Duns Scotus: Divine Willing as the Foundation of Contingent Human Willing

Abstract

Human will is essentially and contingently free, according to the perspective of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. In Scotist metaphysics, it is possible to speak of a contingent moral order, since its root is the divine will, which operates with complete freedom. Moreover, since the divine will freely produces creatures, creatures were not created within an order of necessity and are therefore capable of acting freely, giving rise to infinite configurations of possible realities. In this sense, my free will can choose what to do and what not to do, choosing between one possibility and its opposite.

The aim of this paper is therefore to examine, from the perspective of Duns Scotus’s metaphysics, how human action contains within itself the contingency proper to a possibility that has already been effectively realized. At the same time, it seeks to show that the cause of contingency in the world originates in the free operation of the first uncaused efficient cause, namely God.