The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation. CONTENTS: Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man's Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper Names. (...) Index of Subjects. (shrink)

This volume is the fifth and final volume in the Blessed John Duns Scotus Opera philosophica series. It offers readers Scotus' questions on Aristotle's De anima wherein he focuses his attention upon the faculties of sensation, the nature of the intellect, the role of the intelligible species in cognition, and the formal object of the intellect.

An English translation of John Duns Scotus's The Questions on Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" including an extensive commentary on some of Scotus's more difficult ideas.

The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation._ CONTENTS: _ Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man’s Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper (...) Names. Index of Subjects. (shrink)

Scotus - unlike Thomas Aquinas - never commented on Aristotle's Politics nor did he write any significant political tracts like Ockham. Nevertheless, despite his primary philosophical reputation as a metaphysician, Scotus did have certain definitive ideas about both politics and the morality of the marketplace.

This work is the first English translation of Scotus's commentary on Aristotle's Quaestiones super Praedicamenta. Although there are numerous Latin commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, Scotus's Questions is one of the few commentaries on the Categories written in the thirteenth century covering all of Aristotle's text, including the often neglected post-praedicamenta, and the only complete Latin commentary available in English. Moreover, unlike many of the commentaries, Scotus's text is one of the last commentaries to be written before the nominalist reduction of (...) the categories to substance and quality. The question format allows Scotus a great deal of liberty to discuss the categories in detail, as well as matters that are only remotely raised by the text. Altogether, the forty-four questions cover the following subjects: questions 1-4 are prolegomena to the work itself and raise the question of its subject matter as well as whether there can be a science of the categories; questions 5-8 deal with equivocals, univocals, and denominatives; questions 9-11 discuss Aristotle's two rules regarding predication and the sufficiency of the categories; questions 12-36 discuss the four main categories treated by Aristotle, namely, substance, quantity, relation, and quality; and the remaining eight questions discuss the post-praedicamenta. (shrink)

Duns Scotus has a remarkably unique and comprehensive theory concerning the nature of justice. Alas, commentators on his work have yet to full flesh out the details. Here, we begin the process of doing so, focusing primarily on his metaethical views on justice, i.e., what justice is or amounts to. While Scotus’s most detailed account of justice can be found in his Ordinatio, we find further specifics emerging in a number of other contexts and works. We argue that Scotus (...) offers a unique contribution in the history of philosophy: justice in God is a formality, in humans a virtue, and when attributed to actions, a relation. Even though formalities, virtues, and relations are ontologically distinct items, each can satisfy Scotus’s preferred Anselmian definition of justice—rectitude of will preserved for its own sake—since each characterizes a will aimed at rendering to goodness what is its due. (shrink)

I. Quaestiones in librum Porphyrii Isagoge ; et , Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis -- II. Quaestiones in libros Perihermenias Aristotelis ; Quaestiones super librum Elenchorum Aristotelis ; Theoremata -- III. Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, libri I-V -- IV. Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, libri VI-IX -- V. Quaestiones super secundum et tertium De anima.

Richard Cross provides the first full study of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, examining his account of the processes involved in cognition, from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. Cross places Scotus's thought clearly within the context of 13th-century study on the mind, and of his intellectual forebears.

I assess Anselm’s claim that the debt of sin is "infinite" by examining the thought-experiment used to illustrate it. The claim crashes due to a conflict with Anselm’s implied (and plausible) view of God’s obligations and due to interesting errors in his thought-experiment. Nevertheless, I defend his "Union-of-Obligation-and-Ability (UOA) strategy and his "Provision-of-Satisfaction" mechanism for explaining atonement, which relied functionally on sin’s infinite demerit, by changing them a bit. I also defend Anselm’s UOA and "Disorder-Avoidance" strategies from objections from (...) class='Hi'>Duns Scotus. (shrink)

R. Pasnau once commented that the present-day academic area of cognitive theory suits medieval thought better than epistemology. The comment seems to the point, and the focus of R. Cross’s book is thus appropriately placed. Scotus’s theory of cognition is worth a new treatment both because Scotus represents a new stage in medieval cognitive theory and because his positions are “sometimes rather fluid” and “not always as clear”. This lack of clarity extends to the most important subject in this book, (...) such as various aspects of the issue of intentionality, where Scotus’s discussion is... (shrink)

Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning is a key text for the origins of Martin Heidegger's concept of "facticity." Originally submitted as a doctoral thesis in 1915, it focuses on the 13th-century philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus. Heidegger first analyzes Scotus's doctrine of categories, then offers a meticulous explanation of the Grammatica Speculativa, a work of medieval grammar now known to be authored by the Modist grammarian Thomas of Erfurt. Taken together, these investigations represent an early foray into (...) Heidegger's lifelong philosophical concerns, "the question of being in the guise of the problem of categories and the question of language in the guise of the doctrine of meaning." This new and unique translation of one of Heidegger's earliest works offers an important look at his early thinking before the question of being became his central concern and will appeal to readers exploring Heidegger's philosophical development, medieval philosophy, phenomenological interpretations of the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Scotus’s claim that the categories are the subject of a propter quid science. In order to see the significance of this claim, I first trace the development of the idea that the categories are the subject of a science from Martin of Denmark, Peter of Auvergne, and Simon of Faversham. I then turn toDuns Scotus’s account of the categories as the subject of a propter quid science. Throughout the discussion, I concentrate on the fundamental problems (...) confronting anyone who claims that there is a science of the categories: namely, how they, being ten, can have an appropriate unity. Scotus, as we will see, will answer this problem by claiming that the intellect causes a greater unity in second intentions than the corresponding unity that exists in the world. As a consequence, Scotus contends that the categories are the subject of a propter quid science, one that is radically different from the science of metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Scotus’s claim that the categories are the subject of a propter quid science. In order to see the significance of this claim, I first trace the development of the idea that the categories are the subject of a science from Martin of Denmark, Peter of Auvergne, and Simon of Faversham. I then turn toDuns Scotus’s account of the categories as the subject of a propter quid science. Throughout the discussion, I concentrate on the fundamental problems (...) confronting anyone who claims that there is a science of the categories: namely, how they, being ten, can have an appropriate unity. Scotus, as we will see, will answer this problem by claiming that the intellect causes a greater unity in second intentions than the corresponding unity that exists in the world. As a consequence, Scotus contends that the categories are the subject of a propter quid science, one that is radically different from the science of metaphysics. (shrink)

The degree of realism that Duns Scotus understood his formal distinction to have implied is a matter of dispute going back to the fourteenth century. Both modern and medieval commentators alike have seen Scotus's later, Parisian treament of the formal distinction as less realist in the sense that it would deny any extra-mentally separate formalities or realities. This less realist reading depends in large part on a question known to scholars only in the highly corrupt edition of Luke Wadding, (...) where it is printed as the first of the otherwise spurious Quaestiones miscellaneae de formalitatibus. The present study examines this question in detail. Cited by Scotus's contemporaries as the Quaestio logica Scoti, we establish that it was a special disputation held by Scotus at Paris in response to criticisms of his use of the formal distinction in God, identify its known manuscripts, and provide an analysis based upon a corrected text, showing in particular the total unreliability of the Wadding edition. Our analysis shows that the Logica Scoti does not absolutely prohibit an assertion of formalities as correlates of the formal distinction, even in the divine Person, so long as their non-identity is properly qualified. That is, the positing of formalities does not of itself entail an unqualified or absolute distinction. (shrink)

Angelology gives Duns Scotus the occasion to test his action theory or to expand on it to accommodate the special case of angelic sin: freedom and determinism; synchronic continency; the will as a “comparative power” (assuming quasi-cognitive functions); the distinction between the two affections of the will (commodi and iustitiae).

It was this kind of priority Aristotle had in mind in his proof that act is prior to potency in the ninth book of the Metaphysics where he calls act prior ...

John Duns Scotus offers the possible beginning for a modern reconceptualization of infinity. Because of his own contemporary mindset, Scotus is not able to overcome completely the mediaeval notionof infinity, but he moves toward an understanding of pluralities of infinities. While Scotus reserves infinity in its most proper sense only to God, this effort on Scotus' part, which extends the concept of infinity while reserving a unique sense of it to the divine essence alone, is surely part of a (...) tradition that leads to Descartes' dual concepts of "infinity" (predicated only of the idea of God) and "indefiniteness"(predicated of material nature). Therefore, without tracing the entire history of the contemporary notion of infinity, we see that its possible beginnings could very well lie in the writings of the Subtle Doctor. -/- . (shrink)