Agathology and agapology. In turning our attention now to the relationship between these two spheres we turn our attention to attention itself, attention ‘as such’.

Attention is a counterweight to intention. Intention is exercised in the directedness both of conscious understanding to its object and of the will to its proximate or remote end. These directings are interdependent. Correcting what he sees as the prejudice in favour of the speculative manifested in Aristotle and Thomism, Scotus argues that the will acts in the light of knowledge furnished by the understanding, whereas knowledge furnished by the understanding depends on the will for its application. Furthermore, Scotus argues, and Hopkins chimes in, the will can will the positively infinite, whereas the understanding has to make do with the negativity of the not-finite.

How, however, can Scotus maintain this interdependence of understanding and will yet be described by Hannah Arendt as ‘the lonely defender of the primacy of the Will over Intellect’? One way to make this possible would be to interpret the thesis of interdependence as referring to the human understanding and the human will while interpreting the thesis of the primacy of the will as referring to the divine. God's will would be metaphysically prior because God is the Creator. This way of safeguarding consistency seems not to be accessible to the citizens of the city of the ungodly. And it is they who concern us here where we are attempting to demonstrate the direct relevance to the unbeliever and disbeliever – as such and not as a potential convert – of the works of Scotus and Hopkins despite the absolute presupposition of Christian theology to which the works of both of these authors subscribe. We have based the chief hope of demonstrating some degree of relevance on the premise that God is Love, acknowledging that this premise promises or threatens to reimport the theology implicit in its scriptural place of origin. To the acknowledgement of that origin should be added acknowledgement of the Augustinian element in the armoury drawn on by Scotus and Hopkins in their endeavour to ‘correct’ or at least ‘colour’ Aristotle and Aquinas, as Scotus admits he ‘colours’ Anselm's so-called ontological argument.