John Duns Scotus  ca. 1265 - 1308

The standard source on Scotus' moral philosophy. Since the original publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality in 1986, there has been a remarkable growth of interest in the thought of this early fourteenth-century Franciscan master. Allan B. Wolter's critically acclaimed book inspired much of the inquiry, and today it remains the standard source on Scotus' moral philosophy. This new edition of the book retains the introduction and English translations of the original thirty-four selections of texts from Scotus' writings on the will and morality. In addition to a substantially expanded bibliography, the volume includes a preface written by William A. Frank. "With admirable perseverance . . . the author has prepared the translation of a broad selection of Scotus passages, which in carefully ordered succession present a fairly full humanistic and Christian moral doctrine. The precise aim of the work is not completeness or a simple survey of ethics but a demonstration of the rational unity and consistency of Scotus' moral philosophy and its accessibility to human reason. For a generation of students whose command of Latin is limited this will be a valuable instrument for access both to a standard line of medieval thought and to an impressively unified Christian ethics. . . . A splendid book."-Manuscripta, on the first edition.  

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John Duns Scotus Biography

John Duns Scotus, Scottish theologian and philosopher, was founder of a school of Scholasticism known as Scotism. Born in Duns, Duns Scotus entered the Franciscan order and studied at the universities of Oxford and Paris. He later lectured at both universities on the Sentences, the basic theological textbook by the Italian theologian Peter Lombard. In 1303 he was exiled from Paris for refusing to support Philip IV, king of France, in his quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII over the taxation of church property. After a brief exile Scotus returned to Paris, and he lectured there until 1307. Toward the end of that year he was sent to Cologne, where he lectured until his death on November 8, 1308, in Cologne. His most important writings are two sets of Commentaries on the Sentences and the treatises Quodlibetic Questions, Questions on Metaphysics, and On the First Principle. Scotus combined the Aristotelian theory of knowledge directed to the nature of physical objects as achievable by the abstractive power of the intellect with the Franciscan view of the soul as a substance in its own right with powers of intellection not confined to sensible reality. This subtle mingling of divergent tendencies and his skillful method of analysis, especially in his defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, earned him the title of Doctor Subtilis (Latin, "the Subtle Doctor")...

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Born in Duns, Duns Scotus entered the Franciscan order and studied at the universities of Oxford and Paris. He later lectured at both universities on the Sentences, the basic theological textbook by the Italian theologian Peter Lombard. In 1303 he was exiled from Paris for refusing to support Philip IV, king of France, in his quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII over the taxation of church property. After a brief exile Duns Scotus returned to Paris, and he lectured there until 1307. Toward the end of that year he was sent to Cologne, where he lectured until his death on November 8, 1308, in Cologne. His most important writings are two sets of Commentaries on the Sentences and the treatises Quodlibetic Questions, Questions on Metaphysics, and On the First Principle...

Scotus on Univocal Concepts of God

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Scotus, who was a Scot, and Ockham, who was English, both studied and taught at Oxford, were both members of the Franciscan order, the order established at the beginning of the 13th century by Francis of Assissi. In philosophy and theology the Franciscans do not seem to have formed a united school of thought. Diversity and disagreement characterises the Franciscan tradition. One of the most obvious common characteristics of 14th century philosophy was that it was academic or "scholastic" (belonging to the Schools). In other words, it was written by university teachers for a university readership, students and other teachers; it was not addressed to the general public outside the universities. In this respect it contrasts with philosophy in the 17th and 18th (and, in English, in the 19th) centuries, which was generally deliberately non-academic, being addressed to lay readers, to the general reading public, written generally in the vernacular. Seventeenth century writers such as Descartes did not generally refer to anyone else's writings: there were no learned footnotes, no analyses of other people's arguments, quotations from Aristotle and Plato and so on. This has misled some 19th century historians into thinking that the 17th century writers made a completely new beginning, which is not true. They were often using, and implicitly arguing with, earlier writers' ideas...

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