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117Scotus's realist conception of the categories: His legacy to late medieval debatesVivarium 43 (1): 63-110. 2005.Scotus claims that the extramental world is divided into ten distinct kinds of essences, no one of which can be reduced to another one. Although by the end of the thirteenth century this claim was not new, Scotus's way of articulating it into a comprehensive metaphysical doctrine resulted into a ground-breaking contribution to what became known as 'late medieval realism'. This paper shows how Scotus's view of the categories as ten kinds of irreducible essences should be seen as a development and…Read more
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112Signification of names in duns scotus and some of his contemporariesVivarium 39 (1): 20-51. 2001.
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112What Lucifer Wanted: Anselm, Aquinas, and Scotus on the Object of the First Evil ChoiceOxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 1 (1): 61-82. 2013.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…Read more
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79Species, Concept, and Thing: Theories of Signification in the Second Half of the Thirteenth CenturyMedieval Philosophy & Theology 8 (1): 21-52. 1999.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 f…Read more
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78Scotus on HellModern Schoolman 89 (3-4): 223-241. 2012.The existence of everlasting punishment has sometimes been thought to be incompatible with God’s goodness and omnipotence. John Duns Scotus focused on the key issue concerning everlasting punishment, i.e., the impossibility for the damned to repent of their evil deeds and so to obtain forgiveness. Scotus’s claimwas that such an impossibility is not logical but nomological, i.e., it depends on the rules God established to govern the world, specifically on what I call ‘the rule of the permanence o…Read more
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68Two Models of Thinking: Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus on Occurrent ThoughtsIn Gyula Klima (ed.), Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, Fordham University Press. pp. 81-103. 2015.Even though Scotus did not develop his account in direct opposition to Aquinas, a contrast between these two thinkers helps us to focus on some distinctive features of their respective approaches and on some characteristic moves they made to answer the question, “What is it to think?” Scotus agreed with Aquinas that, barring divine intervention, an intelligible species must be received in the intellect prior to the production of an occurrent thought about a thing’s essence. Unlike Aquinas, howev…Read more
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61Can God create my thoughts? Scotus's case against the causal account of intentionalityJournal of the History of Philosophy 49 (1): 39-63. 2011.Between the thirteenth and fourteenth century, a remarkable number of thinkers developed an interest in explaining a cognitive state's property of being about something, as many recent studies have shown.1 Several of those later medieval accounts shared a common strategy. According to this common strategy, intentionality was explained in causal terms. Thus, it was contended that cognitive states are about what causes them, and that it is precisely because a certain thing causes a certain cogniti…Read more
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60The Individuation of Angels from Bonaventure to Duns ScotusIn Tobias Hoffmann (ed.), A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy, Brill. pp. 79-115. 2012.
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58Univocity in Scotus's Quaestiones super Metaphysicam: The Solution to a RiddleMedioevo 30 69-110. 2005.
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53Scotus on Objective BeingDocumenti E Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 26 81-103. 2015.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…Read more
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40This study of the interpretations of Aristotle's "Categories" in the thirteenth century provides an introduction to some main themes of medieval philosophical ...
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38Duns Scotus on material substances and cognition: a discussion of two recent books (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (4): 769-779. 2016.ABSTRACTIn a recent book, Thomas Ward advances an original interpretation of Duns Scotus’s hylomorphism, which stresses the ability of the parts of certain kinds of composites to exist independently from each other and from the composite to which they belong. Ward argues that the notion of essential order plays a key role in accounting for the unity of those parts in a composite. In another book, Richard Cross gives a comprehensive treatment of Duns Scotus’s theory of cognition, which proposes a…Read more
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35Scotus's Questions on the Metaphysics: A Vindication of Pure IntellectIn Fabrizio Amerini & Gabriele Galluzzo (eds.), A Handbook to Commentaries on the Metaphysics in the Middle Ages, Brill. pp. 359-384. 2014.John Duns Scotus authored two works on Aristotle's metaphysics, the Questions on the Metaphysics and the Remarks on the Metaphysics. The Questions were copied several times and were soon regarded as one of Scotus's major works. A close study of Scotus's views on the nature, method, and limits of metaphysics in the Questions provides an access key to an otherwise intractable work. Scotus had a particularly lofty conception of metaphysics as the discipline that both considers anything whatsoever w…Read more
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34Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 50 (4): 518-519. 2010.
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34Making Room for Miracles: John Duns Scotus on Homeless AccidentsRes Philosophica 99 (2): 121-137. 2022.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 (org…Read more
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31Duns Scotus on God (review) (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 45 (3): 497-498. 2007.Giorgio Pini - Duns Scotus on God - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 497-498 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Giorgio Pini Fordham University Richard Cross. Duns Scotus on God. Ashgate Studies in the History of Philosophical Theology. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. xi + 289. Paper, $34.95. In this volume, Richard Cross gives us an excellent treatment of Duns Scotus's teaching on God, admirable for both its comprehensive…Read more
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30Ex defectu intellectualis luminis: Giles of Rome on the Role and Limits of MetaphysicsQuaestio 5 (1): 527-541. 2005.
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30Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alain of Lille: Words in the Absence of Things. By Eileen C. Sweeney (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2): 252-254. 2012.
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28Sense, Intellect, and Certainty: Another Look at Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on Divine IlluminationQuaestio 22 433-450. 2023.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 natu…Read more
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24Scotus on Doing Metaphysics in statu istoIn Ingham Mary B. & Bychkov Oleg (eds.), John Duns Scotus, Philosopher (Archa Verbi. Subsidia 3), Aschendorff. pp. 29-55. 2010.
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23Scotus and Avicenna on What it is to Be a ThingIn Dag Nikolaus Hasse & Amos Bertolacci (eds.), The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna's Metaphysics, De Gruyter. pp. 365-388. 2011.
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21Review of Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (8). 2010.
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20Interpreting Duns Scotus: Critical Essays (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2021.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…Read more
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18Duns Scotus's Metaphysics - The Critical Edition of his 'Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis' (review)Recherches de Theologie Et Philosophie Medievales 65 (2): 353-368. 1998.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…Read more
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16Duns Scotus’ Literal Commentary on the Metaphysics and the Notabilia Scoti super metaphysicamBulletin de Philosophie Medievale 38 141-142. 1996.
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11Individui Universali. Il realismo di Gualtiero di Mortagne nel XII secolo by Caterina TarlazziJournal of the History of Philosophy 57 (3): 555-556. 2019.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 wor…Read more
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