The Transitional Step: Duns Scotus and the Path to Nominalism

The shift from Aquinas to Ockham did not occur in a single leap. A crucial transitional figure was John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), whose thought introduced several conceptual moves that later made nominalism easier to accept.

Scotus did not reject realism outright. He believed that universals and natures had real significance. Yet he reconfigured several aspects of metaphysics in ways that subtly altered the philosophical landscape.

Univocity of Being

Aquinas held that the term being is applied to God and creatures analogically. God is not a being among other beings. Rather, He is the source of all being.

Scotus proposed the univocity of being, arguing that the concept of being must apply in the same fundamental sense to both God and creatures if meaningful reasoning about God is possible.

This change was intended to protect the intelligibility of theology, but it had unintended consequences. It flattened the metaphysical distinction between Creator and creature, making God easier to conceive as one entity among others, albeit infinitely greater.

The Rise of Voluntarism

Scotus also emphasized the primacy of the divine will. While Aquinas placed greater emphasis on the divine intellect as the source of order in creation, Scotus stressed God's freedom to will differently.

This emphasis prepared the ground for the more radical voluntarism that would appear in Ockham.

The more morality depends on divine choice rather than the structure of nature, the more tenuous the connection becomes between being and goodness.

Haecceity and Individuality

Scotus introduced the concept of haecceity (“thisness”), a principle explaining what makes an individual thing distinct from all others.

This insight sought to preserve individuality within a realist framework, but it also shifted philosophical attention toward particular things rather than shared natures.

Over time, this emphasis made it easier for later thinkers to deny that universals possess real existence at all.

The Door Opens

Scotus himself remained a realist. Yet by modifying several key assumptions of classical metaphysics, he loosened the structure that Aquinas had articulated.

Once those supports weakened, Ockham’s nominalism could enter the intellectual landscape with far less resistance.