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Chapter 6 - Duns Scotus on the dignities of human nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

By
Marilyn McCord Adams
Edited by
Giorgio Pini
Giorgio Pini
Affiliation:
Fordham University, New York
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Summary

This essay shows that Duns Scotus firmly believed in the dignities (plural) of human nature—both the natural human dignity celebrated by Aristotle, who maintained that the material world was made for the sake of rational animals, and the supernatural dignities paid to humankind by God in the Incarnation and to particular human beings by predestining them to glory. When it comes to identifying more concretely the features in which such dignities consist, Duns Scotus’s metaphysical views—about essential powers and about what is essential to powers—combine with his theological conviction that, when it comes to patterns of Divine concurrence with or obstruction of natural powers, God has different policies for different states of human history—to complicate his method.

Keywords

Duns Scotushuman naturedignitiesdivine concurrencemiraclesstate of glorymetaphysics
Type
Chapter
Information
Interpreting Duns Scotus
Critical Essays
 , pp. 122 - 148
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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