1550. For medieval thinkers generally, transcendental . . .

SCANNED PDF

For medieval thinkers generally, transcendental terms are said to transcend the categories "in the sense that they belong no more to one category than to another, and they do not correspond to common natures" (E. Jennifer Ashworth, "Medieval Theories of Analogy," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

But what does it mean to say that transcendental terms do not correspond to common natures? All that I can take it to mean is that they do not correspond to ordinary abstracts, although they definitely do correspond to extraordinary abstracts.

For Duns Scotus, transcendentals are so called because they transcend both the division of being into finite and infinite, and the further division of finite being into the ten Aristotelian categories. Being itself (ens) is a transcendental, and so are its "proper attributes," i.e., "one," "true," and "good," all of which are convertible, or coextensive, with "being." But Duns Scotus also identifies an indefinite number of disjunctions that are disjunctively coextensive with being and therefore count as transcendentals, such as infinite-or-finite, necessary-or-contingent. Finally, he holds that all the so-called pure perfections are transcendentals because they transcend the division of being into finite and infinite, although they are not convertible, or coextensive, with being. Thus, e.g., God is wise and Socrates is wise, but earthworms—although most certainly beings—are not wise. 

But if Duns Scotus distinguishes pure perfections from both the proper attributes of being, i.e., convertible, or coextensive, transcendentals (passiones entis convertibiles), and the disjunctive transcendentals (passiones entis disjunctae), isn't this because his metaphysics is attributively dualistic? Aren't "pure perfections" simply the properties of spirit or mind as distinct from matter or body? Isn't this why Duns Scotus says that wisdom is a transcendental even though earthworms are not wise?

In any case, reckoning pure perfections as transcendentals seems transparently incoherent. Pure perfections can be properly called transcendentals if, and only if, they are properties of being as being, either convertible or disjunctive. That they transcend the division between finite and infinite being is insufficient to make them transcendentals, if transcendentals are supposed also to transcend the distinctions between any finite being and another. Furthermore, Duns Scotus's allowing pure perfections confirms that his metaphysics is not strictly "transcendental" after all.It is in its own way "mixed," being finally categorial as well as transcendental.

9 January 2007