World Congress of Philosophy

Any discussion of John Duns Scotus (1266—1308) on our knowledge of God has to be a discussion of Scotus’s thesis that we have concepts univocal to God and creatures. By this, Scotus means that someone’s idea can equally represent both God and other types of things. This is striking even to modern ears and was perhaps more so for Scotus’s contemporaries.  There are religious objections. Some call Scotus an idolater. But beyond this, as Scotus himself pointed out, the metaphysical ramifications of his thesis threaten to “destroy all philosophy.” By this, he means Aristotle’s thought, which did much to set the philosophical terrain of the thirteenth century. For Aristotle, words that refer to things that are different yet somehow related are analogical, words like ‘healthy’ said of both persons and medicine. Medievals adopted Aristotle’s scheme to make sense of the meaning of religious language, which uses words like ‘good’ to talk about God and creatures.  For thinkers in the