On 8 November 1308, the great Franciscan scholastic thinker, John Duns Scotus, died and was buried in the friars' convent in Cologne. Building upon the intellectual heritage of his Franciscan predecessors in Paris, Alexander of Hales and Bonavetnrue of Bagnoregio, Scotus extended this peculiarly Franciscan approach to the philosophical and theological traditions of western Christianity in new and bold directions with unique emphases and implications. These ramifications bevame the foundation for an important alternate current of philosophical thought known through history as Scotism. On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of John Duns Scotus, international scholars from around the world gathered together to celebrate in a comprehensive manner the life, work and intellectual legacy of the Subtle Doctor. This gathering took on the form of a Quadruple Congress, comprising four conferences, treating four different themes, associated with the intellectual journey and legacy of Scotus, namely Oxford, Cologne-Bonn, Strasbourg and the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University, New York. The corresponding four volumes represent the current state of international Scotus scholarship and will remain an invaluable tool for years to come.
The volume contains the following articles: Stephen Brown, Reflections on Franciscan Sources for Duns Scotus’s Philosophical Commentaries • Cruz Gonzalez Ayesta, Duns Scotus on Synchronic Contingency and Free Will • Thérèse-Anne Druart, Ibn Sina or Avicenna and Duns Scotus: The Originality and Importance of His Contribution • Stephen Hipp, The Doctrine of Personal Subsistence in John Duns Scotus • Ludger Honnefelder, Franciscan Spirit and Aristotelian Rationality John Duns Scotus’s New Approach to Theology and Philosophy • Severin Kitanov, Some Comments on Scotus’s Treatment of Ens in his Quaestiones Super Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis IV.1 • Graham McAleer, Duns Scotus and Giles of Rome on Whether Sensations are Intentional • Marilyn McCord Adams, Essential Orders and Sacramental Causality • Thomas Möllenbeck, A Natural Desire to Know the Ultimate Argument Robert Spaemann’s Post-Nietzschean Proof of God’s Existence in Scotistic Light on Met I,1 • Seamus Mulholland, The Shaping of a Mind: The Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Oxfordian Intellectual Inheritance Of Duns Scotus • Timothy J. Noone, Duns Scotus and the Franciscan Educational Model • Giorgio Pini, Scotus on Doing Metaphysics in statu isto • Andrea Robiglio, A Thomistic Ring to Scotus’s Hermeneutics? The ‘Doctor Communis,’ John Duns Scotus and the Will • Mary Beth Ingham, Scotus’s Franciscan Identity and Ethics: Self-Mastery and the Rational Will • Antonie Vos, Duns Speaks for Himself with the Help of a Comma • Francesco Fiorentino, Sensus Compositus and Sensus Divisus according to Duns Scotus.