Duns Scotus' Concept of Willing Freely: What Divine Freedom Beyond Choice Teaches Us

1982 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-89
Author(s):  
William A. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Divine Freedom

scholarly journals Libertad en Duns Escoto

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Antonio PÉREZ ESTÉVEZ
Keyword(s):  
Moral Order ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Divine Freedom ◽  
The Way

Duns Scotus, due to the way active potencies act, distinguishes natural potencies from Will. Natural potencies, if all requisites are fulfilled, act determinately and necessarily; Will, on the contrary, is indeterminate and determines itself to act. Because of its indeterminacy, Will can choose contrary acts and contrary objects, that is, can choose A and -A. It chooses by itself one of both, it determines itself and nothing external determines it. Human will, due to its imperfection and mutabililty, can choose contrary objects with different willing acts and in different times. Divine will can, with one and the same willing act, choose simultaneously contrary objects, that is, A and -A. Given this divine freedom, all creatures -including physical or moral order- are deeply contingent, that is, they are in this way but they can be either otherwise or not to be. By His ordinate potency, God keeps the established physical and moral order; by His absolute potency, God can revoke this order and establish another, even temporarily. Divine knowledge of the created things that will be, cannot be a necessary knowledge meaning that it is impossible for A (that will be) not to be able to be. As a consequence of this contingency, 'a predestinate can be condemned'.

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Spell of John Duns Scotus

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Llewelyn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Formal Distinction

The Early Mediaeval Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus shook traditional doctrines of logical universality and logical particularity by arguing for a metaphysics of ‘formal distinction’. Why did the Nineteenth Century poet and self-styled philosopher Gerard Manley Hopkins find this revolutionary teaching so appealing? John Llewelyn answers this question by casting light on various neologisms introduced by Hopkins and reveals how Hopkins endorses Scotus’s claim that being and existence are grounded in doing and willing. Drawing on modern respon ses to Scotus made by Heidegger, Peirce, Arendt, Leibniz, Hume, Reid, Derrida and Deleuze, Llewelyn’s own response shows by way of bonus why it would be a pity to suppose that the rewards of reading Scotus and Hopkins are available only to those who share their theological presuppositions

Johannes Duns Scotus

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludger Honnefelder ◽  
Birgitt Haneklaus
Keyword(s):  
Duns Scotus

Duns Scotus on the Will

1953 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 147-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Cresswell
Keyword(s):  
Duns Scotus ◽  
The Will

Realism and religious experience

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-512
Author(s):  
DAVID BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Divine Freedom

AbstractIn this article three types of objection to a realist account of religious experience are explored: (1) the unusual character of its object; (2) its unusual accompanying conditions; and (3) the conflicting content. In response to (1) it is noted that despite divine freedom not all types of encounter preclude predictability, while parallels are drawn with perception of other complex objects such as persons. At the same time the whole notion of simple perceptions is challenged. In response to (2) parallels to the affective element are found not only in moral and aesthetic experience but more widely. Finally, in response to (3) apparent irreconcilable conflicts are lessened by observing how all such experiences take place within the context of traditions whose surface incompatibility does not necessarily indicate deep divisions.

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