Negatio non cognoscitur nisi per affirmationem: Some Remarks on Negation Parasitism in John Duns Scotus’s Writings

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to detect and assess some parasitic aspects that characterize John Duns Scotus’s account of negation, with a major focus on epistemology and theology. The first paragraph introduces the concepts of asymmetricalism or negation parasitism and traces the occurrence of four asymmetricalist theses in the Author’s production. The second paragraph presents and analyzes a first strategy to dismiss negative theology through an elimination scheme, namely a conditional which reduces negative epistemic propositions to positive ones. The third section attempts a generalization of such a scheme to make it suitable for any kind of negative knowledge foreign to the theological context. The fourth and last paragraph presents a different and more problematic eliminative strategy for negative theology and deals with the issues that arise from it.