Blackwell Reference Online

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One of the most influential and respected of the medieval scholastic theologian/philosophers (known to subsequent generations of scholastics as the “Subtle Doctor”), was born probably in the town of Duns in Scotland. He is known to have studied at Oxford before going to Paris, the chief center of learning in Europe at the time, where he encountered the radical Augustinian Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), Godfrey of Fontaines (thirteenth century), and others. Around 1300 he was back lecturing in Oxford for a spell, and on his return to Paris he became involved on the side of Pope Boniface (1235–1303) in his quarrel with Philip the Fair. Political troubles eventually forced him to desert Paris for Cologne, where he died. Given the shortness of his life the amount of written work he produced is remarkable. There is the usual commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard in several versions, Questions on Logic, Questions on Aristotle's De Anima, On the First Principle (perhaps the most elaborate of the many scholastic attempts to prove the existence of God), Most Subtle Questions on Aristotle's Metaphysics , and a set of Quodlibetal Questions , as well as some less significant treatises. Scotus was in the Franciscan Order from an early age and participated in the late scholastic effort to reinterpret the then dominant Aristotelian-Arab philosophical tradition in a way that made room for ... log in or subscribe to read full text