Giorgio Pini

This paper discusses the views of three medieval thinkers—Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus—about a specific aspect of the problem of evil, which can be dubbed ‘the Lucifer problem’. What was the object of the first evil choice? What could entice a perfectly rational agent placed in ideal circumstances into doing evil? Those thinkers agreed that Lucifer wanted to be happier, but while Anselm thought that that was something Lucifer could achieve by his natural powers, Aquinas held that it was not naturally possible for Lucifer to be happier, even though it was something he could obtain supernaturally. By contrast, Scotus posited that what Lucifer wanted was beyond what was logically possible, i.e. to be as happy as God (or to be God’s equal). An interesting consequence of Scotus’s hypothesis is that God could have done nothing to make Lucifer’s evil choice less likely.

Lo studio si pone due domande sulla dottrina dell'essenzialismo, desunta dalla posizione di Avicenna sull'essenza : 1) come fu possibile per gli autori del Due e Trecento interpretare la dottrina aristotelica dell'essenza come dottrina dell'indifferenza dell'essenza all'individualità e all'universalità; 2) come poterono autori che sostenevano dottrine diverse fra loro appellarsi tutti alla risposta di Avicenna. In questo studio è presa in esame la posizione di Tommaso, soprattutto in quanto nell'evoluzione del suo pensiero non dette alla dottrina dell'indifferenza dell'essenza la medesima interpretazione. La prima parte dello studio è centrata sulla dottrina dell'essenza in Avicenna, elaborata sulla scia della distinzione di Alessandro di Afrodisia tra universale e ciò cui l'universale pertiene. Nella seconda si considera la posizione di Tommaso, prima nel De ente et essentia, poi nel Quodlibet VIII, q. 1 delle Quaestiones de quodlibet, infine nei commenti al De anima e alla Metafisica, e nella Summa contra Gentiles

Da lungo tempo è stato riconosciuto il carattere scotista dell'Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum di Antonio Andrea, a tal punto che essa figura tra le opere di Scoto nelle edizioni del Wadding e di Vivés. Anche ora che la paternità di Antonio Andrea per quest'opera è stata comunemente riconosciuta, accade spesso che si faccia ricorso all'Expositio al fine di illuminare questo o quel punto oscuro del pensiero di Scoto. Tuttavia, una volta analizzata, quest'opera mostra di essere un adattamento puntuale del commento alla Metafisica di Tommaso dal punto di vista delle teorie di Scoto. Attraverso l'introduzione sistematica nelle formulazioni di Tommaso delle nuove dottrine scotiste dell'univocità dell'ente e della natura communis, Antonio realizzò il progetto di fornire ai primi discepoli di Scoto un manuale della scienza dell'ente come scientia transcendens.

Can the Proslogion argument for God’s existence be parodied to demonstrate the existence of the worst evil? This is what Duns Scotus contends in one of his works, where he presents such a parody as evidence for the argument’s unsoundness. Elsewhere, however, Scotus defends a “touched-up” version (coloratio) of Anselm’s argument. In my reconstruction, Scotus’s touched-up argument includes three stages: first, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought is a possible object of thought; second, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist and so can exist; third, a demonstration that that than which a greater cannot be thought actually exists. Contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, I argue that Scotus’s argument does not make any illegitimate shift from logical to real possibility. I also contend that one of the most characteristic aspects of Scotus’s touched-up argument is that the comparison between existing in the intellect and existing in reality (arguably the weakest point in standard reconstructions of Anselm’s argument) plays no role in it, and that accordingly Scotus’s argument is immune from his own parody of Anselm’s argument.

The disagreement between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on divine illumination is usually recognized as a high point in the history of medieval epistemology. Still, there is much obscurity surrounding that debate, including the specific nature of the disagreement between those two thinkers. In this paper, I argue that the point at issue is the relationship between sense and intellect. Henry of Ghent, who posits a close tie between sense and intellect, holds that the senses are the only natural source of both content and certainty for the intellect. By contrast, Duns Scotus holds that, in our natural state, the senses are the source of content but not of certainty for the intellect, which can achieve knowledge of the truth of first principles true by virtue of the meaning of their terms independently of the sensory input it receives.

In this article, I consider Duns Scotus’s treatment of accidents existing without substances (= homeless accidents) in the Eucharist to shed light on how he thinks Aristotle’s metaphysics should be modified to make room for miracles. In my reconstruction, Duns Scotus makes two changes to Aristotle’s metaphysics. First, he distinguishes a given thing’s natural inclinations (its “aptitudes”) from the manifestations of those inclinations. Second, he argues that it is up to God’s free decisions (organized in systematic policies) whether a thing’s aptitudes manifest or do not manifest themselves in any given situation. In this way, Duns Scotus tries to find a point of equilibrium between the necessary causal order he attributes to Aristotle and his followers on the one hand, and God’s freedom to break the natural order at any moment on the other hand.

John Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as one of the most original thinkers of medieval philosophy. His influence on subsequent philosophers and theologians is enormous and extends well beyond the limits of the Middle Ages. His thought, however, might be intimidating for the non-initiated, because of the sheer number of topics he touched on and the difficulty of his style. The eleven essays collected here, especially written for this volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, take the reader through various topics, including Duns Scotus's intellectual environment, his argument for the existence of God, and his conceptions of modality, order, causality, freedom, and human nature. This volume provides a reliable point of entrance to the thought of Duns Scotus while giving a snapshot of some of the best research that is now being done on this difficult but intellectually rewarding thinker.

Walter of Mortagne taught at Reims and Laon, where he become bishop and died in 1174. He is the author of two theological treatises and ten letters. Tarlazzi’s book is a careful study of his realism concerning universals. As the author notes, his views must be reconstructed from indirect evidence. We know from John of Salisbury that he was the main proponent of an original position according to which universals are real items in the world but are identical with individuals. Unfortunately, no work on universals has come down to us that can be attributed to William. Since the late nineteenth century, however, scholars have been able to link Walter’s views as described by John of...

L'A., analizzando la fortuna delle Quaestiones super Metaphysicam di Antonio, discepolo di Scoto, ne segnala il carattere di revisione, ovvero di semplificazione e di riordino, dell'opera del maestro, realizzata con lo scopo di rendere agevole ai discepoli la consultazione dell'opera. Di fatto le Quaestiones presentano, oltre alle correzioni formali, aggiunte, modifiche e soppressioni rispetto all'opera di Scoto, apportate secondo una prospettiva aristotelica che influenzerà la formazione del pensiero metafisico della scuola scotista. Due appendici concludono il saggio: l'elenco dei mss. noti della Metafisica aristotelica, e la classificazione delle quaestiones di Andrea in rapporto alle originali scotiste

Students of later medieval semantics are familiar with the controversy that developed at the end of the thirteenth century over the signification of names. The debate focused on the signification of common nouns such as ‘man’ and ‘animal’: Do they signify an extramental thing or a mental representation of an extramental thing?Some authors at the end of the thirteenth century also discussed another question concerning what names signify, that is, whether they signify the composite of matter and form or only the form of the composite. This second debate will not be considered in this article. Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as having played an important role in this debate.See Costantino Marmo, “Ontology and Semantics in the Logic of Duns Scotus,” in Umberto Eco and Costantino Marmo, ed., On Medieval Theory of Signs, (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989), pp. 161–63; and esp. Dominik Perler, “Duns Scotus on Signification,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3 (1993): 97–120. On the topic in general, see Paul Vincent Spade, “The Semantics of Terms,” in N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, J. Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1982), pp. 188–90; Jan Pinborg, “Bezeichnung in der Logik des XIII. Jahrhunderts,” in Albert Zimmermann, ed., Der Begriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 8 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1971): 238–81; Elizabeth J. Ashworth, “Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 43–53; Claude Panaccio, “From Mental Word to Mental Language,” Philosophical Topics 20 (1992): 125–47. In his Ordinatio, he alludes to a magna altercatio among his contemporaries concerning signification.John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio 1.27.1–3 n.83, in Commissio Scotistica, ed, Opera omnia 6 (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis, 1963), p. 97. What is more, he gives, in his two commentaries on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias, a detailed and fair analysis of the two contrasting positions on this issue.John Duns Scotus, Super Peri hermeneias 1.2, and Super Peri hermeneias 2.1, in Opera omnia 1 (Paris: L. Vivès, 1891), pp. 540–44, 582–85. Scotus’s logical commentaries are usually thought to have been composed before his theological writings, in the last decade of the thirteenth century.

La prima parte del saggio è apparsa in «Documenti e Studi» 3, 1 271-304 . L'esame analitico condotto su ciascuna delle sette questioni egidiane permette all'A. di valutare «le dimensioni e le modalità dell'impiego delle opere di Tommaso d'Aquino compiuto da Egidio Romano» . Di ciascuna questione viene quindi presentata una scheda ragionata articolata in tre parti: 1) collocazione della questione ; 2) analisi delle sezioni ; 3) raffronto complessivo tra la questione studiata e l'articolo parallelo del commento al II libro Sententiarum di Egidio, seguito da una valutazione generale del rapporto tra la questione di Egidio e la trattazione svolta da Tommaso

La prima parte del saggio è apparsa in «Documenti e Studi» 3, 1 271-304. L'esame analitico condotto su ciascuna delle sette questioni egidiane permette all'A. di valutare «le dimensioni e le modalità dell'impiego delle opere di Tommaso d'Aquino compiuto da Egidio Romano». Di ciascuna questione viene quindi presentata una scheda ragionata articolata in tre parti: 1) collocazione della questione ; 2) analisi delle sezioni ; 3) raffronto complessivo tra la questione studiata e l'articolo parallelo del commento al II libro Sententiarum di Egidio, seguito da una valutazione generale del rapporto tra la questione di Egidio e la trattazione svolta da Tommaso.

Lo studio, la cui seconda parte sarà pubblicata nel secondo fascicolo di DSTradF 3, si può dividere in tre sezioni principali. Nella prima, dopo aver accennato alla questione storiografica sulla paternità tommasiana o egidiana della dottrina della differenza reale fra essere ed essenza, l'A. esamina datazione e struttura delle Quaestiones de esse et essentia egidiane, ed in particolare delle prime sette questioni di quest'opera, le Questiones de primo principio, sul tema della creazione, confrontandole poi con i Theoremata de esse et essentia e con il commento di Egidio al II libro delle Sententiae. L'esame della dottrina egidiana della creazione è condotto sia per chiarire come Egidio abbia recepito il corpus degli scritti di Tommaso, sia per trarre nuova luce a proposito della dottrina della distinzione reale di essere ed essenza, la cui trattazione era intesa dal maestro agostiniano come continuazione di quella della creazione. Nella seconda parte l'A. esamina l'impiego egidiano degli scritti dell'Aquinate sulla creazione, mentre la parte finale del saggio verte sulle critiche mosse da Enrico di Gand alla dottrina della creazione elaborata da Egidio.

Scholars interested in Duns Scotus and in medieval metaphysics in general will rejoice at the recent critical edition of Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis. The two volumes of the Quaestiones inaugurate a series of five that will contain the philosophical writings of Duns Scotus. All five volumes will be published by the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure and will constitute a complement to the edition of Scotus’s theological writings that is being carried out by the Scotistic Commission in Rome. Surely the work of the Franciscan Institute will remain the standard edition of Duns Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics for years to come, and will soon become an indispensable reference for any student of Scotus, replacing the old editions by Wadding and by Vivès that have been in use until now. Hopefully, this edition will also be instrumental in raising new interest in Scotus’s Aristotelian commentaries, an often neglected part of his work. In what follows, first we shall give a brief presentation of Duns Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics, focusing on their reception and their place in the framework of Scotus’s literary output; second, we shall describe the work of the editors of the Franciscan Institute; third, we shall make some remarks on the edition itself and on its significance for the studies on Scotus and on medieval metaphysics in general

Scotus’s views on objective being — i.e. the special way objects of thought are supposed to be in the mind — have been recently interpreted in different ways. In this paper, I argue that Scotus’s apparently contradictory statements on objective being can be made sense only if they are read against the background of his theory of essence. Specifically, I claim that a key point of Scotus’s position is that objects of thoughts are in the mind but have mind-independent identity (they are in the mind but not of the mind). I defend my interpretation by focusing on a usually neglected passage from Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics where Scotus provides an unusually explicit (if short) account of what he takes ‘to be objectively in the intellect’ to mean.