Steven P. Marrone

Duns Scotus on Metaphysical Potency and Possibility

That Duns Scotuss thought marks a turning point in the understanding of modality has ensconced itself among the commonplaces of history of medieval philosophy, a fact almost entirely due to the efforts of Simo Knuuttila.1 But if debate over -whether Duns altered the course of thought on this critical area of philosophy has virtually disappeared, confusion seems still to reign about exactly what sort of change he wrought. At the international conference on Scotuss metaphysics and ethics held in 1994 at the University of Bonn, no less than three different interpretations of his pathblazing efforts were offered, one by Knuuttila himself, another by Knuuttilas habitual interlocutor on this issue, Calvin Normore, and a third by John Boler.2 I, too, had something to say about Scotus and modality at the Bonn conference, but there I kept my assessment of his philosophical accomplishment tributary to Knuuttilas, focusing instead on the ambiguous historical links between Dunss ideas on the matter and the precedent work of Henry of Ghent.3 It is time, I believe, that I turn my attention to the issue under debate. Having thought about the Bonn papers for a long time, I have come to the conclusion that there is something more to be said. Perhaps immodestly, I think I can bring us a step closer to resolving the

The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus's Early Works

Of all the philosophical innovations for which John Duns Scotus has been acclaimed, surely the most celebrated is his notion of the univocity of the transcendental concepts, the primary and most important of which was the concept of being. Although Duns was hardly shy about advancing novel or even idiosyncratic ideas in his endeavor to subject philosophy and theology to a penetrating critical analysis, most of his novelties found their roots in the debates of the generation or two preceding him. Even so radically non-Aristotelian a doctrine as the intuition of singulars was not new with Duns so much as more fully articulated in his works and raised to a prominence only hinted at in the writings of his Franciscan predecessors.1 On the matter of univocity, however, Dunss ideas marked a radical departure from a tradition that had remained essentially unchanged for nearly a thousand years, and in a sense went back all the way to Aristotle. Here there was almost no hint of change in the decades before Duns. On the contrary, the Aristotelian notion of univocity was reaffirmed and reinforced. It was pure invention when Duns suggested that the notion of univocity might be used in a way that broke with the past.2 It is not new to point this out. Since the days of Duns himself scholars have either criticized him for his recklessness or praised him for his insight in talking about univocity the way he did. Yet until

The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris

Foreword Jean-Claude Schmitt Introduction 1. Criminality and its social milieu 2. The sources 3. The social topography of Paris 4. The criminal and his group 5. Clerks and bohemians 6. Charity and beggars 7. The world of prostitution 8. The world of work and the world of crime 9. The boundaries of the marginal world Conclusion Notes Index.