ABSTRACT
Scotus’ formal distinction as real The problem of intensive quantity, or intensity, is developed by Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy by means of an engagement between Spinoza and Duns Scotus. According to Deleuze, the problem of intensive quantity, or intensity, has a long Scholastic tradition, which is particularly developed in the work of Scotus. By reading Spinoza alongside of the Scholastics, in particular Scotus, Deleuze provides a Spinozist context for the elaboration of this problematic, which functions as an alternative to that presented by Hegel’s dialectical philosophy. Scotus thereby becomes another figure in Deleuze’s alternative lineage in the history of philosophy. It is by means of determining the relation between the early stages of the development of the infinitesimal calculus and the Scholastic examples of intensive quantity, which Deleuze considers to be directly related to the problem of intensive quantity for Spinoza, that the different concepts of intensive quantity developed by Hegel and Deleuze are distinguished. The Scotist concept of intensive quantity is first distinguished from the Hegelian concept of intensive quantum. However, before explicating the Deleuzian concept of intensive quantity, the passage from the infinite collection of infinitely small extensive parts to the intensive processes which produce them will be determined. These intensive processes are determined by what Deleuze describes as ‘intensive parts’, the relations between which are constitutive of intensive quantities. The mechanism by means of which the relations between intensive parts are determinative of intensive quantities will then be examined in chapter 5. Deleuze purports to find in Spinoza’s work, if not specific references to Scotus, at least references to specific problems raised and developed by philosophers of the Middle Ages, in particular those problems which circulated amongst the Scholastics and were elaborated in the work of Scotus. The metaphysics of Scotus establishes a univocal concept of being which is neither a genus nor a category and which ‘is predicated in the same sense of everything that is’,1 whether finite or infinite, singular or universal, created or uncreated. Univocal being is therefore
when the concept is predicated of infinite being and of finite being, etc., the distinction between them, from the point of view of their being, is neutralized. Being, according to Scotus, expresses primarily a quidditative notion, according to which being is understood to be a common nature or essence. In the article ‘Duns Scotus’ Teaching on the Distinction Between Essence and Existence’, Andrew O’Brien argues that ‘being … becomes universal when it is abstracted by the human intellect, which confers on it universal predicability. This absolute essence becomes particularized when it is united with matter, and it becomes a singular individual when it receives its ultimate determination, the “thisness” (haecceity) which, though not of itself a form, is, for Scotus, a “formality.”’2 So, in relation to the distinction between the universal, the particular, and the singular, Deleuze notes that, for Scotus, ‘univocity does not lead to any confusion of essences’,3 that is, insofar as the essence referred to is the common nature of being.4 Scotus’ concept of the univocity of being leads to his conception of the univocity of divine attributes which is enshrined in the formal distinction.5 While pondering the mysteries of the Trinity and the divine attributes, Scotus came up against the problem of referring to a plurality of attributes or perfections in God when the divine nature was supposedly devoid of any real distinction. He first postulated the formal distinction to elucidate these theological problems. Apart from the concept of haecceity as the principle of individuation and the concept of the univocity of being, no thesis is more distinctly Scotist than the formal distinction. However, although he was the first to postulate the formal distinction, the concept of such a distinction did not originate with him. The Scholastics generally recognized the need for some intermediary distinction between a real and a purely rational distinction. In The philosophical theology of John Duns Scotus, Allan Wolter argues that ‘Medieval philosophers generally admitted a threefold distinction’:6 the real distinction, which entails a distinction between individuals in actual existence; the rational distinction, which is purely conceptual with no real foundation in objective reality; and an intermediate distinction, which, though defined rationally, has some kind of basis in reality. ‘Historically the formal
2 Andrew O’Brien, ‘Duns Scotus’ Teaching on the Distinction Between Essence and
Existence’, The New Scholasticism, 38 (1964), p. 69. Haecceity is from the Latin haecceitas, meaning ‘thisness’.
