Medieval philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 2 ( PDFDrive ) 224

METAPHYSICS but as bringing something into existence in the absence of any precondition (Lect 19 174) Aquinas had maintained that in all material substances, including human beings, there was only a single substantial form Scotus denied this: and in this denial he had, for once, the majority of medieval scholastics on his side He agreed with Aquinas that non-living entities had only a single substantial form: a chemical compound did not retain the forms of the elements of which they were composed But living bodies—plants, animals, and humans—possessed, in addition to the speciWc forms belonging to their kinds, a common form of corporeality that made them all bodies He argued for this on the basis that a human body immediately after death is the same body as it was immediately before death, even though it is no longer an ensouled human being Similar considerations hold with regard to animals and plants Though Scotus held that the soul is not the only substantial form of humans, he did not, like some of his predecessors, believe that there were three diVerent souls coexisting in each human being, an intellectual, sensitive, and vegetative soul If there were any forms in human beings other than the soul and the form of corporeality, they were forms of individual human organs—a possibility that Scotus once considered.7 But in addition to the matter and the forms in a substance there is another item which is neither matter nor form, the haecceity that makes it the individual it is For the individuality of the matter and the individuality of the form are between them not suYcient to individuate the composite substance (Lect 17 500) How all these items—matter, forms, haecceity—Wt together in the concrete material substance? It is wrong to think of a material substance as being an aggregate of which all these items are parts; for the parts could, on Scotus’ account, all exist separately Moreover, the whole substance has properties that are diVerent from any of the properties of the parts listed: for instance, the property of being a uniWed whole In addition to those parts, Scotus believed, we had to add an extra item: the relationship between them—something which he is prepared to look on as yet another part But even after we have added this, we have to say that an individual See R Cross, The Physics of Duns Scotus: The ScientiWc Context of a Theological Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 68 205