Publication Details

Abstract

Given the state of naturalness in his time Scotus rejects the intuitive knowledge of God as a singular and existing essential totality. There is, however, another way of knowing God: per rationes communes seu univoca. Here the notion of being, which overarches the gap between God and creation, plays an important role. The notion of being is embodied in all essential concepts: in the order of differentiated knowledge it is „the first clearly knowable concept“, while in the order of the origin of knowledge it is the last one; it is an entirely simple concept; it is conceivable only clearly and with certainty, or not at all; it is the most imperfect concept, its imperfectness being its advantage: it opens the horizon of the possible knowing of the „first“ or „infinite“ reality; it is predicable about every reality either in quid (about all essential contents) or in quale (about convertible transcendentalia and the ultimate differences). In comparison to any proper concept the concept of being is conceptus imperfectus deminutus et non-adaequatus; nevertheless, it is a real concept due to its denotating the real beings and due to its being effected by an abstraction; in the latter the object cooperates with the knowing power, therefore the concept is not a sort of rational fiction. Last, but not least, together with other transcendentalia it is the subject of metaphysics and it makes the philosophical knowing of God and thus also the meaningful theological language possible.