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Univocity of being is the idea that words describing the properties of God mean the same thing as when they apply to people or things. It is associated with the doctrines of the Scholastic theologian John Duns Scotus.
In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many theologians and philosophers (such as Thomas Aquinas) held that when one says that "God is good" and that "man is good", man's goodness is only analogous to, i.e. similar to but distinct from, God's goodness. John Duns Scotus, while not denying the analogy of being à la St. Thomas, nonetheless holds to a univocal concept of being. It is important to note that Scotus does not believe in a "univocity of being", but rather to a common concept of being that is proper to both God and man, though in two radically distinct modes: infinite in God, finite in man. [1]
The claim here is that we understand God because we can share in his being, and by extension, the transcendental attributes of being, namely, goodness, truth, and unity. [2] So far as Scotus is concerned, we need to be able to understand what ‘being’ is as a concept in order to demonstrate the existence of God, lest we compare what we know - creation - to what we do not - God. Thomas Williams has defended a version of this argument. [3]
Gilles Deleuze borrowed the doctrine of ontological univocity from Scotus. [4] He claimed that being is univocal, i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference. "With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being." [5] Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, [6] who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one substance, God or Nature. He claims that it is the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, despite the absence of the term from any of Spinoza's works. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze and Guattari summarize this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism". [7]
Gilles Louis René Deleuze was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.
Monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
In monotheistic theology, the doctrine of Divine Simplicity says that God is simple.
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world.
Schizoanalysis is a set of theories and techniques developed by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, first expounded in their book Anti-Oedipus (1972) and continued in their follow-up work, A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
The absence of good, also known as the privation theory of evil, is a theological and philosophical doctrine that evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather the absence, or lack ("privation"), of good. This also means that everything that exists is good, insofar as it exists; and is also sometimes stated as that evil ought to be regarded as nothing, or as something non-existent.
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second being A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
Difference and Repetition is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Baruch Spinoza. It was written between 1661 and 1675 and was first published posthumously in 1677.
Haecceity is a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, first coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing. Haecceity is a person's or object's thisness, the individualising difference between the concept "a man" and the concept "Socrates". In modern philosophy of physics, it is sometimes referred to as primitive thisness.
The transcendentals are "properties of being", nowadays commonly considered to be truth, unity (oneness), beauty, and goodness. The conceptual idea arose from medieval scholasticism, namely Aquinas but originated with Plato, Augustine, and Aristotle in the West. It is believed to be prefigured in the Bhagavadgita, an ancient Hindu classic, which illuminates the doctrines of Yoga. Viewed ontologically, the transcendentals are understood to be what is common to all beings/things/identities, and all things that exist can be judged, or appraised, or may be said to be or possess the innate qualities and characteristics which we consider or deem True, Beautiful and Good. From a cognitive and "first principles" horizon, going all the way back to Aristotle, they are the "first" concepts, since they cannot be logically or deductively traced back to "a prior metaphysics" preceding their Rational unfoldment and display.
Affect is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields.
The body without organs is a fuzzy concept used in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The concept describes the unregulated potential of a body—not necessarily human— without organizational structures imposed on its constituent parts, operating freely. The term was first used by French writer Antonin Artaud in his 1947 play To Have Done With the Judgment of God, later adapted by Deleuze in his book The Logic of Sense, and ambiguously expanded upon by himself and Guattari in both volumes of their work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Radical orthodoxy is a Christian theological and philosophical school of thought which makes use of postmodern philosophy to reject the paradigm of modernity. The movement was founded by John Milbank and others and takes its name from the title of a collection of essays published by Routledge in 1999: Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, edited by Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward. Although the principal founders of the movement are Anglicans, radical orthodoxy includes theologians from a number of ecclesial traditions.
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze examines Baruch Spinoza's philosophy, discussing Ethics (1677) and other works such as the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), providing a lengthy chapter defining Spinoza's main concepts in dictionary form. Deleuze relates Spinoza's ethical philosophy to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Willem van Blijenbergh, a grain broker who corresponded with Spinoza in the first half of 1665 and questioned the ethics of his concept of evil.
Henry (of) Harclay was an English medieval philosopher and university chancellor.
Scotistic realism is the Scotist position on the problem of universals. It is a form of moderate realism, which is sometimes referred to as 'scholastic realism'. The position maintains that universals exist both in particular objects and as concepts in the mind.
John Duns Scotus was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.
What is Philosophy? is a 1991 book by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. The two had met shortly after May 1968 when they were in their forties and collaborated most notably on Capitalism & Schizophrenia and Kafka: Towards a Minority Literature (1975). In this, the last book they co-signed, philosophy, science, and art are treated as three modes of thought.
