Duns Scotus
1266-1308 · Scholasticism · Prominent
Scotus was a Franciscan theologian known as the Subtle Doctor. What makes you this person and not a duplicate of you? He called it haecceity, thisness, something positive in each thing that makes it that one and no other. He held that being means the same thing when said of God and of creatures, which is why we can talk about God at all, and he put will above intellect and love above knowledge.
Signature
The position Scotus is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- leans Unchanging
- Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (29 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Scotus refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love / Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological / Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law / Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted / Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?