Univocity of being

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 of Thomas Aquinas, nonetheless holds to a univocal concept of being. Scotus believed in 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. 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. 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. ==Gilles Deleuze==

Gilles Deleuze borrowed the doctrine of ontological univocity from Scotus. 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." Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, 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". == Mousavirad ==

A contemporary defense and development of univocity, termed "Complete Univocity", has been proposed by Seyyed Jaaber Mousavirad. This view argues that for predicates like "knowledge" or "power" to be applied to God and creatures with a single meaning (semantic univocity), there must necessarily be some fundamental ontological commonality between them. Mousavirad critiques rival theories like analogy and "partial univocity" (which accepts semantic univocity but denies ontological commonality) as philosophically untenable or theologically problematic. He posits that attributes are "gradational concepts," sharing a core reality realized in different modes or degrees of perfection—unlimited and necessary in God, limited and contingent in creatures—thus preserving both meaningful discourse about God and divine transcendence. This perspective is presented as aligning with the thought of the Islamic philosopher Mulla Sadra's concept of the "gradation of existence. ==See also==