Kenny Anthony. Medieval Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy. Volume 2
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to say that the soul, or the mind, thinks. Aristotle had said, ‘It is better
not to say that the soul pities, or learns, or thinks, but that it is the human
being that does these things with his soul’ (De An. 408b15), and Aquinas
echoes this when he says, ‘It can be said that the soul thinks, just as the eye
sees, but it is better to say that the human being thinks with the soul.’ If we
take this comparison seriously, we must say that just as an eye, outside a
body, is not really an eye at all any more, so a soul, separated from a body,
is not really a soul any more.
Aquinas goes some way to accepting this, but he does not treat it as a
reductio ad absurdum. He agrees that a person’s disembodied so ul is not the
same thing as the person whose soul it is. St Paul wrote, ‘if in this life only
we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable’ (1 Cor. 15: 19).
St Thomas, in commenting on this passage, wrote: ‘A human being
naturally desires his own salvation; but the soul, since it is part of the
body of a human being, is not a whole human being, and my soul is not I;
so even if a soul gains salvation in another life, that is not I or any human
being.’ Whether or not Aquinas’ belief in the possibility of disembodied
souls is coherent, it is remarkable that he refuses to identify such a soul,
even if beatiWed, with any self or ego. He refuses to identify an individual
with an individual’s soul, as many theologians before him, and many
philosophers after him, were willing to do.
Scotus versus Aquinas
Duns Scotus’ philosophy of mind diVered profoundly from that of Aqui-
nas, in accordance with the diVerences in their metaphysical systems.
Aquinas believed that there was no purely intellectual knowledge of
individuals, because individuation was by matter, and intellectual thought
was free of matter. But for Scotu s there exists an individual element, or
haecceitas, which is an object of knowledge: it is not quite a form, but is
suYciently like a form to be present in the intellect. And because each
thing has within it a formal, intelligible, principle, the ground is cut
beneath the basis on which Aquinas rested the need for a species-speciWc
agent intellect in human beings.
Individuals, unlike universals, a re things that come into and go out of
existence. If the proper objects of the intellect include not only universals
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but individual items like a haecce itas, then there is a possibility of such an
object being in the intellect without existing in reality. The possibility that
one and the same object might be in the intellect and not exist in reality
was the possibility that Aquinas’ intentionality theory was careful to avoid.
An individual form, for Scotus, may exist in the mind and yet the
corresponding individual not exist. Hence the individual form present in
the intellect can be only a representation of, and not identical with, the
object whose knowledge it embodies. Hence a window is opened at the
level of the highest intellectual knowledge, a window to permit the entry
of the epistemological problems that have been familiar to us since Des-
cartes.
The diVerences between Aquinas and Scotus, so far as concerns the
intellect, are not so much a matter of explicit rejection by Scotus of
positions taken up by Aquinas. It is rather that a consideration of the
Scotist position leads one to reXect on its incompatibility at a deep level
with the Thomist anthropology. But when we turn from the intellect to
the will, things are very diVeren t. Here Scotus is consciously rejecting the
tradition that precedes him; he is innovating in full self-awareness. He
regards Aquinas as having misrepresented the nature of human freedom
and the relation between the intellect and the will.
For Aquinas, the root of human freedom was the will’s dependence on
the practical reason. For Scotus, the will is autonomous and sovereign. He
puts the question whether anything other than the will eVectively causes
the act of willing in the will. He replies, nothing other than the will is the
total cause of volition. What is contingent must come from an undeter-
mined cause, which can only be the will itself, and he argues against the
position which he attributes to ‘an older doctor’ that the indetermination
of the will is the result of an indetermination on the part of the intellect.
You say: this indetermination is on the part of the intellect, in so representing the
object to the will, as it will be, or will not be. To the contrary: the intellect cannot
determine the will indiVerently to either of contradictories (for instance, this will
be or will not be), except by demonstrating one, and constructing a paralogism or
sophistical syllogism regarding the other, so that in drawing the conclusion it is
deceived. Therefore, if that contingency by which this can be or not be was from
the intellect, dictating in this way by means of opposite conclusions, then nothing
would happen contingently by the will of God, or by God, because he does not
construct paralogism, nor is he deceived. But this is false. (Oxon. 2. 25)
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Scotus’ criticism of the idea that the indeterminism of the will arises
from an indeterminism in the intellect is based on a misunderstanding of
the theory that he is attacking. The intellect in dictating to the reason does
not say ‘This will be’ or ‘This will not be’, but rather ‘This is to be’ or ‘This is
not to be’, ‘This is good’ or ‘This is not good’. If what is in question is a non-
necessary means to a chosen goal, it is possible for the intellect, without
error, to dictate both that something is good and that its opposite is good.
Moreover, in making the will the cause of its own freedom, Scotus’ theory
runs the danger of leading to an inWnite regress of free choices, where the
freedom of a choice depends on a previous free choice, whose freedom
depends on a previous one, and so on for ever.
Scotus was not unaware of this danger, and in opposition to the position
he attacks, he develops his own elaborate analysis of the structure of
human freedom, in a way that he believes holds out the possibility of
avoiding the regress. In any case of free action, he says, there must be some
kind of power to opposit es. One such power is obvious: it is the will’s power
to will after not willing, or its power to enact a succession of opposite acts.
Of course, the will can have no power to will and not will at the same
time—that would be nonsense—but while A is willing X at time t, A has
the power to not will X at time t þ 1.
But beside this obvious power, Scotus maintains, there is another, non-
obvious power, which is not a matter of temporal succession (alia, non ita
manifesta, absque omni successione). He illustrates this kind of power by imagining
a case in which a created will existed only for a single moment. In that
moment it could only have a single volition, but even that volition would
not be necessary, but would be free. Now while the lack of succession
involved in freedom is plainest in the case of the imagined momentary will,
it is there in every case of free action. That is, that while A is willing X at t,
not only does A have the power to not will X at t þ 1, but A also has the
power to not will X at t, at that very moment. The power, of course, is not
exercised, but it is there all the same. It is quite distinct from mere logical
possibility—the fact that there would be no contradiction in A’s not
willing X at this very moment—it is something over and above: a real
active power. It is this power that, for Scotus, is the heart of human
freedom.12
12 See the discussion of synchronic contingency in Ch. 6 above.
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In defending the coherence of the concept of this non-manifest power,
Scotus makes use of a logical distinction that can be traced back to Abelard.
Consider the sentence ‘This will, which is willing X at t, can not will X at t’.
It can be taken in two ways. Taken one way (‘in a composite sense’) it
means that ‘This will, which is willing X at t, is not willing X at t’ is possibly
true. Taken in that way the sentence is false, and indeed necessarily false.
Taken in another way (‘in a divided sense’) it means that it is possible that
not-willing X at time t might have inhered in this will which is actually willing
X at time t . Taken in this sense, Scotus maintains, the sentence can well be
true (Ord. 4. 417–18).
Ockham versus Scotus
Ockham rejected the non-manifest power that Scotus had introduced. It was
not a genuine power, he said, because it was totally incapable of actualizati on
without contradiction. The power not to sit at time t should be regarded as a
power existing not at t (when I am actually sitting) but at time t 1, the last
moment at which it was still open to me to be standing up at t.
Like Ockham, I Wnd Scotus’ occult powers incomprehensible. But Ock-
ham’s rejection of them is not suYciently wholehearted. Scotus’ mistake
was to regard a power as being a datable event just like the exercise of a
power. Ockham accepts the notion of a power for an instant, and simply
antedates the temporal locati on of the power. But having a power is a state;
it is not a momentary episode like an action.
It may be true, at t, that I have the power to do X, without that entailing
that I have the power to do-X-at-t. Of course, it may be true that I can do X
at t, but in order to analyse such a statement we must distinguish between
power and opportunity. For it to be true that I can swim now it is necessary
not only that I should now have the power to swim (i.e. know how to swim)
but also have the opportunity to swim (e.g. that there should be a suY cient
amount of water about). Scotus and Ockham fail to make the appropriate
distinction, and their temporarily qualiWed powers are an amalgam of the
two notions of power and opportunity. But an opportunity is not an occult
power of mine: it is a matter of the states and powers of other things, and the
compossibility of those states and powers with the exercise of my power.13
13 See my Will, Freedom and Power, ch. 8.
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In spite of their disagreements about the precise nature of freedom,
Ockham is at one with Scotus in stressing the autonomy of the will. The
will’s action is not determined either by a natural desire for happiness, nor
by any command of the intellect, nor by any habit in the sensitive appetite:
it always remains free to choose between opposites.
On the cognitive side of the soul, Ockham regularly writes as if he
recognizes the three sets of powers traditional in Aristotelian philosophy:
outer sense (the familiar Wve senses), inner sense (the imagination), and
intellect. However, when he discusses the intellect it is not at all clear that
he is talking about the same facu lty that Aristotle and Aquinas described.
For Aquinas, the intellect was distinguished from the senses because its
object was universal while theirs was particular; and the individual was
directly knowable only by the senses. But for Ockham, both particular and
universal can be known directly by both senses and intellect.
For Aquinas, a human mind’s knowledge of a particular horse would be
subsequent to the acquisition of the universal idea (species) of horse, formed
out of sense-experience by the creative activity of a faculty peculiar to
human beings, the agent intellect. Once this idea has been acquired, it can
be applied to individuals only by a reXective activity of the intellect,
reverting to sensory experience. Ockham regards all this apparatus as
superXuous.
We can suppose that the intellect can be brought to the knowledge of an
individual by the same process as it is led to the knowledge of a universal. If it is
brought to knowledge of the universal by the agent intellect on its own, then the
agent intellect on its own—we may suppose—can equally easily bring it to the
knowledge of an individual. And as it can be directed by the intelligible species or
by the phantasm to think of one universal rather than another, so too we can
suppose that it can be directed by the intelligible species to think of this individual
and not another. In whatever way after the acquisition of the universal concept
the mind can be directed to think of one individual rather than another (even
though the knowledge of the universal concerns all individuals equally) in just the
same way it can be directed, even before the acquisition of the universal, to think
of this individual rather than another. (OTh. 1. 493)
When Ockham claims that the intellect can know the individual, he is
not basing his claim on the existence of a formal element of individuation,
like the Scotist haecceitas. He rejected any such principle and denied the need
for it. Whatever exists in the real world just is individual, and needs no
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principle to individuate it. His point in the quoted passage is that whatever
philosophical account you give of the acquisition and employment of
knowledge of the universal, exactly the same acc ount can be given of the
acquisition and employment of knowledge of the individual. If that is so,
then it seems a violation of Ockham’s razor to postulate two diVerent
faculties with exactly the same function.
In fact Ockham does distinguish between the senses and the intellect,
but whenever he describes the operation of the intellect, it seems to be a
mere double of either the inner or the outer sense. The very same object
that we sense is intuitively grasped by the intellect under exactly the same
description; the intellect’s grasp of the object sensed is parallel to the
imagination’s representation of the object senses (OTh. 1. 494). Seeing a
white object, imagining a white object, and thinking of a white object are,
for Ockham, mental operations of a similar kind. The one feature which
seems to be peculiar to the intellect is the act of judging that there is a
white object. This judgement is an act not of the senses, nor of the will, but
of the intellect alone (OTh. 6. 85–6).
Just as he was uncon vinced by the traditional arguments for God’s
existence, so Ockham was unconvinced by the arguments of medieval
Aristotelians to prove the immortality of the soul. If a soul is an immaterial
and incorruptible form, he said,
it cannot be known evidently either by argument or by experience that there is
any such form in us. Nor can it be known that thinking in us belongs to such a
substance, nor that such a soul is a form of the body. I do not care what Aristotle
thought of this, because he always seems to speak hesitantly. But these three
things are simply objects of faith. (OTh. 9. 63–4)
Pomponazzi on the Soul
As the Middle Ages drew to an end, this scepticism about philosophical
proofs of immortality became more widespread. The arguments for and
against the immortality of individual human beings are set out in Pietro
Pomponazzi’s pamphlet of 1516, On the Immortality of the Soul. Pomponazzi
begins by considering the opinion that there is a single, immortal, intellec-
tual human soul, while e ach individual human being has only a mortal
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A representation, from the Sala Sistina in the Vatican library, of the Wfth Lateran
Council, which condemned Pomponazzi’s teaching on the immortality of the soul.
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soul. This opinion, which he attributes to Averroes and Themistius, is, he
tells us, ‘widely held in our time and by almost all is conWdently taken to be
that of Aristotle’. In fact, he says, it is false, unintelligible, monstrous, and
quite foreign to Aristotle.
To show that the opinion is false, Pomponazzi refers the reader to
arguments used by St Thomas Aquinas in his De Unitate Intellectus.To
show that it is un- Aristotelian he appeals to the teaching of the De Anima
that, in order to operate, the intellect always needs a phantasm, which is
something material. Our intellectual soul is an act of a physical and organic
body. There may be types of intelligence that do not need an organ to
operate, but the human intellect is not one of them.
A body, however, can function as a subject or obje ct. Our senses need
bodies in both ways: their organs are bodily and their objects are bodily.
The intellect, however, does not need a body as subject, and it can perform
operations (such as reXecting upon itself) which no bodily organ can do:
the mind can think of itself, while the eye cannot see itself. But this does
not mean that the intellect can operate entirely independently from the
body.
Aquinas is again invoked in order to refute another opinion, the Platonic
view that while every human has an individual immortal soul, this soul is
related to his body only as mover to moved—like an ox to a plough, say.
Like Aquinas, Pomponazzi appeals to experience:
I who am writing these words am beset with many bodily pains, which are the
function of the sensitive soul; and the same I who am tortured run over their
medical causes in order to remove these pains, which cannot be done save by the
intellect. But if the essence by which I feel were diVerent from that by which
I think, how could it possibly be that I who feel am the same as I who think? (c. 6,
p. 29814)
We must conclude that the intellectual soul and the sensitive soul are one
and the same in man.
In this, Pomponazzi is in agreement with St Thomas: but at this point he
parts company with him. Thomas, he said, believed that this single soul was
properly immortal, and only mortal in a manner of speaking (secundum quid).
But he, Pomponazzi, will now set out to show that the soul is properly
14 In E. Cassirer et al. (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1959).
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mortal, and only immortal in a manner of speaking. He continues to speak
of Aquinas with great respect. ‘As the authority of so learned a Doctor is
very great with me, not only in divinity but also in interpretation of
Aristotle, I would not dare to aYrm anything against him: I only advance
what I say in the way of doubt’ (c. 8, p. 302).
By nature man’s being is more sensuous than intellective, more mortal
than immortal. W e have more vegetative and sensory powers than intel-
lectual powers, and many more people devote themselves to the exercise of
those powers than to the cultivation of the intellect. The great majority of
men are irrational rather than rational animals. More seriously, the soul
can only be separable if it has an operation independent of the body. But
both Aristotle and Aquinas maintain that the phantasm is essential for any
exercise of thought: hence the soul needs the body, as object if not as
subject. Souls can only be individuated by the matter of the bodies they
inform: it will not do to say that souls, separate from their bodies, are
individuated by an abiding aptitude for informing a particular body.
Did Aristotle believe in immortality? In the Ethics he seems to assert that
there is no happiness after death, and when he says that it is possible to
wish for the impossible, the example he gives of such a wish is the wish for
immortality. St Thomas asks why, if Aristotle thought there was no
survival of death, he should want people to die rather than to live in evil
ways. But the only immortal intelligence Aristotle seems to accept is one
that precedes, as well as survives, the death of the individual human.
However, Pomponazzi says, he has no desire to seek a quarrel with
Aristotle: what is a Xea against an elephant? (c. 8, p. 313; c. 10, p. 334).
The Aristotelian conclusion which Pomponazzi Wnally accepts is this:
the human soul is both intellective and sensitive, and strictly speaking it is
mortal, and immortal only secundum quid. In all its operations the human
intellect is the actuality of an organic body, and always depends on the
body as its object. The human soul is what makes a human individual, but
it is not itself a sub sistent individual (c. 9, p. 321). This position ‘agrees with
reason and experience, it maintains nothing mythical, nothing dependent
on Faith’. The intellect that, according to Aristotle, survives death is no
human intellect. When we call the soul immortal it is only like calling grey
‘white’ when it is compared to a black background.
The immortality of the soul, Pomponazzi concludes, is an issue like
the eternity of the world. Philosophy cannot settle either way whether
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the world ever had a beginning; it is equally impotent to settle whether the
soul will ever have an end. His last word—sincere or not—is this. We must
assert beyond doubt that the soul is immortal: but this is an act of faith, not
a philosophical conclusion .
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