agree that Scotus says that in select cases God can indeed make an otherwise impermissible act permissible, or a permissible act impermissible. Nevertheless, God’s goodness sets significant parameters on when this may occur and God is guided by reasons for the whole of his creation. Hence my reading of Scotus’ seemingly radical Voluntaristic remarks is that Scotus is not saying that “anything goes in ethics.” Rather, Scotus is merely insisting that God has freedom in creating and is not necessitated to create the actual goods of this world. God is free to create different worlds by instantiating different kinds of natures, but prior to creating the actual world, God’s goodness constrains God to intend what would be good for these creatures. Once it is agreed that Scotus’ brand of Voluntarism is not of the radical sort suggested by some of the commentary, we will need to reinterpret Scotus’ moral epistemology in this light. This is the task of the final chapter. Recently, it has been argued that Scotus’ Voluntarism allows syllogistic reasoning to play little or no role in practical decision making because our actions are to be guided by God’s arbitrary commands; instead, Scotus is a moral intuitionist about the proper ground of nearly all moral beliefs. I argue that this is wrong on both counts. Scotus thinks that practical syllogisms play a substantive role in moral reasoning and that a number of moral beliefs can be properly grounded by testimony or from a consideration of the concepts involved in the beliefs.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Brower, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Philosophy

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