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 do 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
7 See R. Cross, The Physics of Duns Scotus: The ScientiWc Context of a Theological Vision (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998), 68.

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