Duns Scotus: Rationality in Economic Dynamics
The merchant's personal gain is useful to the common good
John Duns Scoto (1263/66?-1308), an eminent Franciscan personality, saint and daring teacher, theoretical and at the same time practical, an analytical and original philosopher (so called in the tradition Doctor Subtilis), was one of the main interpreters of Franciscan Theology; but he was also a careful observer of socio-economic realities and culture, to which he offered a contribution from his propositions concerning social theology. The Franciscan inspiration of the Canticle of the Creatures influenced his thought: nature constitutes the magnificence of God and provides a place for good living, not a valley of tears. Anticipating the philosophy of dialogue, today fundamental in anthropology, he structurally integrates the definition of 'person', dating back to Boethius, adding to it rationality and one’s ability to create bonds.
The concept he employs, which somewhat anticipates existentialism and social systems, is that of haecceitas: il principium individuationis lies in the distinction of one individual from another, owing to its irreducibility. This signifies affirming the singular and unrepeatable being of man. In the more specifically ethical-economic issues, the originality of Duns Scotus with respect to the other schools is manifested in his approach to merchant exchange. Exchange in the market place must have a social function and be exercised with justice and for the common good. It ought to have two dimensions: the merchant must perform a useful service to the community and he ought to receive adequate remuneration.
The economy is an instrument for personal gain, but it is refined in its utility for the common good, by means of an admirable and harmonious synthesis between the particular and the universal, between the subject and the community, between the individual and society. This intuition, which has an impact on economic thought up until the last school of the Seventeenth Century, will be picked up by the Italian School of Civil Economics of Antonio Genovesi and Pietro Verri, as well as the Scottish School of Moral Philosophy of the Market by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith. Then, it will appear again at the nascent classical school, the Economia Politica. With Economia Politica, a new spirit is introduced (foreign to Schola), one in which economic development is understood as civil progress. Within this new perspective lies the real difference between medieval economic thought – bound to theology-philosophy, where the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, gratuitousness and fraternity stood out – and classical systematic economics, developed autonomously from theology.