Humanity, person and substance
19
Jun
Boethius’ definition of person, one of his greatest contributions, is
naturae rationalis individua substantia (person is an individual substance of rational nature), adopted in part by Thomas Aquinas, because he still remained attached to Aristotle’s view of essence, which is always linked to the question of the diverse (diversum) and the different (differens).
In his commentary on Metaphysics (Aquinas, 1995, p. 650-657), Metaphysic is topic book as the Categories´s Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas states that the diverse (diversum) is what is totally and absolutely opposed to the same, while the different (differens) is partial and relatively opposed to the same, so his ontology is distant from the Other, and his Trinitarian concept is linked to distinction, in Scotus its in categories “supra substantial”.
In his Summa Theologica, in a later commentary, he says about the Holy Trinity that the Son is other (alius) in relation to the Father, but the emphasis is more on the distinction of the persons than on communion, although he is not unaware of it, the song Sublime Sacramentis is popular among Catholics, it writen by Aquinas.
It is Duns Scotus who deepens the theme of the univocity of being”, the formal distinction and the concept of ‘hecceity’, overcoming quidity, and emphasizing the individuality of a being, which is not only its essence, but also its unique and unrepeatable existence.
Scotus, seen as a moderate realist (essence and substance of Being), is the first to think of its individuation, and also to understand the Trinitarian communication with the divine without abolishing substantiation, which is why we classify it here as a link between the two, doesn’t mention there, but this divine in substance is the Eucharist.
Scotus was also the first to defend the conception of Mary, mother of Jesus, as being by divine advent, thus anticipating the Christian/Orthodox dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which the church would recognize with much discretion much later and also only now in the 20th century, through Pope John Paul II, was he recognized as a “servant of God”.
The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was greatly influenced by Scotus, and explains the moderate realism of the Subtle Doctor as follows:
“Apart from thought, only singular things exist. But there are in the singular certain ‘natures’, neither universal nor particular, which constitute the foundation of intelligibility. In things, these natures are particular, but when placed in relation to an act of the intellect, they become universal … So, for example, the hard surface of a specific stone is determined, while the universal hardness that the intellect apprehends is indeterminate or general. One consequence of this view is that the individual itself is not an adequate object of knowledge. What we know are genera and species, themselves products of mental action” (Goudge, 1969).
In Heidegger, the concept of “Dasein” (being-there, the human being) is intrinsically linked to hecceity. Dasein is a being-in-the-world that manifests itself through its singular and unique existence.
Thus, both the linguistic turn and the Hideggerian ontology are influenced by Scotus and bring the concept of hecceity closer together.
Aquinas, T. Commentary on Aristotle’s metaphysics. Notre Dame, Indiana: Dumb Ox Books, 1995.
Thomas A. Goudge, The Thought of C. S. Peirce, USA, University Michigan, Dover 1969, p. 99
