Happy Feast!

 Belatedly, alas, the day is past. Here are some recent videos on Scotism:

Fr. Kappes on 'The Meaning of Catholic' and Drs. Goff, Pomplun and Smith, on 'Dogs with Torches'.

Dr. Ward on 'Dogs with Torches'.

Dr. Justin Sledge on Univocity

 

I came across this video on univocity recently, and I can report it is quite good. Probably the best discussion of Scotus on univocity I have ever seen from a non Scotus expert.

Naturally I had some minor complaints. One is that it is not controversial to call God being itself, given the medieval interpretation of Exodus 3:14 which ensconced being as the primary name of God. Another is that I don't think the 'being among beings' was really ever an issue, that is, that univocity rendered God just a being beings. It is true, one can find Bonaventure saying that God is not 'ens inter entia sed super entia', but the modern slogan is more an extreme platonist claim that God is rather beyond being, something most scholastics would disagree with (as per Exodus). The real issue about univocity is what Aquinas had said, that it destroys divine simplicity (I don't think the medievals would even say that God is transcendent or transcendental). If God is in a genus with creatures, then there would be an aspect in God that was held in common with creatures, and an aspect that was unique to God, and so at least two univocal parts [reality of genus and reality of specific difference]. 

Project on the Formalitates.

 Claus Andersen (Leuven) has a website for his project on the formalites and the formalist tradition. There is a lot of useful information, including lists of manucripts and printed treatises on the formalities. 

Promotion of Francis of Meyronnes

Well, it's the anniversary we have all been waiting for, the date of the letter which promoted Francis of Meyronnes to being a master of theology. Here is a screen shot from the CUP.

Letter on the Cult of Scotus

 The Franciscan minister general composed a letter on the occasion of the 30 year anniversary of the confirmation of the cult of Scotus, available here.

Conference on the Absolute Primacy of Christ

 There is a conference planned for July on the absolute primacy of Christ, information here.

From their description:

Join us at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Catholic Retreat Center from July 14th-16th, 2023, for a grace-filled weekend of conferences on the Absolute Primacy of Jesus Christ. In Medieval times all of the great scholastics, including Saints like Anselm, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, grappled with the question of God's primary motive in bringing about the Incarnation. Was it because of sin - no sin, no Incarnation? Or was Emmanuel God's original plan - sin or no sin, always the Incarnation? The objective of this Symposium is to create an opportunity for scholars to present theological arguments in favor of the absolute primacy of Christ and to create a resource - a handbook, as it were - for theologians and faithful alike who want to learn more about the beauty and intricacies of this Christocentric perspective of creation and salvation history.

New Book: Cognitive Issues in the Long Scotist Tradition

 A book has appeared, edited by Heider and Andersen. Available here.

The blurb:

The late-scholastic school of Scotism (after John Duns Scotus, † 1308) left considerable room for disagreement. This volume innovatively demonstrates just how vividly Scotist philosophers and theologians discussed cognitive matters from the 14th until the 17th century. It further shows how the Scotist ideas were received in Protestant and Reformed milieus.

Conference on Scotism and Platonism, May 2023

Announcing a conference on the interrelations between Scotism and Platonism, Bonn 2023. I hope to see you there! note that you can also attend via zoom.

Goff on a variety of topics

 here is an old but good video of Dr. Jared Goff discussing Scotism and Palamism.

Festum Scoti, 2022

 Hello, and happy feast! A day late, yes.

Here is the collect:

Domine Deus, fons omnis sapientiae, qui Beatum Ioannem

presbyterum, Immaculatae Virginis assertorem,

nobis magistrum vitae et scientiae dedisti, concede, quaesumus,

ut, eius exemplo illuminati, et doctrinis nutria,

Christo fideliter adhaereamus. Qui tecum vivit.

Alistair McGrath on Natural Theology

 The contemporary theologian Alistair McGrath has written an entry on natural theology for the new resource "St. Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology," which will attempt to do for theology what the Stanford encyclopedia has done for philosophy.

I have written on the topic as well recently (see the first blog entry of the year), so I have a few points of criticism.

One is that McGrath makes no mention of Christian Wolff, who wrote a natural theology that was quite influential on the continent. Indeed, McGrath is focused on the English understanding of natural theology as closely allied with natural philosophy and the physical sciences.

This means that McGrath makes no mention at all of Nicolas Bonetus, the first person to write a Theologia naturalis and assign it a place among the system of sciences inherited from Aristotle. But perhaps, since this the encylopedia is electronic, the author will update it later. 

More of an oddity than anything else, McGrath treats the natural theology of Raymond Sebonde under the heading of 'Renaissance and Reformation', though he notes that it is from the late fiftheenth century, surely part of the medieval era. And again, Sebonde was writing a hundered years after Bonetus.

We come to Duns Scotus. McGrath devotes only a paragraph to Scotus, and, given that the English discussion of natural theology and natural philosophy is predominate, the only doctrine of Scotus that is singled out is the notion of Haecceity.

A further development of importance to natural theology was due to the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus and his successors. The concept of haeccitas (‘this-ness’) emerged during the fourteenth century as a means of capturing and preserving the distinct identity of any particular aspect of the natural order. Although this concept was important for the philosophy of religion, it was adopted in the nineteenth century by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who used it as the basis of a heightened attentiveness to the individual aspects of nature (Boggs 1997), which is particularly evident in his 1877 poem ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’.

So no mention of univocity of being, or Scotus' proof for the existence of God, or the nature of metaphysics and theology. the former doctrine, as is well known, is treated under the rubric of natural knowledge of God. 

In the end it makes an interesting contrast with Milbank and his school, for whom Scotus is of cosmic catastrophic significance. For McGrath, it seems Scotus is mainly of interest because of the poetry he inspired.

News

 Hi all, been busy this year, sorry. But here is some recent news of interest to the Scotist community.

Tobias Hoffmann has updated his Bibliography of Duns Scotus, find it here.

Claus Andersen has tracked down volumes of the Vatican edition of Scotus' works on Archive.org and published the links, here.

Finally, I appeared on the "Dogs with Torches Podcast" to discuss Scotus, univocity, and their modern critics, here.

Natural Theology

 A new special issue of the journal RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA has come out, an issue devoted to the topic of natural theology.

Here are the contents, which contain two essays of direct interest to scholars of Scotus and Scotism:

Alberto Frigo, "Radical natural theologies from duns scotus to christian wolff. Introduction."

Garrett Smith, "The Natural Theology of Nicholas Bonetus."

Alberto Frigo, "Même la Trinité: Descartes, Pascal et Saint-­Ange"

Gabriel Meyer-­Bisch, "Usages et fonctions du concept de «cité de Dieu» dans la première philosophie de Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Uses and functions of the concept of City of God in the early Leibniz’s Philosophy.)"


Pietro Terzi, "Involution and the Convergence of Minds. The Philosophical Stakes of Lalande’s Vocabulaire"

Olivier Boulnois, "La teologia naturale, Duns Scoto e la deduzione a priori della Trinità (Natural Theology, Duns Scotus and the a priori Deduction of the Trinity.)"

Édouard Mehl, "La Puissance et son nombre, d’Abélard à Kepler"

Jean-­Christophe Bardout, "Prouver sans démontrer. Malebranche et la Trinité"

Gualtiero Lorini, "«Diversa Theologiae naturalis systemata»: Christian Wolff’s Ways to God"

Enrico I. Rambaldi, Patrizia Pozzi

Scotist News

 Hello dear readers, here are a few items worthy of note that have recently appeared.

1. A digital edition of the debate between Duns Scotus and Guillelmus Petri Godinus is now available on the website of the Scotus Archiv (Bonn), here. Website still under construction, but the text and manuscript photos are up now. The debate is about the principle of individuation, and is one of the only, if not the only, place that Scotus directly confronts the Thomist theory.

2. A journal issue dedicated to Antonius Andreae has appeared, here.

3. And, finally, the long-awaited book edited by Giorgio Pini, called Interpreting Duns Scotus, has now appeared.

A veritable end of year feast for all!

More on Scotus' Birthplace

 So back on the theme of where Scotus was born, namely, was he Irish (Scotus, Hibernicus), or Scottish (Scotus). While it is commonly held today that the Scottish position has triumphed, there was some criticism on a post from earlier in the year to the effect that the word "scotus" originally meant someone from Ireland and only later, possibly during Scotus' own time did it come to mean someone from Scotland. 

While transcribing the Additiones magnae, a text compiled by William of Alnwick from Scotus' Oxford and Parisian teaching, I came across the following sentence, that is obviously sketching a map of Europe and also distinguishes between Scotland (scotia) and Ireland (hibernia). 

"...inter Norwegiam et Scotiam et inter Hyspaniam et Hyberniam..."

This is from the end of Add. II d. 14 q. 4. Even if William of Alnwick may be expanding on Scotus' text (studies on the Additiones II are in their infancy, so I don't know if there is a parallel elsewhere in Scotus yet), it shows that ireland was already being called 'hibernia' by about 1315, close to Scotus' lifetime.