Post by dreamy on Jul 19, 2006 20:04:16 GMT 10
Forefather of the Scottish Enlightenment
ANTONIE VOS
SUBTLETY matters. Being subtle is a gift, but in a critical culture it also a must. John Duns was subtle. Academic life knows many subtle minds, such as Galileo and Cantor, but only one philosopher has been nicknamed "subtle" from the start and John Duns is still called the doctor subtilis, the subtle mastermind.
As his name suggests, he was born in the small Scottish village of Duns in Berwickshire in either 1265 or 1266. (His surname and the village name are a coincidence.) He is usually called Scotus, for when he started to teach in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe, he immediately gained recognition and in addition to his subtleness the epithet Scotus was attached to him because of his Scottish origins.
The great Scots-born philosopher John Duns Scotus.
It can be said that Duns Scotus (many wrongly think "Scotus" was his surname) is the Scottish philosopher, logician and theologian par excellence, although he mainly taught in Oxford, Paris and Cologne. He studied philosophy and theology in Oxford for about 20 years until 1301 and already wrote a series of logical writings during his student years. He taught theology and philosophy at the University of Paris after having finished his theological studies, but he died in Cologne on 8 November 1308. Although his was an early death at the age of 42, he changed the standards of Western thinking and revolutionised the contents of philosophy and theology taught at Europe's universities.
Sir Anthony Kenny, the British philosopher and former Head of Rhodes House, says of the man: "In his brief academic career he altered the direction of philosophical thinking in many areas and set in on new courses to be followed for centuries."
Although there is the commonplace saying that it would be difficult to find a famous thinker of the Middle Ages whose life is less known than that of Duns Scotus, a book I have just completed on this subject tries to remedy this. Following 25 years of researching and writing about the man, the secret to my endeavour was to unwrap many new aspects that were discovered in several books and contributions published in numerous countries in different languages over the decades.
The young thinker Duns Scotus produced an impressive series of works which are all reviewed, in the company of the spurious works, but his philosophy also covers a formidable range of fields. These areas include semantics, logic and dialogical theory, epistemology and theory of science, physics and ethics, philosophy of mind and action, ontology and philosophical theology - which are all described and analysed in the book.
Duns Scotus had a basic theory of synchronic contingency, a view that classic philosophy and theology required to be reconstructed in a consistent manner. Divine activity is the focus. The world is a contingent, created reality. The heart of this view is that factual reality is not necessary; it is contingent. It could have been different from what it is now, not only in terms of what shall happen in the future - diachronically - but just at the moment when something is the case. The world turns, but the world could have turned otherwise. Things are now factually so, but it is possible at the same moment - synchronically - that they are not so.
His thought is not only a philosophy of contingency and will, but Duns Scotus also stresses that reality should often be different. This philosophy is also a philosophy of individuality, human dignity and love. Free persons can have acted differently and they often should have acted otherwise. This experience and insight revolutionise understanding human existence - the nature of nature and the nature of history.
The legacy of Duns Scotus and his work is the key to understanding Western thought itself. If one is not familiar with his discoveries, it is impossible to recognise his thinking in later traditions. Without Duns Scotus one cannot understand the development of thought in the latter centuries. His traditions determined the alternative options till the end of the 18th century. Famous early modern movements like Molinism and Socinianism, Arminianism and Cartesianism, Spinozism and Enlightenment only defined themselves by deviating from the original Scotian model. Seen in this light the story of the radical Enlightenment becomes a quite different one.
Followers of Duns Scotus were called Scotists and Dunsmen or Dunses in the English speaking world. In the 16th century some people became tired of critical thinking, detailed analysis and sharp argumentation. Thus Dunsman and Dunse were adopted for a "cavilling sophist" or a "blockhead". The earliest quotation in these senses is 1577 and the English language still uses the derogatory term "dunce".
My book presents Duns Scotus for critical minds eager to be subtle - not a dunce - and eager to rediscover the thought of John born in Duns, arguably one of the most significant philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, at the same time refreshing their idea of the dynamics of Western thought.
When we were to select Plato and Aristotle as the philosophical representatives of antiquity, and Locke and Kant as those of the modern era, we are bound to nominate Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus as representing the Middle Ages. The seventh centenary of this Scotsman's death will elicit many manifestations in 2008.
heritage.scotsman.com/greatscots.cfm?id=1027032006
ANTONIE VOS
SUBTLETY matters. Being subtle is a gift, but in a critical culture it also a must. John Duns was subtle. Academic life knows many subtle minds, such as Galileo and Cantor, but only one philosopher has been nicknamed "subtle" from the start and John Duns is still called the doctor subtilis, the subtle mastermind.
As his name suggests, he was born in the small Scottish village of Duns in Berwickshire in either 1265 or 1266. (His surname and the village name are a coincidence.) He is usually called Scotus, for when he started to teach in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe, he immediately gained recognition and in addition to his subtleness the epithet Scotus was attached to him because of his Scottish origins.
The great Scots-born philosopher John Duns Scotus.
It can be said that Duns Scotus (many wrongly think "Scotus" was his surname) is the Scottish philosopher, logician and theologian par excellence, although he mainly taught in Oxford, Paris and Cologne. He studied philosophy and theology in Oxford for about 20 years until 1301 and already wrote a series of logical writings during his student years. He taught theology and philosophy at the University of Paris after having finished his theological studies, but he died in Cologne on 8 November 1308. Although his was an early death at the age of 42, he changed the standards of Western thinking and revolutionised the contents of philosophy and theology taught at Europe's universities.
Sir Anthony Kenny, the British philosopher and former Head of Rhodes House, says of the man: "In his brief academic career he altered the direction of philosophical thinking in many areas and set in on new courses to be followed for centuries."
Although there is the commonplace saying that it would be difficult to find a famous thinker of the Middle Ages whose life is less known than that of Duns Scotus, a book I have just completed on this subject tries to remedy this. Following 25 years of researching and writing about the man, the secret to my endeavour was to unwrap many new aspects that were discovered in several books and contributions published in numerous countries in different languages over the decades.
The young thinker Duns Scotus produced an impressive series of works which are all reviewed, in the company of the spurious works, but his philosophy also covers a formidable range of fields. These areas include semantics, logic and dialogical theory, epistemology and theory of science, physics and ethics, philosophy of mind and action, ontology and philosophical theology - which are all described and analysed in the book.
Duns Scotus had a basic theory of synchronic contingency, a view that classic philosophy and theology required to be reconstructed in a consistent manner. Divine activity is the focus. The world is a contingent, created reality. The heart of this view is that factual reality is not necessary; it is contingent. It could have been different from what it is now, not only in terms of what shall happen in the future - diachronically - but just at the moment when something is the case. The world turns, but the world could have turned otherwise. Things are now factually so, but it is possible at the same moment - synchronically - that they are not so.
His thought is not only a philosophy of contingency and will, but Duns Scotus also stresses that reality should often be different. This philosophy is also a philosophy of individuality, human dignity and love. Free persons can have acted differently and they often should have acted otherwise. This experience and insight revolutionise understanding human existence - the nature of nature and the nature of history.
The legacy of Duns Scotus and his work is the key to understanding Western thought itself. If one is not familiar with his discoveries, it is impossible to recognise his thinking in later traditions. Without Duns Scotus one cannot understand the development of thought in the latter centuries. His traditions determined the alternative options till the end of the 18th century. Famous early modern movements like Molinism and Socinianism, Arminianism and Cartesianism, Spinozism and Enlightenment only defined themselves by deviating from the original Scotian model. Seen in this light the story of the radical Enlightenment becomes a quite different one.
Followers of Duns Scotus were called Scotists and Dunsmen or Dunses in the English speaking world. In the 16th century some people became tired of critical thinking, detailed analysis and sharp argumentation. Thus Dunsman and Dunse were adopted for a "cavilling sophist" or a "blockhead". The earliest quotation in these senses is 1577 and the English language still uses the derogatory term "dunce".
My book presents Duns Scotus for critical minds eager to be subtle - not a dunce - and eager to rediscover the thought of John born in Duns, arguably one of the most significant philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, at the same time refreshing their idea of the dynamics of Western thought.
When we were to select Plato and Aristotle as the philosophical representatives of antiquity, and Locke and Kant as those of the modern era, we are bound to nominate Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus as representing the Middle Ages. The seventh centenary of this Scotsman's death will elicit many manifestations in 2008.
heritage.scotsman.com/greatscots.cfm?id=1027032006