NG200801005

BERNARDINO DE ARMELLADA 194 NAT. GRACIA LV 1/enero-abril, 2008, 193-227, ISSN: 0470-3790 In the doctrine of Scotus, univocity of being is not a scholastic subtlety surpassed by the overwhelming evolution of ideas. On the contrary, it is a challenge to the alleged end of metaphysics. Through the abstraction of all determinations of reality, Scotus places intelligence from the initial knowl- edge of ‘species specialissima’ before the last point of reality, seen by Scotus as ‘the minimum of entity’ in which all things coincide by withdrawing from absolute nothingness. It is a minimal entity which, as the more common, is the first object of the intellect and makes possible knowledge and intellectual discourse. This study analyses and works out the various steps of the teaching of Scotus from the starting point of human reflection and arriving at the ‘being’ beyond the categories; the insufficiency of ‘analogy’ in order to have any idea of God; the univocity as fundament in order to avoid the contradiction in logi- cal discourse: A concept is univocal, states Scotus, that “has sufficient unity in itself that to affirm and deny it of the same subject suffices as a contradiction. It also suffices as a syllogistic middle term, so that where two terms are united in a middle term that is one in this fashion, they are inferred without a fallacy of equivocation to be united among themselves”; the subtle, but enlightening, logic and metaphysical distinction of the univocity as commonness, i.e. predi- cated ‘in quid’, and as virtuality, i.e. predicated ‘in quale’. This ‘univocal being’, as the concept ‘simpliciter simplex’ is purely determinable, but not in the way of gender in regard to species, but in the ‘last differences’ to which the being belongs as univocal ‘in quale’ or virtually. Among the last differences called ‘disjunctive’ the most important one is that of ‘finite-infinite’. Although we conceive the univocal being initially as ‘finite’, at its metaphysical level we can without difficulty separate the subject ‘being’ from the predicate ‘finite’: a neu- tral concept that opens the possibility, without contradicting, of the concept of ‘infinite being’. Given that the ‘infinite’ is possible, it is necessarily existent. KEY WORDS: Scotus, theeology univocity, analogy, God, infinite being. No ha sido necesaria la llegada del VII Centenario de la muerte de Juan Duns Escoto para motivar el auge casi espectacular que han adquirido últimamente las investigaciones y estudios sobre su doctrina filosófica y teológica. Ya desde la mitad del siglo pasado se notó una vuelta insistente al estudio de las ideas, desde siempre sanamente provocadoras, del Doctor Sutil. En las páginas renovadas de su obra se están dando cita tanto especialistas en el pensamiento medieval como científicos modernos que buscan antecedentes escla- recedores en la evolución de las ideas. Forman parte privilegiada en esta porfía los teólogos que no quieren atenerse a un pasado estre- cho para canalizar el futuro de su ciencia.