of philosophical argument. The Franciscans were particularly badly hit, since
Bonaventure’s grand system was now unacceptable and in need of replacement.
Something was needed to fill the gap: this turned out to be the ultra-system of
Duns Scotus.
Duns Scotus and the Franciscan Counterattack
Consider the overall condition of the intellectual field in the generations around
- There was a remarkable richness of positions. The basic cultural capital
of the field was being broken apart once again; sizable new pieces were added
to the pool by contentious reflection, and there were great opportunities for
creative recombination. Conservatives as well as explicit reformers shared in
the riches. Henry of Ghent reacted against Aquinas and his followers by
rejecting the primacy of existence and stressing that God possesses Ideas—es-
sences—before Creation. In order not to reduce God to the level of Ideas,
Henry described God as yet a further level of essence, the esse essential. To
avoid individuation by matter, Henry analyzed individuation as double nega-
tion: the negation of all differences within itself, and the negation of identity
with all others. Henry even incorporated the Muslims into his position, declar-
ing that Augustine’s concept of the divine illumination of the soul is the same
as Avicenna’s Agent Intellect (Gilson, 1944: 430). But this creative defense of
traditionalism merely provided a tempting target for Duns Scotus’s attack.
There is little doubt that Duns Scotus was groomed by the Franciscans to
be their champion in restoring the philosophical eminence of their order.
Though born in remote Scotland, he was picked up by the organization from
an early age and given plenty of attention and encouragement; when he showed
growing intellectual powers, he was sent to the centers of controversy and set
the major intellectual tasks of the day.^11 Much as Thomas Aquinas had been
ordered to the trouble spots of intellectual life as spokesman for the Domini-
cans 30 years earlier, Duns was delegated to do battle for the Franciscans:
restoring their prestige at Paris (Oxford remaining by and large a Franciscan
stronghold), and even invading the Dominicans’ own stronghold at Cologne.
Given the sociological principle that creativity takes place along lines of
maximal opposition within the current level of abstraction in the intellectual
field, what might we predict that the champion of the Franciscans would do?
The battlefield is no longer the same as that on which Aquinas maneuvered
between Averroists and Augustinians; the nature of the soul and its immortality
is no longer a key point. Instead the highest prestige must be on the terrain of
the new metaphysical doctrines Aquinas had introduced as weapons for his
struggle. The impressive thing, however, is not to turn back the clock, rejecting
Aquinas’s concepts in the name of reasserting Augustine and Bonaventure;
Academic Expansion: Medieval Christendom^ •^481